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formation from the human being into that of the brute."*

These prints were, many of them, intended for fun, and could have no serious influence. The decline of faith in vaccination was due to the general discovery that it did not prevent smallpox, and that it did excite other ailments. "It made small-pox milder" was the apology even then coming into vogue. As for the epidemic of small-pox raised in London and the whole island by the neglect of vaccination and a return to variolation, it was a creation of Jenner's fancy. There was less small-pox in London in 1806 than in 1805; but if there was not more, the bold Jernerian would answer, there ought to have been, and it could only be through the mercy of

Providence that there was not.

We now come to Ceylon, in which vaccination was held to have had a perfect triumph. "To Sweden and to Ceylon," says Baron, "Dr. Jenner was in the habit of pointing when he wished to prove what his discovery might accomplish; or when he lamented that fatal obstinacy of his fellow-creatures which, with such examples before them, could induce them to reject blessings within their reach."+ Sweden we shall discuss at another time; and of Ceylon we may observe that a portion of the island was taken by the British from the Dutch in 1795, and in several parts was extremely unhealthy. Small-pox was a frequent and deadly epidemic, but to what extent there is no evidence save hearsay and estimates from hearsay. The Dutch did not concern themselves with the health of the natives, but when the English took over their settlements in 1800 in the midst of a severe epidemic, they opened hospitals for small-pox and for inoculation with small-pox under the supervision of Dr. Christie. He, hearing the glad tidings of vaccination, resolved to introduce the practice, and having in 1802 received virus from Dr. Scott, of Bombay, he set to work with systematic energy and perseverance. Supported by the authority of successive Governors, he closed the hospitals, forbade variolation, organised a staff of vaccinators, and kept them employed, until the greater part of the population under English influence was vaccinated. In the words of Moore, writing in 1816:

"At length the priesthood submitted to vaccination, the last to adopt this innovation upon their ancient customs; and the remains of the small-pox were happily extinguished in all that part of the island which belonged to Great Britain." ||

That small-pox had been exterminated by vaccination in Ceylon was set forth by vaccinators as something indisputable; but there were two observations to make-first, that smali-pox was often suppressed in the sense that for a time there was no small-pox in a certain population, and especially subsequent to a severe epidemic; and second, that variolation was suppressed. Granted that small-pox ceased in Ceylon coincidently with

Baron's "Life of Jenner," vol. ii., p. 89.

+ Ib., vol. i., p. 426.

"An Account of the Introduction, Progress, and Success of Vaccination in Ceylon." By Thomas Christie, M.D. London : 1811.

"The History and Practice of Vaccination." By James Moore. London: 1817. P. 242.

the introduction of vaccination, it may be fairly held that the exhaustion induced by the preceding epidemic, and the cessation of variolation, were sufficient to account for the phenomenon. What remains to be said of Ceylon, we shall leave Dr. Gregory, physician of the London Small-Pox and Vaccination Hospital, to say for us. He writes:—

"Ceylon was the British colony where the Government earliest interfered and most vigorously encouraged the practice of vaccination. Salaried vaccinators were scattered over the whole island. So successful were their labours, that up to the beginning of 1819, it had often been said that the experiment of exterminating small-pox had been made and successfully carried out in Ceylon. In July, 1819, however, a severe epidemic small-pox In 1830 a second epidemic over

broke out there.

spread the island-in 1833 a third, and in 1836 a fourth. In these four epidemics, 12,557 persons were attacked, of whom 4,090 died, being at the rate of 33 per cent., or one out of every three.

