rapidly through the neighbourhood. These blunders, it is to be feared, were not confined to vagrant quacks, inasmuch as several medical men were not quite blameless."*

Whilst such doings discredited vaccination in

one way, they served it in another: they made it easy to conceal its failures and injuries by ascribing them to the use of spurious virus. Everything is to be gained for truth in vaccination by taking it in what its believers allow to be its unexceptionable form, so as to leave no room for evasion. Small-pox in America as in England soon showed itself indifferent to the art of the vaccinator, and then it was settled that at least it made the disease milder; and

under cover of the convenient fiction it continued to be practised where fees were to be had for the performance.

The attitude of the medical mind to epidemics, and the ignorance of what we now regard as the first elements of sanitary science, are illustrated with touching sincerity in a letter addressed by Dr. Waterhouse in 1817 to the Surgeons of the United States Army. Said the Jenner of the New World

unseen.

"You need not waste your time or distract your attention by guessing at the remote causes of dysenteries or epidemic fevers. We learn from the highest authority, that the pestilence 'walketh in darkness.' The enemy approaches We are pretty well convinced that epidemic fevers depend not on any of those changes in the air that are pointed out by the thermometer, barometer, or hygrometer. These wide spreading maladies, as well as endemics, or local disorders, seem as if they arose from some secret movements, or alterations in the earth, or on its surface that is, on some new combinations in the soil, or some effluvium from a deeper situation, affecting not only the air we breathe, but the water which we use for everything. Epidemics seem to accompany or follow a blighted state of vegetation. They seem also to accompany an abundant harvest; but whether in the series of cause and effect is not fully known. As to myself, I'm weary of conjecture."

Well might he be weary! He does not say so, but neither does he make any reserve in favour of vaccination; and after seventeen years trial of it, the old physician must have included it in his cry of Vanitas Vanitatum!

AN INSTRUCTIVE Experience.-A lady told me the other day that she had five children, four of whom she was persuaded to have re-vaccinated, holding back the fifth on account of delicate health. She attended to the vaccinated arms, which were much inflamed and troublesome, when she was seized with small-pox, which also attacked her child who was not re-vaccinated-a triumph for the doctor who had strongly recommended the re-vaccination of the whole family. I told her that I had little doubt that her small-pox was contracted from the effluvia of the four vaccinated arms. "Yes,' she replied, "that is my own suspicion, but I never heard it expressed before. She added that she and her daughter got nicely over their attack; that it was not much worse than vaccination; and that their general health had much improved since their illness. ST. KENTIGERN.

* Baron's Life of Jenner, Vol. i. p. 387.

THE TWO CREEDS.

THE vaccine profession seem content to leave their theory in its original shroud. It is felt to be unwise to particularise, and the proffered blessings are clouded in generalities. We need items of the claim made on behalf of the cowexpect no reply when we ask, What are the pox? What will it do for the individual who personal or collective? If personal, how can a submits to the operation? Is the protection protected person become a victim to the smallpox? If collective, is the protection shared equally or unequally among the recipients? himself to be 37 times safer than his opponents, If shared equally, a vaccinated person, believing may quietly await his turn, and see the anti-vaccinators laid low before his time arrives. If shared

unequally, what is it that governs the inequality? Does the efficiently vaccinated landowner in his country mansion receive a fuller measure of proletaire who sleeps in a cellar, or over a protective virtue than the efficiently vaccinated malodorous mews? And is the proportion of individual or collective protection received in vaccination by our legislators themselves fairly estimated, if it be described as 37 times greater than that received by an equal number of vaccinated Red Indians, Icelanders, or Samoiedes?

State Medicine is reserved when inquiries are made. State Compulsion can only be justified Were State Medicine by State Infallibility. explicit, it would soon cease to be infallible: an explicit infallibility would become incapable of changing its front.

