A STUDY ON DESICCATED GOAT SPLEEN VACCINE AS
         AN IMMUNIZING AGENT AGAINST RINDERPEST

                                             BY

               K. S. NAIR, G.B.V.C., M.R.C.V.S., D.T.V.M.

                                    Superintendent

                        R. KRISHNAMURTI, G.M.V.C.

                                          AND

                  G. S. KALYANASUNDARAM, G.M.V.C.

      Veterinary Assistant Surgeons, Serum Institute, Madras

                (Received for publication on 14 October 1941)

TISSUE vaccines are now widely used in combating rinderpest and
several workers have employed, in different ways, rinderpest goat spleen
in the preparation of such vaccines. In Burma, a dried goat spleen
vaccine is being used on an extensive scale and is reported to be safe, effective
and cheap. A series of experiments were conducted at the Serum Institute,
Madras, with desiccated goat spleen vaccine; the product was also tried in
selected areas of the province. The object of this paper is to record the
results obtained.

           TECHNIQUE OF PREPARATION OF THE VACCINE

A private communication from Mr G. Pfaff of Burma and his [1938]
article ' Immunization against rinderpest, with special reference to the use
of dried goat spleen' gave full details of the preparation of this vaccine.
The method followed for making it was similar to that adopted by him.
Briefly stated, the mode of preparation is as follows :—

Spleens from three reacting goats were cut into pieces and a few pieces
of each spleen were passed through a tissue mincer. The resulting fine pooled
pulp was placed in a desiccator and dried in vacuo over calcium chloride,
keeping the desiccator in cold storage. The quantity of dry vaccine ob-
tained was roughly one-fourth by weight of the pulp used for desiccation.

                             DETAILS OF EXPERIMENTS

Experiments with the first batch of vaccine

The first batch of vaccine was prepared on 13 June 1939, using the
pooled spleen pulp from three goats belonging to the three different strains, viz
Mukteswar strain No. 1, Mukteswar strain No. 2 and Madras strain, which
were maintained at the Serum Institute. The spleens were removed on
different dates and kept in cold storage before pooling. Fresh vaccine as

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