"In each of these epidemics a certain number of vaccinated persons took small-pox. The proportion of the vaccinated to the unprotected varied. In the third epidemic, out of a total of 460 attacked, 341 represented themselves as vac

cinated." ""*

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'From Canton I have a most curious production -a pamphlet on vaccination in the Chinese language. Little did I think, my friend, when our store for me such abundant happiness. May I be correspondence first began, that Heaven had in grateful!" +

His happiness and gratitude would have suffered mitigation could he have discerned under the Chinese characters the hand of Dr. Pearson, "whose dirty name," he said to Dunning on another occasion, " shall not daub my paper."‡

The Chinese had their own system of variolation, namely, the use of pulverised small-pox scabs as snuff; but some of them accepted vaccination, tried it, and dropped it when they found it did not keep off the disease as warranted. Small-pox in China is almost exclusively a disease of childhood, and is little dreaded. Dr. Rennie, medical officer to the British Embassy at Peking in 1861-62, says of that city:

"Since 1820 vaccination (introduced from Canton) has been practised to a limited extent among the population-probably one-fifth may be vaccinated. At one time it was believed to afford protection, small-pox not having been so common immediately after its introduction. Of recent years, however, confidence in it has considerably diminished, owing to the frequency with which those are attacked who have been vaccinated." ||

"Lectures on the Eruptive Fevers, delivered in St. Thomas's Hospital in January, 1843." By George Gregory, M.D. London: 1813. P. 210.

+ Baron's "Life of Jenner," vol. ii., pp. 84, 356. Ib., vol. ii., p. 342.

"Peking and the Pekingese." By D. F. Rennie, M.D. London: 1865.

Persia was sometimes referred to in the ravings that went on as to the triumphs of vaccination in the East; but what was known of Persia? The practice was introduced where Europeans were resident, but it never became general. Dr. C. J. Wills has recently described surgery and medicine in Persia as extremely rude and superstitious, and that "vaccination is not in favour, whilst inoculation, or the direct communication of the disorder, by placing the patient in the same bed with one suffering from smallpox of the most virulent type, is the method pursued."

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It was natural enough for Jenner, in presence of failure and contempt in England, to appeal to success in the East, and to try to overwhelm his adversaries with evidence which they could not overtake; but any one of judicial temper must have perceived that if vaccination was to be vindicated, data of a very different order would have to be forthcoming. Where the number of the population in a distant region was unknown, where the ordinary prevalence of small-pox among the people was undefined, where the extent of artificial variolation was unspecified, and the existence and intensity of related forms of zymotic disease were undescribed, what conclusion could be drawn as to the efficacy of vaccination that a man of science was bound to respect? Why should certain knowledge in England be surrendered for uncertain information from abroad?

CIRCULAR LOGIC.-The vaccination logic in vogue is of the finest circular type. No perfectly vaccinated person can have small-pox. If any one has had small-pox, it proves that he was imperfectly vaccinated-q.e.d. So of those who die either the marks are obliterated by the disease, or they were badly made, or there were not enough of them, or they were too old. And children too puny or diseased to be vaccinated, when they die of small-pox, thereby prove the necessity of vaccination. The curious fact remains, that London has not had so low a death-rate for years as during the height of the recent epidemic.-Herald of Health.

GOOD SENSE BEFOGGED.-R. Pringle, M.D., Sanitary Commissioner in North-West India, writing in the Lancet, Sept. 2, says: "Much has been written about the modification produced by vaccination when a successful case of vaccination subsequently suffers from variola, but the only modification I have ever noticed was that the variolous disease appeared, as a rule, in a milder type, and left fewer permanent cicatrices."-No difference between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated, only the disease made milder! How do you know, Dr. Pringle ? Like scarlet fever, small-pox is of all degrees of intensity, and what makes scarlet fever mild in one case and severe in another? Suppose there were some hocus-pocus like vaccination practised to prevent scarlet fever, should we not be told that the mild cases were due to the said hocuspocus? Until it is ascertained how severe a case of small-pox would be without vaccination, how can it be known how mild it has been made by by vaccination ? A physician like Dr. Pringle should be ashamed to deal in such unverifiable conjectures, confusing his own intelligence, and perpetuating the confusion of others.

* British Medical Journal, April 26, 1879.

VACCINO-TUBERCLE.

A VAGUE suspicion that tubercular disease may be communicated or intensified by the process of vaccination pervades nearly all of the writings of anti-vaccinators from Dr. Squirrell* to the present time, and of some of the more candid authors on the other side of the question. It is desirable that the information available on the subject should be collated, its value estimated, and the charges against vaccination (if such there be) clearly formulated, and this paper is an attempt to fulfil in some way these indications.