Judging from the impetuous tirades aimed against the anti-vaccine defenders of personal and parental rights, the modern vaccine creed may be thus particularised:

1. Small-pox is the lot and destiny of all (with the reserve that there is no rule without an exception).

2. Subject to the same reserve, a single attack is the common law of nature.

3. Small-pox once had the power of originating; but in these days can only be propagated from an existing case.

4. Cleanliness and hygienic precautions, domestic or municipal, exert no practical influence over it: the palace is as liable as the wigwam: the anti-vaccinator is powerless against it: the only preventive, and the only mitigator, is vaccination.

5. Vaccination can mitigate, but cannot cure. 6. Vaccination from the cow is perfect: but the calf is better.

7. Vaccination properly administered from cow, calf, or human being, can convey no disease but cow-pox. Those who hold this opinion, ought to be the sole judges in cases of alleged transmission of family diseases.

8. The chances of recovery from small-pox among the vaccinated are dependent on the number, age, and quality of their Vaccination Marks, and are in no way influenced by the age or constitution of the patient, the nature of the treatment, or the "atmosphere of concentrated infection" which does not always infect re-vaccinated hospital nurses.

The anti-vaccine creed is less intolerant, and may be thus displayed:

1. Small-pox is a filth disease, and may originate daily in the foul haunts where dirt and degradation reign.

2. The attack is mild or severe according to the amount or intensity of the impurities to which the sufferer is, or has been, exposed, and the strength of his constitutional powers of resistance.

3. Sanitation is better than vaccination.

4. Anti-vaccinators, by reason of their avoid ance of transmitted disease, and their active belief in sanitary laws, are less liable than vaccinating families to the attacks of the zymotic or filth diseases throughout life, and are consequently regarded with "eye askance" by the extreme section of the medical profession.

5. Statistical comparisons ought to be made between vaccinators and anti-vaccinators, and not between the strong and the weakly of vaccinating families. H. D. D.

CALCUTTA.-There was no small-pox in Calcutta in 1880, but compulsory vaccination was brought

into force for the first time under Dr. M'Leod.

The law imposes upon the corporation of Calcutta the function of making arrangements for the due performance of the rite, and the results are looked forward to with much interest.

THE Vereins-Blatt for March, contains an account of the death of Abraham Paulus, a native of Greenland, occupied in the construction of a map of the Labrador coast. The account states that some time since Paulus, with his family, eight persons in all, arrived in Germany, where three of them died, the remaining five going to Paris to reside there. It does not appear whether they were vaccinated in Germany, but on arriving in Paris the authorities insisted on their undergoing the operation, which, proving abortive, they were re-vaccinated, and this time with such results that the whole five died in a few hours.-Dulce est pro scientiâ mori.

THE STRANGE HOPE OF "SCIENCE." The Report of the Epidemic of 1847-48, published by the Board of Health, with its map of the plaguespots of London, marked to my mind, an epoch in Sanitary Science; demonstrating not only how completely cholera, but zymotic disease generally, could be eliminated by efficient sewerage, pure water-supply, adequate ventilation, and general purification of dwellings, combined with due precautions against the dispersion of the special poison." -Thus Dr. Carpenter writes in the Modern Review, and we agree with him; but he holds out the hope that for the various forms of zymotic disease there may be discovered antidotes of the same order as vaccination; and when these are discovered it will be possible to disregard Sanitary Science and live in filth with complete impunity.

PASTEUR'S EXPERIMENTS. M. PASTEUR has continued and extended his experiments on the cultivation and attenuation of animal poisons, and has communicated his results to a general meeting of the Medical Congress. What was true of the virus of chicken-cholera, he finds to be also true of that of charbon or splenic fever, viz., that its virulence is due to a special microbe which is capable of attenuation and destruction by the agency of atmospheric oxygen, and further, that the inoculation of an animal with the attenuated virus preserves it in a quite miraculous manner from the danger of a future attack.

Notwithstanding aught that may be said to the contrary, these experiments of M. Pasteur furnish the most destructive arguments it would be possible for Pathology to produce against the theory on which vaccination is founded, and establish the strongest plea for a rational and sanitary system of treating disease.

