"A DISGRACE TO HUMANITY!" MR. YOUNG having sent a card relative to the increase of small-pox in London coincidently with the increase of vaccination to Mr. Benjamin Barrow, F.R.C. S., J.P., and Mayor of Ryde, received in reply the following—

"Your card on vaccination tells nothing. Your reasoning is fallacious.

"I consider your Society as a disgrace to humanity!-Yours faithfully, B. BARROW. "Ryde, I. of W., July 29th, 1881."

A disgrace to humanity! The true servants of humanity have been often thus stigmatised, and the deeper their service, the sharper the stigma; but in the stigma they found stimulus, and from the stimulus issue, victory.

JENNER AND JESTY.

THE following letter appeared in the British Medical Journal of 9th July

"Whilst on a visit in the county of Dorset, I was surprised to find on a gravestone in the churchyard of Piddletown the following memorial: 'In memory of George Jesty, who departed this life June 23rd, 1845, aged 63 years, youngest son of the late Mr. Benjamin Jesty, of Downshay, Isle of Purbeck, discoverer of the memorable vaccine inoculation.' Afterwards, I found in the churchyard of Worth Matravers, a memorial stone with the following inscription: 'Sacred to the memory of Benjamin Jesty, of Downshay, who departed this life April 16th, 1816, aged 70 years. born at Yetminster, in this county, and was an upright honest man, particularly noted for having been the first person known that introduced the cow-pox by inoculation, and who, from his great strength of mind, made the experiment from the cow on his wife and two sons in the year 1774.'

He was

"If this date can be relied upon, Jesty's experiment preceded Jenner's on the boy Phipps by twenty-two years. I was informed that Mr. B. Jesty was a large dairy-farmer.—-Yours faithfully, "F. WHITWELL.

"Shrewsbury, June 20th, 1881."

These particulars are frequently revived, and the true answer is that what Jesty claimed Jenner did not claim. Jesty inoculated with cow-pox, sharing the dairy-maids' faith that it prevented small-pox. Jenner knew that the dairy-maids were wrong, and that cow-pox did not avert small-pox. What he recommended was cow-pox produced by horsegrease. Pearson and others disregarded Jenner's recommendation and made use of cow-pox like Jesty; and Jenner did not resist; and not only did not resist, but allowed it to be supposed that they were fulfilling his programme. Facts, however are facts, and we should not let Jenner get mixed up with Jesty, and the course of Jenner's procedure be obscured.

A CARD FROM HASTINGS. Mr. Wheeler has received a post-card bearing the following anonymous communication-"It has been proposed, and I hope to see the same CARRIED OUT, That medical men do not attend unvaccinated cases of small-pox-let the fools attend upon themselves-M. D."-We have no objection. Our friends will not consider the prospect alarming.

A LETTER FROM FRANCE-A MOTHER'S EXPERIENCE.

THE packet of anti-vaccination tracts I have read with the deepest interest, and I would now suggest that, with your attacks upon Jenner and his socalled discovery, which could not have been scientifically tested when taken up, the London Society should obtain disinterested inedical instruction for the treatment of small-pox and publish it. The best mode of combating the disease should be made known. Ignorance on this subject throws many into the hands of Jennerian practitioners who, if they knew how to meet small-pox, would stand out against vaccination.

There is one fact which I am ready to concede to the Jennerians. It is, that pock-pitted faces are not nearly so frequent now as they were in my childhood. Perhaps it is because at that time the generation which had been inoculated with smallpox à la Mary Wortley Montagu, had not died out. The Jennerians altogether leave out of sight in accounting for the diminution of small-pox within this century the disease of variolic inoculation, which in the last had spread from the Levant to London.

