ale of vaccination, and ask what can marks have to do with its efficacy? Remember, Marson offered no explanation of his statement. He was satisfied to say thus and thus have I observed, and you may take my word for it. But in science we take no man's word. We must see, or, like Trelawney's Cornishmen, we must know the reason why. Marson appeared before the House of Commons' Vaccination Committee in 1871, and set forth his marks doctrine with all the qualifications and inconsistencies which characterise the victim of a fad in contact with facts which his fad fails to include or account for.

MR. WHEELER'S RESEARCHES.

Fatal cases of smallpox are confluent cases, and in confluent cases vaccination marks rarely show up so as to answer to Marson's description of marks distinct, foveated, dotted, or indented, with a well, or tolerably welldefined edge. And in this matter our acute and industrious friend, Mr. Alexander Wheeler, has explored the records of the the Smallpox Hospitals, and proved that vaccination marks many or vaccination marks few have no influence whatever on the character or issue of smallpox. As Mr. Wheeler shows, the classification of smallpox into discrete and confluent is the only clue to the right estimation of the fatality of the disease. Smallpox in the discrete form, that is, when the pustules are distinct and separate, is not dangerous when uncomplicated with other disease, the overwhelming majority of patients recovering, vaccinated or unvaccinated. The contest between life and death is waged among the confluent cases, where the pustules are so close that they run together; and it is on these confluent cases, and the conditions and antecedents of the sufferers, that attention should be concentrated. There is a third form of smallpox, the malignant, chiefly confined to persons of irregular life, which is almost invariably fatal, and, as vaccinators themselves allow, vaccination in malignant smallpox affords no odds to its victims.

MR. ROBINSON'S OPINION.

Nevertheless, as Mr. Enoch Robinson has pointed out, there is something to be said for what Marson called good vaccination marks. The bit of reality that constitutes the basis of the marks illusion is this, that a wellformed vaccine cicatrix represents a strong vitality with vigorous healing power; whilst an ill-formed cicatrix represents a contrary habit of body; and, pari passu, those who heal well under vaccination stand likely to make the best recoveries in the event of smallpox. Good marks are simply notes of good constitutions, and the rest follows. Aught beyond is mere medical rubbish, on a par with faith in omens and divination in tea-cups.

CRUELTY OF MARKING.

Vaccination, in whatever form, is bad, but this faith in marks aggravates its cruelty. Mr. Claremont, vaccinator for St. Pancras, operates on infants by the thousand, and inflicts on each four marks. At a recent inquest on an infant, the victim of his handiwork, I heard him say, "The mothers nearly always protest." Of course they do. What kind of mothers would they be if they did not protest! Apart from the venom, the shock to an infant's life from such wounds is very serious. Young was called the other day to see a dying infant vaccinated by this Claremont. Previous to vaccination. it was perfectly healthy, but never afterwards. From the time of the operation it fell under a blight. "In its coffin," said Mr. Young, "it lay like a child's doll-the "poor babe had wasted away."

Mr.

I was glad to see in the Times about a year ago a letter from Dr. Allnatt of Cheltenham protesting against the cruelty of vaccination as practised upon the children of the poor. He recalled the days when he was a pupil of Dr. Walker, in 1825-26, and his instructions were to dip the point of the lancet into the fresh lymph, and insert it tenderly without drawing blood, under the cutis of the forearm, and protect the wound with a slight compress.

"But the case is altered now," he says. "Some of the vaccinators use real instruments of torture. Ivory "points are driven into the flesh, and wounds ensue which become erysipelatous, and in the delicate constitutions "of weakly children fatal."

The case is altered now, says Dr. Allnatt; but why is the case altered now? Why, because, under the old terms vaccination was more and more seen to be no defence against smallpox; and to preserve the rite, and the gains from the rite, the marks doctrine was invented, or, rather, revived, and hailed as a sort of revelation from heaven.

REVACCINATION INTRODUCED.