Vaccino-syphilis, first observed by Dr. Moseley, the anti-vaccinator, in 1805, and for 70 years the elite of the medical world, has now passed contested with more warmth than discretion by from the stage of angry discussion into that of acknowledged fact, and it is only by similar ventilation of the subject, coupled with continued observation and experiment, that the truth about vaccino-tubercle can be ultimately arrived at.

Scrofula or tuberculosis may be defined, or rather described, as a general infective disease characterised by the development of distinctive miscroscopical elements, the result of a low inflammation and tending to caseous degeneration. It inoculation, and it can be produced by artificial is not a specific disease, it is communicable by cultivation. A belief in the infective nature of tubercle has been rapidly gaining ground during the last twenty years, and is even more fully recognised on the Continent than here. Buhl was the first to start the idea, which was followed up and verified experimentally by Villemin, Klebs, and Burdon Sanderson, the result of whose experiments was to show "that the development of general tuberculosis is not due to anything specific in the substances inoculated, but that the products of various inflammations (for the most part inflammations of slight intensity) may constitute the infective agents."t In 1880 Cohnheim declared "the test for tubercle" to be "the

capacity of a morbid product, when introduced into the body of a rabbit or guinea-pig, to produce tuberculosis in the animal. What produces tuberculosis is tubercle; what fails to produce it is not tubercle"; while Wilson Fox had previously shown that vaccine lymph introduced into in the animal. The experiment was repeated the body of a guinea-pig does produce tuberculosis four times, in all with fatal success, post-mortem several organs being found to contain tubercle as intense and typical" as in animals inoculated been communicated to hens by vaccination. If with crude tubercular matter.§ Tubercle has also Cohnheim's test be true, the inference is inevitable that vaccine lymph is tubercle. The conclusion is as startling as it is logical, but becomes less surprising when the original source of the vaccine lymph is ascertained, and its mode of propagation understood.

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cular disease; the horse and the cow have each their respective scrofula, an important fact to bear in mind when dealing with horse-grease and cow-pox. The equine analogue of scrofula is glanders, farcy, or grease from which Jenner's true and not the spurious " pox was obtained," and this lymph, which is still in use and has passed through countless constitutions, is surely not the last thing in the world to be suspected of disseminating scrofulous diseases. "What glanders is to solipeds, margarosis or tuberculosis is to the bovine species," "* and cows thus affected are neither few nor far between. Mr. Fleming reckons "5 per cent. of our bovines infected," while, in parts of Saxony, according to Wolff, the percentage, is as high as 20 per cent. Dr. Creighton,+ in a careful monograph, shows that this bovine tuberculosis (Perlsucht) may be conveyed to man through the lymph, then, à fortiori, it may be presumed to be conveyed through the inflammatory lymph of a vaccine lymph of a vaccine vesicle, for we are assured "the lymph is viruliferous."

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If demonstration be demanded, it is at hand: "M. Toussaint vaccinated a cow in an advanced stage of tuberculosis with lymph absolutely pure. The vesicles progressed normally, and with the lymph obtained from them he vaccinated different animals, all of whom subsequently became tuberculous." "The significance of these experiments," says the editor of the Medical Times,

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can scarcely be over-rated, for though a judicious vaccinator would not use lymph taken from a child who exhibited already evidence of the disease, the chances of cows in whom spontaneous vaccinia may appear, and whose lymph would at the present time be eagerly sought after, being, like so many of their species, tuberculous, would be great; and it would seem in consequence that the dangers of animal vaccination may be greater than those of human, which are supposed to be avoided by having recourse to the cow." Add to this that hundreds of scofulous children are being used as vaccinifers, and from whom the lymph may pick up tubercle, if, indeed, it be not already charged with it, and the danger becomes a formidable one.

Strong as the case may seem, it may be made even stronger, and the truth of the inference drawn from Cohnheim's dictum rendered still more plausible.