My husband has told you under what circumstances he became an Anti-Jennerian. I had long before had doubts, but they were overruled by my family in 1866, when we lived in a neighbourhood where there was much small-pox, and I had an unvaccinated infant son. I do not remember when I was first vaccinated, but there was a tradition in the servants' hall that all the diseases of infancy crowded at once upon me, and left me a "deathupon-wires." At the age of eight I was, with several other brothers and sisters, re-vaccinated. In less than eighteen months after, the health of my eldest sister, a strong grown-up girl in the most robust condition when re-vaccinated, broke down. A goitrous swelling in the neck declared itself. My eldest brother caught the small-pox, but was not marked, and I was laid low with typhoid fever. I did not grow three inches from the age of nine to seventeen, when strength came back, and I shot up to a fair enough stature. The other children did not appear to suffer from any evil consequences; but I distinctly remember that a boy who was born after the general re-vaccination of the family, and who was a remarkably fine and healthy infant, was given in vaccination some horrible disease which fixed itself in the glands of the neck. He came of a splendidly healthy stock; but one would have said that he was the child of scrofulous parents. The family doctor, who had vaccinated him, suggested that a nursery-maid had been careless about the poor infant in her walks, and given him to dirty people to hold, which was an unfounded assumption. The child has grown up to be a sickly man. His glands are now all right; but the swelling only left them to settle in one of the knees.

The English believe in the Bible. You ought to call Moses into court. He had enlightened ideas on the subject of hygenics and sanitation, and would have never suffered morbid germs to be put into the blood. You could prove from Moses the whole skin principle, which in a country like England would be doing a great deal.

Before I conclude I shall mention a case of death from confluent small-pox of a girl who had lived in my service, and had been in a convent in which she was reared, vaccinated over and over again. There were long lines of vaccine marks on the upper part of her arm. Small-pox carried her away notwithstanding after three days' illness. E. C.

AN OUTRAGEOUS CASE.

MR. JOSEPH WOOD, furniture broker, of 207 Dalton Road, Barrow-in-Furness writes to Mr. Tebb, 18th August

"I was fined on 11th July in the sum of 20s. and costs for disobeying an order to vaccinate two of my children, total £3 4s. On Monday I was distrained upon for that amount and further costs, total £3 19s., and four police took £20 worth of goods from my place. My reason for not paying the fine was that in my opinion, and in that of my solicitor, it was illegally inflicted by reason of the presence on the Bench of the chairman of the Board of Guardians at whose instance I was prosecuted.

Mr. Wood is unquestionably right in his contention that he has been illegally fined. The presence of the chairman of the Board of Guardians on the Bench as his prosecutor and judge was so grossly indecent, that if his head were not turned by the vaccination craze he would recognise its impropriety. No doubt the Home Secretary will interfere and see that justice is done.

SHETTLESTON, an eastern suburb of Glasgow, is described in the Daily Mail as being in an alarming condition-dungsteads overflowing, roads flooded, etc., etc.; and to mend matters the authorities recently sent round a doctor to vaccinate the inhabitants!

MR. GEORGE A. SALA.-Mr. Sala is the gossip of the Illustrated London News, and is always amusing, and not the least so when he is frivolous. In the number for 23rd July, he says "I have received a bolster of printed and written documents referring to a London Society for the Abolition of Compulsory Vaccination. I have forwarded them to a friend of mine who is Honorary Secretary to the Societies for Abolishing the Compulsory Registration of Births, Deaths, and Marriages; for the Re-enactment of the Corn Laws, the Re-establishment of the Practice of Burning Witches Alive, the Restoration of Temple Bar, the Re-opening of the Fleet Ditch, and the Promotion of Infectious Diseases." It would be vain to reproach Mr. Sala with knowing a little of everything, and not much of anything; for that, he would reply, was his profession; but it accounts for his fun over the enforced quackery of vaccination, as hateful in its way as the superstition of witchcraft, with which, indeed, the analogy is remarkable.