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The differences which exist between vaccinator and anti-vaccinator are deeper and more subtle than they at first sight appear to be; they are in fact, based upon two totally different views of disease. The vaccinator begins by assuming, what indeed is absolutely essential to his theory, that man is naturally unhealthy, or prone to disease, or blest with a congenital liability," specific susceptibility" to each and all of the variable class of zymotic poisons. It is the particular role of vaccination (so says the theory) to remove the susceptibility to small-pox in particular. Small-pox, it is added, is due to a specific germ or microzyme, is propagated solely by contagion, and never arises de novo; and that since these germs are omnipresent and the

or

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ability to small-pox [apart from vaccination] universal, the sole cause which determines whether or no a person will or will not take small-pox is simply and solely that of vaccination. If he be vaccinated, he cannot take it; if he be unvaccinated, he must take it; smallpox is to be controlled and abolished by vaccination alone.

The anti-vaccinator on the other hand starts by affirming that man is naturally healthy, and not prone to disease; that health and not a chronic state of cow-pox is the antithesis to small-pox; and that so long as man is kept in healthy surroundings he will by the inherent resisting power exerted by healthy blood towards disease germs, enjoy complete immunity from small-pox or any other of the class of disease to which it belongs. That small-pox and its allies are the Nemesis of hygienic shortcomings. That its causes are amenable to sanitary influences outside the body, and by such alone can it be satisfactorily and successfully combated; and that where these are neglected, there smallpox will arise and prevail. That small-pox must have arisen de novo at some time, and that it might do so as well now as then. These briefly are the two views which are held; they differ widely, and the struggle between them must be internecine.

For more than 80 years the vaccination experi

* Vide Prof. Lister's speech at Medical Congress.

ment has been tried, and for the last thirty it has been generalised by the aid of a compulsory law, but alas! with doubtful success, and the most enthusiastic disciple of Jenner must admit that vaccination has failed to realise what was expected of it, and that every one of his master's original propositions have been negatived by time and experience. The experiment of sanitation in great measure yet remains to be tried, owing to the fact that it is still a fashionable fiction to declare that "Sanitary measures have no influence on small-pox."*

Now it has long been recognised by physicians that for the occurrence of any particular disease of the zymotic class, two sets of conditions are necessary, known respectively as predisposing and exciting. The two must conjoin to produce the disease, and while the first set is common to all the members of the class, the second is distinctive for each, and gives to each disease its diagnostic features. The former class results from what may be termed unwholesome conditions of life, and is to be met and obviated by their removal; thus Dr. W. B. Carpenter writing on the Predisposing Causes of Epidemics, concludes thus-"It would be possible to extinguish the greater number of epidemic diseases by preserving the blood of every individual in a state of unfermentablity, which shall effectually prevent these poisons from finding the conditions of their development within the body." It is a pity Dr. Carpenter's later publications have not been inspired with the same good sense. Sir Thomas Watson also writes in the same strain when he says, "In proportion as the body is weakened or exhausted, it yields more readily to the influence of contagion, or of malaria; but by obviating all causes of debility and fortifying the system, we walk with comparative immunity amid surrounding pestilence." As for the exciting causes of disease, these, according to the most fashionable theory of the day, are certain lowly organisms, germs or bacteria. Whether this theory be the true one, whether the materies morbi be animal, vegetable, or chemical, particulate or diffuse, matters little to our present purpose, and in no way interferes with the induction to be drawn from M. Pasteur's researches. The one grand and fundamental conclusion at which he has arrived, and which he holds to be part of a universal law is this that the exciting causes of disease can be weakened and destroyed outside the body by natural agency, viz., PURE AIR.

It follows then, logically, from what has been said, that all the factors which go to make up disease, may be controlled and destroyed by careful attention to those natural and rational precautions which may be briefly summed up in this one word "sanitation." Cleanliness, good food, uncontaminated water, and a plentiful supply of pure air, are henceforth our reliable prophylactics. Fortify the system, and purify the surroundings, and disease must vanish away.

ANTISEPTIC VACCINATION.-The following letter appeared in the Lancet of 25th June-"Having seen several cases of erysipelatous and septicemic self been disabled for three days by the same, I inflammation following vaccination, and having mywould suggest that, following the acknowledged success of the antiseptic system', considerable pain and inconvenience might be done away with by the use of the carbolic spray during vaccination and the hermetic covering of the wound afterwards. -E. F. GRUN, Dresser at the London Hospital."