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Dr. Niemeyer, of Tübingen, a great authority on tubercle, writes:-"It cannot be denied that vaccination sometimes endangers life, and in other cases leaves permanent impairment of health, especially cutaneous diseases and other scrofulous affections, due to the debilitating influence of the fever accompanying the vaccinia."+

Such then is our knowledge concerning vaccinotubercle at the present time. If the evidence be not conclusive, it is, at least, sufficient to necessitate further inquiry; and, for my own part, I am not doubtful as to the result.

The conclusions warranted by the foregoing facts may be summarised as follows:

1. Tubercle is non-specific, is inoculable; may be cultivated artificially.

It has been said above that the tubercular poison can be obtained by artificial cultivation, and the process of manufacture is as follows: A chemical irritant is applied to the skin of a guinea-pig or rabbit, a vesicle results, the lymph from which is successively inoculated on a series of animals, till a powerful poison is obtained, which poison in its milder action produces unmistakable tubercular disease. Would it be straining a point to suggest an analogy between this process and that of arm-to-arm vaccination, children being sub-culous stituted for guinea-pigs? If not, another argument is added to support the belief that vaccine

"Tuberculosis from a Sanitary and Pathological Point of View." G. Fleming, F.R.C.V.S. 1881.

"Bovine Tuberculosis." Creighton. 1881. + Medical Times and Gazette, Sept. 3, 1881.

§ Public Health Reports, New Series. No. II.

2. Vaccine lymph, judged by Cohnheim's test,

is tubercle.

3. Vaccination of healthy animals from tuberanimals may convey the disease from the latter to the former.

4. "Horse-grease Cowpox" is inherently and essentially tuberculous.

5. Tubercle is a common disease of cows, and

"Variola, its Causes, Nature, and Prophylaxis, and the Dangers of Vaccination." By C. Spinzig, M.D. St. Louis,

1878.

"Textbook of Medicine." Dr. Felix von Niemeyer. 1879.

may be conveyed to man through the milk or lymph.

6. Arm-to-arm vaccination is a system admirably adapted for the culture of tubercular diseases. W. J. COLLINS, B.Sc., M.R.C.S.

St. Bartholomew's Hospital.

LORD CLIFTON ON THE TRUE INTENT AND MEANING OF SECTION 31 OF THE VACCINATION ACT OF 1867.

"I THINK Section 31 of the 1867 Act must go at last. I can prove to demonstration it was only meant to apply to children born between Dec. 31, 1853, and Jan. 1, 1868. As soon as the Act of 1853 was repealed by the Act of 1867, children born in the interval could only be touched by retrospective enactment. Hence Section 31, which merely epitomises the procedure of the rest of the Act, with the addition of a preliminary magistrate's order in order to give jurisdiction. In the case of children born since 1867, there is jurisdiction without an order, and it is, therefore, illegal to exercise a second jurisdiction in the same case. If, therefore, Pilcher v. Stafford' still holds good as to Section 29, there can only be one conviction for each child, and that must be within fifteen months of birth. Cockburn was completely misled as to the Parliamentary history of Section 31, or he would not have given such a decision in Allen v. Worthy.

"The Houses of Parliament do not interfere with a common law principle like that of a single conviction for a single offence, nor is it in the power of mere words to do so. Parliament provides means for taking proceedings, and the Courts decide whether they can be repeated. But Cockburn thought that somehow he was bound to give due effect to Sec. 31, not knowing its true history.

"Appearances under Sec. 31 must be refused; for, although a parent may appear without the child, they cannot make an order without some appearance. Anti-vaccinists all over the country should refuse to recognise the right of magistrates to command appearance or make orders for vaccination.

"Cobham Hall, Aug. 29, 1881."

NATIONAL ANTI-COMPULSORY
VACCINATION LEAGUE.

THE seventh annual conference was held at Brighton on September 20 and 21, under the presidency of Mr. W. Hume-Rothery. There were between fifty and sixty delegates present from various parts of the Kingdom; and a large and influential public meeting was held in the Town Hall, at which there was much excellent speaking. As a full account of the proceedings appears in the October number of the NATIONAL ANTI-COMPULSORY VACCINATION REPORTER, it is unnecessary for us to go over the same ground, especially as the pressure on our space exceeds our limits. The absence of Mrs. Hume-Rothery and Mr. W. Gibson Ward from the conference, owing to illness, was much regretted.

