Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub
[ocr errors]

of the early part of this century, knows that vaccination was far more strongly objected to then than it is now. Any one who looks at the caricatures, for instance, of horns sprouting out of the heads of people, who knows how fashionable, popular clergymen preached against it, knows perfectly well that it had to fight its way; and I am sure it could not have fought its way as it did, if it had not been that the public soon came to appreciate its value. And what was the result? Why, that the mortality in the first ten years was halved. I say "halved," because, for the reasons I gave just now, I knock off 1,000. I say, the previous mortality, putting aside inoculation, was 4,000 per million. Thus, according to Dr. Farr's statistics in the first ten years of the century the mortality was halved; and this before vaccination came to be by any means universal. Dr. Farr's next period belongs to 1831-35. Now, that is a period I know very well, because it is when I was in the profession and practising in Bristol. So firm was the conviction of medical men, that we paid money out of our own pockets to propagate vaccination. We used to give shillings and half-crowns to poor women to bring their babies. I do not want to boast of it; I simply mention it as a fact that showed our faith. When I took part in propagating a new stock of vaccine, which my old master had brought from Berkeley, medical men who remembered the old Jennerian vaccine vesicle, had said at that time, "This vaccination is not anything like as effective as it was in our earlier days; it is dying out." We learn the rationale of all this now; we are perfectly satisfied of it. M. Pasteur has shown what "humanising will do. I mention one small fact, communicated to me by Dr. Martin, who has been the great advocate in the United States of animal vaccination. He told me last summer, "If you try retrovaccination; if you vaccinate a calf from the human subject, and then try to carry that through a succession of calves, you cannot do it; it dies out in three removes." This shows how completely the genuine vaccinia of the cow has died out by what M. Pasteur has taught us to call " cultivation" in the human subject. Then, I say, there is good vaccination and bad vaccination, good lymph and bad lymph. We believed then that the good lymph had been altered, and we brought in a new lot of original vaccinia from the cow. Several of us clubbed together to pay the expenses out of our own pockets, for establishing an institution for the general diffusion of this vaccinia, where one or other of us devoted his time for hours every day for a year; and that we did. The sum I then contributed was a sum of some importance to me in those early days of my professional career. That showed our honest conviction. Let me mention another fact which I published in the Times last year-that during my attendance on an Eye Institution for eight years, I saw at least 100 cases of blindness from smallpox. The inquiry was carefully made in every instance, "Has that child been vaccinated ?" "No, sir." "How did it get the small-pox ? "Catched it natural, sir." That was the regular answer, which meant that the child had not been inoculated. Out of the 100 cases, at least, of blindness from small-pox, which I saw during my early professional career in Bristol, in no case

[ocr errors]

whatever had the child been vaccinated. I have taken some pains to get further information on this point; and I have found that in the Blind Institution of St. George's-in-the-Fields, which is the oldest institution in London, two-thirds of the patients that applied for admission in the middle of last century were blinded by small-pox. Now, the other day, I wrote to the present secretary of the Institution, and asked him what proportion of cases there were at present blinded by small-pox; and he said about one-twentieth. That seems to me a rather significant fact. I can speak from my own recollection of the years 1831 to 1835, that there was then no objection to vaccination, only people did not care about taking the trouble. Little objections there might be, such as these: "Oh, my child had sore ears after vaccination, so I did not have this next child vaccinated." That was the common answer given when we asked why the poor child, blinded by small-pox, had not been vaccinated. Now, sore ears, as every medical man knows who practises among the lower classes, is one of the commonest disorders among children, and cannot be at all fairly attributed to vaccination. I say at that period vaccination was general. It is impossible to say how general, but it was general; and the London mortality shows a reduction during the years 1831-35 to 830 per million. In 1840 the Legislature provided the means of vaccination, and made it compulsory upon certain medical officers to vaccinate anybody who asked to be vaccinated. That put it in the way of the people; and what was the result? Why, that between 1841 and 1850, the small-pox mortality of London was reduced to less than one-half what it had been between 1831 and 1835. Then, sir, came the period of compulsory vaccination from 1853. I have purposely taken the decades as they are given in the RegistrarGeneral's Reports. I object altogether to selections of epidemic years. These selections do not give the years of freedom; they do not say that between those epidemic years small-pox dropped to almost nothing. I object, sir, to selected statistics, I have taken the statistics of decades; and in the decade 1851 to 1860, the death-rate dropped down from 400 to 278. I say that was the result of compulsory vaccination. In the following decade (1871-80) the rate per million dropped down a little more -to 276. The coincidence of those figures is so remarkable, that I say that the last seventeen of those twenty years give you a fair statement of what compulsory vaccination did in reducing the London death-rate.*