MARKS-PRAY EXPLAIN.-The Deptford Hospital Report for 1879 gives account of 317 small-pox patients with one vaccination mark, 384 with two marks, and 447 with three marks. Homerton Reports for 1871 to 1877 give 1,042 persons suffering with small-pox showing one mark, 1,259 with two marks, and 1,261 with three marks or more. Fulham Report for 1878 gives 149 cases with one mark, 156 with two marks, 202 with three marks and more. The Metropolitan Report for 1870-2 gives 1,124 with one mark, 1,722 with two marks, 1,677 with three marks and more. How is this? anomaly certainly needs explanation. In every case except the last, more persons suffered from smallpox who had two vaccine marks than those who had one. And, again, those having three vaccine marks and more suffered in larger numbers than those who have only two or one, as regards fatality. I ask for explanation.-ALEX. WHEELER in Newcastle Chronicle.

The

WHERE CHOLERA AND FEVERS WERE BRED.My own recollection goes back to the time when Sanitation was in its infancy; when Fevers of various kinds were considered "visitations of God," which came in the ordinary course of things, and from whose occasional ravages no population, whether urban or rural, could look for exemption. It was the first visitation of Cholera, which took place in 1831-32 (when I was myself a medical pupil) that stirred up public attention to the relation between dirt and disease, foul air and pestilseverely visited were, in nearly all cases, those In every great town the localities most which had been previously known to the medical attendants of the poor as "fever nests." Sanitary Committees were everywhere formed, which brought to the knowledge of the public a depth of squalor previously undreamt of. Accumulations of filth of every conceivable kind, fearful overcrowding, and almost complete exclusion of fresh air, were the ties; and where these were wanting, a further

ence.

conditions which characterised most of these locali

ted sewer, that poisoned all the air breathed by

search could always discover a cesspool or obstruc

+ British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review, January,

1853.

Practice of Physic, Vol. i. pp. 77, 3rd Edition.

*Paget.

Lectures on Inflammation.

"PURE VACCINE LYMPH"-WHAT IS IT? By E. HAUGHTON, M.D.

BEFORE any rational decision as to the advantages or disadvantages of vaccination can possibly be arrived at, another question must be answered without dissimulation, evasion, or deceit—namely, “What is vaccination"? This question may be answered by the impudent assertion that "everybody knows that," or, by an endeavour to raise some side issue so as to leave

the questioner without any satisfactory reply. We may be referred back to the days of Jenner, and regaled with the interesting story of his conversation with a milkmaid, and his notions about horse-grease, swine-pox, ass-pox, and the like. But the question now is this-If I am desirous of being vaccinated with the best vaccine lymph, what is the nature and source of the animal virus that will probably be provided for me? I may, of course, shut my eyes and open my mouth, as is sometimes said to children when sweetmeats are offered to them; but vaccine "lymph" is not a sweetmeat, neither is it a "natural secretion like milk and butter," as was once said by a quondam president of the British Medical Association. It is something which, Sir James Paget assures us, is very beneficial," although it produces 66 a permanent morbid condition of the blood." According to my conception of the proper usage of words, what is called "vaccine lymph" is not lymph at all, but a fluid excreted from a sore produced by an animal virus, whose exact nature is the subject of much controversy amongst leading members of the medical profession, and which must continue to to be the subject of controversy so long as it is derived from sources altogether different from one another.

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Dr. Jenner stated in his largest work that the infection employed by him came in the first instance from the horse, originating in a complaint called "the grease," which is attended by an oosing of thin matter from the heels of the animal; and this, according to Mr. Seaton's evidence before the Parliamentary Committee in 1871, constitutes the principal supply for the United Kingdom. As the results of using this lymph" have been severely criticised on all sides, and public confidence in its efficacy begins to wane, it has been foreseen by the advocates of the Compulsory Vaccination Acts, that unless some substitute could be found out in which the public could still believe, the entire repeal of those Acts, with all their emoluments, would follow as a matter of course.

