Rinderpest.                                    71

The demand would be much greater if there were a suffi-
cient staff for field operations. The serum treatment is not
allowed to be carried out except by graduates of a Veterinary
College who have also been trained in inoculation work.

The number of qualified Veterinary Assistants is far below
the requirements and the colleges are unable to educate a suffi-
cient number to meet the increasing demand for men for Gov-
ernment and other posts.

The popularity which the serum has, under the most diffi-
cult circumstances, achieved among cattle owners in India,
and the annual records of the Superintendents, Civil Veter-
inary Department, and their staff, go to prove that the use
of the "serum alone" method is one of real practical benefit,
that it protects cattle through an outbreak of the disease, and
that it affords a means of effectually checking the spread
of Rinderpest.

In field operations there are many difficulties in keeping
treated animals under observation and in collecting accurate
information. There is, however, little doubt that the number
of cattle which succumb to Rinderpest, after serum treatment,
is extremely small. If the percentage of deaths among animals
after serum injections were at all appreciable, the owners would
consider the treatment as the cause of death and would draw
attention to the fact.

Recently I had an opportunity of making some careful ob-
servations of the results of serum injections in an outbreak
of Rinderpest among the susceptible Hill cattle.

In January 1908, Rinderpest broke out among cattle in a
village a few miles from the Laboratory. Soon after the
disease appeared, 35 cattle were injected with a single dose of
serum. Among the untreated animals deaths occurred for
over a month and a half. The inoculated animals were during

                 * 6,27,349 doses were issued during 1908-09.