When vaccination was seen to be no preventive of smallpox, it was conjectured that it might require renewal, a suggestion which distressed Jenner exceedingly. It was calculated, he said, " to do unspeakable mischief," depriving his discovery "of more than half its virtues." But as experience continued to belie the claim made for vaccination as a permanent defence, it was natural that those interested in its performance should endeavour to retrieve its waning credit. Thus revaccination began to be practised. Between 1830 and 1835 there were 13,861 revaccinations effected in the army of Wurtemburg. Dr. Holland (subsequently Sir Henry) after recording the accumulating proofs of the futility of vaccination in 1839, recommended revaccination as a probable resource, and the recommendation gradually acquired authority. The London Medical Gazette in 1844 boldly proclaimed, "Revaccinate, revaccinate!" But so late as 1851 the National Vaccine Establishment protested against the innovation, saying, "The restriction of the protective "power of vaccination to any age, or to any term of "years, is an hypothesis contradicted by experience and "wholly unsupported by analogy." Whatever the experience, however, and whatever the analogy, there was the indisputable fact, that vaccination in most unimpeachable form did not avert smallpox, and that if the public.

faith and the public money were to be retained some fresh artifice was essential. It was hard to surrender the original claim of the equivalence of vaccination to smallpox; but it needs must when the devil drives; and so it has come to be admitted that Jenner was mistaken, and the vaccine rite to be effectual must be renewed.

VACCINISATION.

Dr. Colin expresses what is now the common medical opinion in saying, "We must not stop at a single vaccination. We must establish the firm conviction in the public "mind, that vaccine prophylaxy is only real and complete "when periodically renewed;" and Dr. Warlomont, chief of Belgian vaccinators, goes yet further in advising and practising what he calls Vaccinisation; which is, that every subject of the rite be vaccinated again and again until vesicles cease to respond to the insertion of virus. Then, and then only, can the victim be guaranteed from smallpox! Such are the shifts to which vaccinators have been reduced. If their insurance were valid, the premium would exceed the principal, whilst there is no reason to believe the new security is a whit better than the old. In these frantic prescriptions we see the quackery in its death-throes.

ABSURDITY OF REVACCINATION.

As for revaccination keeping off smallpox, it is absurd, and ought to be known for absurd. The chief incidence of smallpox is among the young, in whom it cannot be pretended that the influence of primary vaccination is exhausted. The subjects of revaccination are passing, or have passed out of the smallpox age; and as the statistics of the army and navy prove, our soldiers and sailors. are no more exempt from smallpox than the unrevaccinated civil population of corresponding years. this matter, the old words stand true, Populus vult decipi; decipiatur.

In

THE REDUCTION OF SMALLPOX.

From whatever side regarded, the original and successive claims made for vaccination are seen to have broken down; but a practice endowed and enforced as a poll-tax for the benefit of the medical profession is not lightly surrendered. Instead a variety of defences, more or less ingenious, are thrown out.

I. One of these is the reduction of smallpox. It is said, "Smallpox was once a common disease, and is now "a comparatively rare one-How are we to account for "this improvement otherwise than by the introduction " of vaccination?"

The answer is, that smallpox was declining before vaccination was introduced, and that, too, in spite of the extensive culture of the disease by variolation; and the decline continued during the first part of the present century whilst as yet nine-tenths of the people were unvaccinated. Several diseases once common have abated or disappeared; and why should we attribute to an incommensurate cause a similar abatement in smallpox? Leprosy, once extensively prevalent in England, has disappeared. Why? It died out gradually; but suppose some rite, analogous to vaccination, had been brought into vogue contemporaneously with its decline, would not the rite have had the credit, and would not its practitioners have called the world to witness the success of their prescription?

HAS VACCINATION SAVED LIFE?

It

II. In the same line of defence, we have the claim made for an extraordinary salvation of human life. Thus Sir Spencer Wells in a recent speech observed, "Jenner is immortal as a benefactor of mankind. "may not be generally known, but it is true, that Jenner has saved, is now saving, and will continue to save in all "coming ages, more lives in one generation than were "destroyed in all the wars of Napoleon."

The answer to such a statement is to call for proof of the lives saved. There is no proof. At the close of last

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