Immunity in Guinea Pigs to the Virus of Vesicular Stomatitis.

Abstract

It is known that the injection of immune serum into guinea pigs prevents generalization of the lesions but not the primary vesicles of foot-and-mouth disease. In studying a strain of the virus of vesicular stomatitis, a disease of horses closely related to foot-and-mouth disease of cattle,1 we have found that the virus, when injected into guinea pigs, loses its original feeble power to produce the characteristic secondary lesions in the pad, and that only primary lesions arise after pad inoculation. Notwithstanding this fact, the virus receives a general distribution since it can be recovered, 48 hours after pad inoculation into guinea pigs, from the apparently normal tongue. On the other hand, when the virus is injected into the muscles or the skin (intradermal) elsewhere than in the pad, no local lesion whatever follows, and 10 days after the inoculation it is found that the pigs are immune to reinoculation.In the preliminary experiments, no attempt was made to titrate the strength of the virus, because...