"COMPULSION MUST GO."

THE Edinburgh Evening News of Sept. 17 had prosecution of Mr. Thomas Strain, of Belfast, and the following excellent article on the repeated Mr. P. A. Taylor's refutation of Dr. Carpenter's fallacies::

It would be interesting to have a deliberate and ing statesman or jurist on the case of Mr. Strain, well-weighed expression of opinion from any leadof Belfast, who was yesterday fined for the fifth time for refusing to have his child vaccinated. The judicial contention is that the health of the community is endangered through Mr. Strain's child remaining unvaccinated. The child still remains unvaccinated, and to all appearance will continue so. Mr. Strain will go on paying fines as long as his purse holds out. Should it be exhausted, he will probably go to jail; and still the child will be unvaccinated. It becomes an imperative question whether the Legislature is going to tolerate any longer such imbecilities of procedure; whether it will enact that when parents refuse to have their children vaccinated the operation shall be performed by force; or whether it will put an end to compulsion in regard to vaccination. It is plain to any reasoning mind that the present course is preposterous. If refusal to vaccinate is as criminal and dangerous an attitude as the law and the medical profession say it is, compulsion must be made real. At present it is palpably illusory. Fining parents can scarcely be represented as likely to check small-pox. But those who fully realise how absurd has been the operation of the law will probably be inclined to ask themselves seriously whether the legislators and medical men who have superintended its action with such complacency have shown flawless wisdom in their preliminary reasonings. That this question is likely ere long to be asked by a tolerably large section of the public seems probable, in view of the discussion of the subject that is going on at present. There is just published, in

the form of a penny pamphlet, a letter on Vaccina

Carpenter, concerning which it is not too much to tion, from Mr. P. A. Taylor, M.P., to Dr. W. B. say that it is by far the most staggering presentation of the case against vaccination that has yet come before the general public. Whatever may be the truth about vaccination, and that is obviously not to be settled by one pamphlet, it will be admitted by any impartial reader that in respect of general cogency and controversial force the pamphlet is in every way superior to the article of Dr. Carpenter to which it is a reply. It is not merely that the writer presents his own case powerfully; but that he exposes an amount of recklessness on the part of his opponents in the way of accepting false statements, garbling statistics, and suppressing awkward facts, which excites feelings of the gravest surprise. It is the duty of every medical man to read that pamphlet, which is issued by the London Society for the Abolition of Compulsory Vaccination, and the business of the most capable to answer it, if they can. Mr. Taylor quotes the admission of a physician of reputation that his statistics "have never come under the cognisance of the medical assured by a demonstration-far more effectual profession." Unless the public mind can be rethan any yet achieved-that Mr. Taylor's statements are fallacious, it is scarcely possible to doubt that, in the words of the physician referred to, anyhow, compulsion must go."

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THE INTERNATIONAL MEDICAL CONGRESS AND SANITATION. BY WILLIAM TEBB.