RARITY OF SEERS.-Very, very few are the men who can, by and for themselves, see and describe the things that are before them. Just as it took thousands of years to produce a man who could see, what now any one can see when shown him, that the star Alpha in Capricorn is really two separate stars, so we had to wait long before the men came who could see the difference between measles and scarlatina, and still longer for the one who could distinguish between typhus and typhoid. Said Plato, "He shall be as a god to me, who can rightly divide and define." Men who have this faculty -the "Blick" of the Germans, we cannot produce directly by any system of education; they come, we know not when or why, forming a small band, a mere understanding of whose thoughts and works is a test of our highest powers. A single English dramatist, and a single English mathematician have probably equalled in scope and excellence of original work in their several fields, all the like labours of their countrymen put together.-JOHN S. BILLINGS, M. D. at International Medical Congress.

"Yes."

"It vhas shust two hours more as a man comes in und says he vhas sent to waccinate on der odder arm, und I pays him two shillings und class of peer." "Yes."

"Pefore night a man mit spectacles comes in und says he vhas sent by der health poard to see oof I vhas waccinated. I show him two blaces, but he shakes his headt und says, 'Dot waccination am too high oop, und you vhil git der shmall-pox in der hands." Den he makes dot blace here, und I gif him twenty-five cents und class of peer.' "Yes."

"

"Vhell, in der course of four days six more men comes aroundt to waccinate me by order of der mayor, der gufernor, der president, der poard of bublic vorks, und I don't know vhat else, und efery time I bays two shillings und class peer. Vhen I vhas waccinated nine times I pegins to believe I vhas a greenhorn, und vhen der tenth man comes aroundt I hit him on der headt mit a bottle and vhalks oafer to see you aboudt it. Vhas it all right?"

"I guess the boys were guying you." "What ish dot?”

"Why, you haven't really been vaccinated at

all."

"No!"

"No; and you'd better be vaccinated again."

"Waccinated again! Waccinated den dimes? Nefer. Pefore I vhas waccinated den dimes I catches der shmall-pox, und goes to ped mit him all summer!"

MR. HENRY BERGH, President of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, writes to Mr. Tebb from New York, 30th July"I have never held but one opinion of that filthy, unnatural and criminal mode of treating disease in human beings by inoculating a healthy body with the matter derived from a diseased body of one of the lower animals."

GONE TO THE DOGS.

OUR readers will be amused with the following advertisement, now posted over south London

CANINE VACCINATION.

DOGS VACCINATED with Calf Lymph as a palliative of Canine Distempers (Typhoid Fevers, &c.), which are now prevalent. Hermetically sealed Calf Lymph from the Establishment of Dr. Renner kept in stock for that purpose. ROYAL SOUTH METROPOLITAN DOG & CAT HOSPITAL, BRIXTON,

Founder and Proprietor-A. E. CONSTANT. Veterinary and Canine Surgeon, late Government Inspector of Cattle, M.R.C.V.S.L.; Author of "A Treatise on the Cattle Plague," "Rabies in the Dog," &c.

Vaccinators Supplied with Calf Lymph.

It is an acknowledged fact by Medical Men that the diseases of the lower animals tend greatly to engender diseases (Fevers, &c.), among the human race, where they are allowed to be together.

MISS ROBINSON wishing to learn Mr. Constant's terms for the salvation of dogs from distemper, wrote to inquire, and the following was his

answer

"South Metropolitan Dog and Cat Hospital, 20th August, 1881.

"Madam,-Your favour to hand. The age I consider most suitable for canine vaccination is from 4 to 6 months. From extent of my practice of over 20 years, I believe it to greatly mitigate, if not entirely prevent, what is termed distemper. The fee at hospital is 7s 6d. I am, Madam, yours truly, A. E. CONSTANT, M.R.C.V.S.L."

Alas! it seems to be with dogs as with men, it only mitigates when it does not prevent. Cobbett tells us what that means.

SMALL-POX FROM A WIND INSTRUMENT.-There has been an outbreak of small-pox at Wokingham, and the Lancet, 23rd July, accounts for it by a musician with the disease upon him "blowing strenuously through a wind instrument, and thus presumably diffusing infection among hundreds of people" at a parish fête. "At Swallowfield twenty

cases have arisen, all traceable to the musician." Think what havoc such a musician might play at Covent Garden or Drury Lane!