The charges made against the "old stock" were many and grave, and some of them came from persons who could not be conveniently "boycotted," or even denied an impartial hearing. What was to be done? A new idea entered into the brains of several medical men, and I hope I may not wrong any of these illustrious gentlemen by putting their names further down on the list than they ought to be from a chronological point of view. The names are: The late Mr. Ceely, of Aylesbury; Dr. Blanc (the Abyssinian Captive); Sir John Cordy Burrows; and Mr. Badcock, of Brighton; and Mr. Greene, of Birmingham. Last, not least, comes

Mr. Ernest Hart, the apostle of truth and of the Belgian calf-pox. Mr. Hart is the author of a brochure called, "The Truth about Vaccina

tion," and is well known as an advocate in the pages of the British Medical Journal and elsewhere for the manufacture of "Pure vaccine variolous matter, or, in other words, the pus lymph" by inoculating heifers or calves with which exudes under the skin in the form of pustules, constituting the disease popularly known adoption of a kind of homoeopathic theory; and, as the small-pox. This is, in fact, the practical curiously enough, is most popular amongst against anything supposed to savour of homœothose whose anger is most easily kindled pathic practice.

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But, nevertheless, there are some points of distinction which it would be well to bear in mind. First, it is not a drug that is used, which exhausts itself in its primary effects; but a living substance, capable of self-multiplication within the living body. Secondly, it is not used to cure, but to prevent disease-though even the former notion has been tried by some of its most prominent advocates, I need not substance that cannot be analysed, nor its exact say with terribly fatal effect. Thirdly, it is a composition ascertained. It even has been stated by microscopic authorities that it generally contains some of the red corpuscles of the blood, and always some of the white ones. From which it may be inferred that whatever human beings may also be transplanted in the can be transplanted with the blood of other process called vaccination. When it was found no longer possible to deny the fact of such the statement that such accidents were of such ghastly contaminations," refuge was taken in extreme rarity that they ought not to be taken into account when a "beneficial" protection was to reiterate the fact that there are other poxes in question. Now, however, there is no need than cow-pox, and that some of them are transmissible to the third and fourth generation. In the face of such awful disclosures, another move was imperative; and, presto, a new lot of vaccine lymph has been found, which will do all that is required of it; whilst (like Cæsar's wife) it is itself above suspicion. I have heard of a gentleman who once bought a race-horse, but was so unfortunate as to lose his pedigree paid a large sum for the animal on account of almost directly after the purchase. As he had the pedigree, he applied again to the dealer; who at once replied that he was sorry he had not a copy of it, but he would engage to shortly furnish him with another which was quite as good! In like manner, should the pedigree of the original calf that was so obliging as to furnish the Belgian Pox (now so fashionable) be lost, through the carelessness of an ungrateful world,

there can be no doubt that another will immediately be forthcoming, which (so far as results can show) will certainly prove to be quite as good.

"My wish is," said an irate Indian official to Mr. Young, "that every one of you agitating antivaccinators should be hanged. Who can measure the mischief you are doing!"

WHAT SAVED THE UNVACCINATED? A LEADING article in the Times of 15th December, 1880, contained the following "It would appear, therefore, as if the advocacy of vaccination might with advantage be placed on a different ground from that which has commonly been urged by its supporters, and as if the operation might be recommended or enforced, not as a means of preventing small-pox, but as a means of preventing mortality from it, when it occurs. The following facts will demonstrate to the impartial reader the falseness of the assertion that vaccination prevents mortality from smallpox. In the Lancet and British Medical Journal have appeared, during the last nine months, reports of cases of malignant small-pox occurring in the Homerton and Fulham hospitals. Four cases are given, of which three had been vaccinated, and one was unvaccinated. The vaccinated cases all dicd, the unvaccinated case recovered. The following comment upon the latter cure, by Dr. Gayton, the medical superintendent of the Homerton hospital (B. M. J. April 9th, 1881), will be read with interest"This case is interesting from the fact that, after a somewhat lengthened experience in the treatment of small-pox, and observations extending to upwards of eight thousand cases, a similar one terminating in health has not come under my notice. The very severe symptoms as shown by the initial petechial exanthem; the cutaneous extravasation of no small extent; the sparseness of the small-pox eruption, and its ill-developed and blood-like contents, pointed with an almost terrible certainty to death."