Vaccination

In the month of August an International Medical Congress was held in London, the largest, probably, ever assembled; but although, in one section or another, almost every subject relating to medicine and surgery was brought up for discussion, vaccination was only indirectly referred to. The Committee of Management was, no doubt, aware that at the discussions recently held by the Academy of Medicine in Paris on M. Liouville's Projet de loi; at the Belgian Academy of Medicine, as well as at the Calf Lymph Conference of the British Medical Society in London, in December, 1879, the utmost confusion of opinion prevailed. On this last occasion, not only was compulsory vaccination assailed as unjust and tyrannical, but evidence was brought forward by members of the British Medical Society, showing that the practice was attended with serious risks, and occasionally followed by fatal results, with whatever the lymph, and that it neither prevented nor mitigated small-pox. could not have been introduced without exciting considerable opposition, and destroying that harmony which it was considered important to preserve. For these and other reasons, the subject was prudently ignored. The vaccination of animals, however, is another matter, and as Jenner's contemporaries pretended that vaccination would prevent the distemper in dogs, and the existence of a canine vaccinating establishment in London is well known, there could be no likelihood of opposition to a project for vaccinating chickens and sheep. It was reserved, therefore, for Professor Pasteur to read a paper, explaining his recent discoveries on the inoculation of fowls for chicken cholera, and of sheep for charbon, or splenic fever; although I believe neither of these diseases prevails in England. After pointing out the nature, properties, and mode of culture of the virus with which the fowls were inoculated, M. Pasteur stated that the oxygen of the air was capable of extinguishing the virulence of the microbes of chicken cholera and rendering them innocuous, in short, of destroying their power to spread disease altogether. May we not here," continues the learned lecturer, "be in the presence of general law applicable to all kinds of virus, and what benefits may be the result?" "Just so," says the sanitarian; "but why not, instead of poisoning the blood of fowls, and tainting their flesh with this concentration of disease, try the agency of the oxygen in cleansing the poisonous habitat of the fowls, where the disease is developed, and thus prevent chicken cholera altogether." This natural and rational process is surely not the less scientific because of its simplicity. Similarly with the later triumphs of Professor Pasteur's experiments, which have not only been hailed with unbounded delight by the entire medical profession, but seem to have excited the attention and interest of the chief of our own vaccination department, Mr. Dodson. The disease known as charbon, it is said, proves fatal to sheep in France every year to the value of 20,000,000

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francs. It originates in anthracoid germs brought to the surface by worms generated in the bodies of diseased animals. The sheep eat these worms as they ascend in the roots of the grass. Professor Pasteur discovered that he could in like manner extract an ichorous fluid or virus from the bodies of these worms, and by inoculating the sheep therewith enable them to eat the poisonous germs with impunity. And already the demand for this virus, like that of any other nostrum receiving such a first-class advertisement, is so great as to constitute a strain upon the learned discoverer's sources of supply. Nothing is revealed as to whether this wholesale contamination of the flesh of the

Pro

sheep with the ulcerous matter may not deteriowho partake of it as food. This is a question rate its quality, and engender disease in those which concerns the hygieist and sanitarian, who of disease, but which to those whose chief function seek to prevent disease by purifying the sources is not the prevention but the treatment of disease fessor Pasteur and his disciples virtually say, can only possess a superficial interest. let disease and the causes of disease continue. Let the French farmers continue to bury their diseased carcasses-the pestiferous hot-beds of a vile and mischievous growth; let the poisonous germs be propagated, and we will sell you our antidote. The sanitarian, with a truer philosophy, says, remove the ascertained cause of splenic fever altogether; instead of burying the dead carcasses where the sheep feed, burn or otherwise destroy them, and thus prevent the growth of the disease germs.

the

To prevent disease is not, however, consistent science any more than to prevent litigation is with the prosperity or triumphs of medical advantageous to the legal profession, or to prevent wars to the advancement of military chieftains; nevertheless, sanitation, or mind, and ere long the medical profession will common-sense method, is growing in the public be compelled, by an enlightened public opinion, to relinquish a system which must crumble to pieces owing to its own inherent falsity.

M. Pasteur promises other discoveries in the same direction, and thus we have the encouraging prospect before us of soon having the whole category of diseases inoculated into the animal kingdom, scattering the germs of corruption, and tainting the flesh of bird, beast, and man in the interests of science.* Such an opportunity as Professor Pasteur's exposition afforded could not be permitted to pass without an eulogistic allusion to the services of Dr. Edward Jenner in the introduction of vaccination, a man

who has caused unparalleled mischief to the human family by deteriorating the health unnumbered thousands. I do not, however, of the people, and causing the deaths of charge upon Dr. Jenner the cruelty and injustice arising out of the coercion used by his misguided followers. He believed that vaccination would annihilate small-pox and become universal through the force of its inherent ad

Dr. Farr, in the Thirteenth Annual Report of the Registrar-General, says :-"To operate on the mortality, protection against every one of the fatal zymotic diseases is required, otherwise the suppression of one disease element opens the way to others."

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