MEDICAL QUACKERY.-The profession of medicine always has offered, probably always will offer, peculiar attractions to those who with weak principles, and still weaker consciences, desire to make profit by trading on the credulity of their patients. The thing is so exceedingly easy to do. Our real knowledge of disease in many of its departments is very vague, and our knowledge of therapeutics still less certain. There is room on all sides for differences of opinion, and scope for the introduction of new theories and the employment of high sounding epithets. The fatal facilities thus afforded to the charlatan have naturally made the well principled professors of physic, very vigilant in guarding their ranks against the introduction of quackery. We wish to be honest, and we wish to associate with none but those who are so.-MR. JONATHAN HUTCHINSON, F.R.C.S. at the Ryde Meeting of the British Medical Association, August, 1881.

WHY AWKWARD?-The Medical Press heads a

paragraph describing a case of small-pox in an unvaccinated pupil at Clifton College as "Awkward for Anti-Vaccinators." Why awkward? Whoever maintained, that to be unvaccinated was to be secure from small-pox? It is vaccinators who promise security from small-pox to those who submit to their rite, whilst Nature is continually placing them in the awkward position of convicted impostors.

DR. WM. STRANGE of Worcester, describes a card on which is set forth the increase of small-pox in London, contemporaneously with increase of vaccination, as an insult to the intellect of a boy of seven years old." Why? If what is said to prevent small-pox, not only does not prevent it, but suffers it to increase, the insult to the intellect is administered by those who cry for more and more of what is thus manifestly impotent.

MR. GEORGE SMITH of Coalville writes to the Daily News that for the second time within four months, small-pox has been conveyed from London to Braunston in canal-boats; adding that "in the first case there were man, woman, and six children sleeping in the cabin; and in the second there were living in the cabin at the time the boat 'pulled up' two men, two women, and two children of three different families."-We would ask Mr. Smith whether it is not conceivable that these boat-folk conveyed the small-pox to London? Has Mr. Smith never heard of varioplasm, an unknown substance that lies under the human skin, and breaks out into small-pox, whenever overcrowding and foul air provides the requisite stimulus ?

DRYSDALE'S CONVERSION BY CEELY.--An enthusiastic calf-lympher was Dr. Drysdale, but in the Medical Press of 27th July, he reports his conversion to a small-pox lympher; and in this wise

"It happened that I had a very long conversation with the late Mr. Ceely of Aylesbury at Cambridge, and he most kindly went into the subject of the production by himself of true vaccine vesicles on the cow by the inoculation of the matter of small. pox on the udders. Again and again did he assure me that he had on several occasions succeeded in this experiment, and that he had afterwards vaccinated many children with the lymph from these vesicles. A sceptic before, I was convinced; and unless M. Warlomont has something more to tell us than we have heard from MM. Chaveau, Viennois, and Meynet, I can only say that the positive experiments of Ceely must be taken to have proved the point that vaccinia is merely human small-pox modified in some way by transmission through the cow."

SCANDAL FROM CARDIFF.-Mr. T. Garrett Horder, public vaccinator, writes to the Lancet of 20th August that he has inspected the Cardiff schools, and has found no less than a hundred children without any marks of vaccination, and that at least 25 per cent. of the vaccinated were unprotected, either because the marks were too few in number, or because they were imperfect in character. What a scandalous assertion! At least 25 per cent. of the vaccination in Cardiff a sham, and little better than no vaccination! How does the Lancet suffer a correspondent to make such unprofessional imputations? The work, however bad, was paid for in good money, and the doctors had the money. Mr. Horder concludes by advising that no children be admitted to school without proper vaccination marks, and agrees with the Lancet in thinking that small-pox will never be stamped out until a Compulsory Re-vaccination Act is passed.