If vaccination neither mitigates the severity of the disease, nor saves the vaccinated from death, where are we to look for its protective influence? And what was it that saved the unvaccinated?

ENOCH ROBINSON.

DUKINFIELD, 15th August, 1881.

THE VACCINATORS' IDEAL.-Dr. Collingridge, medical officer of health for the port of London, says in his last report, that until the Vaccination Act is carried out in its entirety, and until re-vaccination becomes general, with thoroughly efficient annual vaccination, there seems little chance of avoiding serious outbreaks of small-pox.-Thoroughly efficient annual vaccination! It is what we have been expecting, and wondering who would first hoist the flag. Now it is done, and Collingridge is the man. Bravo, Collingridge!

SPAIN. A correspondent in Madrid writes— "Vaccination has been long practised in Spain. It is not compulsory, even for entrance to schools; and in the army, only those recruits are vaccinated who have not previously undergone the operation. There are occasionally outbreaks of small-pox among the soldiers; and from time to time the disease assumes a very deadly form in Spain, in spite of general vaccination. The repetition of vaccination is not common."-In the Almanaque de Medicina y Farmacia for 1882 will appear an article by Dr. Hubert Boëns on the International League of AntiVaccinators, its Organisation and its Purpose.

THE NEMESIS OF VACCINATION. WHAT YOU SOW you reap. Plant septic pollution in the blood of your children and you must Resort to a expect a growth of pollution. common sewer which contains the seeds of every hereditary disease, and under a superstitious notion inoculate your infants with its filth, and you must expect the healthiest children to be reduced to the foulness of the most wretched. We address these words to the people of Scotland. They will be put in type and printed there, and we hope read and pondered.

For now the representatives of Wallace and Bruce are the tamest serfs on earth. They submit to the despotism of irresponsible doctors and allow them to poison their children's blood, without even a protest. As far as we know, there is not a single energetic Anti-Vaccination Society, working for freedom of conscience and the natural authority of a father as king in his family, in all Scotland. The result of a common pollution is now becoming manifest.

In the Family Doctor, published by W. H. Allen and Co., London, 1st August, 1881, it is stated on page 2, "That not a single family in Scotland is free from skin disease.'

One dead level of pollution is the heritage of the people of Scotland. The filth of vaccination will in due course universalise the pollution of syphilis, and physical rottenness will be the prelude of national degradation and extinction. Is there no hope for Scotland in the manliness of her sons? Have they not the sense to discern and reject the abominable imposture? We shall see.

WM. GIBSON WARD. Perriston Towers, Ross, Herefordshire, 18th August, 1881.

OUR EVIL EXAMPLE.-In the Cape Town newspapers we observe that the Town Council are holding up the possibility of the importation of small-pox from London as a terror to drive the colonists to vaccinate and re-vaccinate; adding that "vaccination and re-vaccination are thoroughly trusted to in Europe as preventives of small-pox.'

ANTI-VACCINATION IN THE PULPIT.-A Constant Subscriber writes-"It may interest you to know, and may stimulate others who profess to be preachers of truth, that in a sermon at the Catholic Apostolic Church a few weeks ago, reference was made to vaccination. The preacher denounced it as an essentially anti-christian practice; for whereas Christ came to cleanse from sin and remove its results, vaccination reversed that operation. Reference was also made to the commission to the disciples to cure all diseases, but nowhere, said the minister, are we taught that this was to be effected by infusing into the blood diseased matter from brutes. Wo! unto any country which permits its government not only to enact, but to enforce by fine and imprisonment, the pollution of its pure and innocent infancy. I have since learnt that the sermon has been in great request, and that one lady who had advised her servant to be vaccinated 'felt very uncomfortable,' and informed the minister of several cases of 'accident' from the practice which had come under her own notice."