I now come to the greatly-increased deathrate (448+ per million) of the decade 187180; as to which my argument is, that it is altogether exceptional. And why? Because in the year 1871 a peculiar type of small-pox came

* The average small-pox death rate for all England during the twelve years 1838-52 and 1847-53 (the causes of death not having been abstracted by the Registrar-General in the intervening years) was 420 per million; while for the seventeen years, 1854-70, subsequent to the compulsory enforcement of vaccination, it fell to 174. In Scotland, the average number of deaths from small-pox during the ten years 1855-1864, was 1,051; in the six years that followed the enforcement of compulsory vaccination, the average fell to 144, or scarcely more than one seventh.

+ Dr. C. Pearce, in a letter to the Echo, calculates this rate at 450; I think he will find that mine is the correct rate.

over to us from France, where there is strong reason to believe it had been engendered by the horrible conditions which prevailed during the Franco-German War among the wretched troops that were then got together. There were outbreaks of small-pox among them; and just the same thing followed that happened here in our jails and military hospitals in old times. Where men with a mild type of disease were crowded together, a most malignant type was developed. That malignant type of small-pox was brought from France to this country in the beginning of 1870 or 1871, and it is still the characteristic of the epidemic. It is only those conversant with medical history, who know that the same disease may have quite different characters at different times. You must not speak of small-pox as if it were always one disease. Why, it is on indisputable record that in many cases of inoculation under favourable circumstances, the deaths were no more than two or three in a thousand; and during the earlier part of the present century (certainly within my own recollection) we never heard of a case of this "malignant " form of smallpox. We used to think "confluent" small-pox the worst. The worst I ever saw was a case of confluent small-pox, and the poor child died of it. It was unvaccinated, living in a very healthy lodge in a park near Bristol. But what is really the worst form of small-pox? Why, the form of which I read from Horace Walpole, in Lord Dalkeith's family. The form is now perfectly well known to the medical superintendents of our small-pox hospitals; and I could give you figures to show that a considerable number of deaths occur from this most severe form of the disease (140 in one, and 108 in another, of the metropolitan hospitals during last year). The average duration of the stage of this form of small-pox is only four days. It was severe not in London only, but in various countries of Europe. It was worse in America. so bad that it has been suggested that the Black Death of the middle ages, which carried off onethird of the population, might have been this severe small-pox. The symptoms are much alike -blackness over the body, from the escape of the colouring matter of the poisoned blood into the skin; or if the patient survives long enough for the eruption to come out, the blood passes into the pustules; or, again, hæmorrhage takes place from the bowels and the kidneys, and the patient sinks in the course of a few days. As a general rule, every one thus attacked dies; recovery being the very rare exception. Now, it is this "malignant" small-pox which runs up the mortality of unvaccinated patients. If you look at the tables that have been published of the epidemic of 1871 and of succeeding years in London, you will see that the mortality of unvaccinated patients has been from 40 to 45 per cent.-an unheard-of mortality in this century, though I dare say some epidemics last century would show a similar mortality. The mortality among the vaccinated tells a very different story. The returns of the epidemic of last year (as far as I have yet seen them) prove that there was not a single death from malignant small-pox among those who showed "good" marks of vaccination. Several, no doubt, had been vaccinated; but there

It was

was scarcely a single case in which there was evidence of effective vaccination, among the hundreds of poor creatures who died of this terrible form of small-pox. When you do not separate the vaccinated from the unvaccinated, you cannot distinguish what is due to vacci nation. The Metropolitan Hospital-returns show this most significant fact,-that the number of cases of small-pox in children under ten years of age who possessed vaccination marks, was far less than the number of cases above ten; and they further show scarcely a single death of any child under ten years of age among the well vaccinated, and very few even among those that had been "imperfectly" vaccinated. On the other hand, of the unvaccinated, the cases among children formed a large majority, and the deaths a far greater proportion; thus speaking very strongly of the protective power of vaccination during the period of childhood, in which the fatalities were mostly confined to the unvaccinated. Such are the general facts of this epidemic. (See appended Table, p. 229.)

As one accustomed to study the histories of Epidemics, I have no hesitation whatever in saying that the period of eleven years, 1871-1881, is an altogether exceptional one; the small-pox of this period having a type which has never before been prevalent in the experience of living men.

Now, sir, I come to the distribution of this epidemic. It was severe in 1871 over the whole country. In Scotland it was particularly severe, for the Compulsory Vaccination Act had not there been long in operation, and there was a very large unvaccinated residuum in the large towns, especially Glasgow. This epidemic of 1871, which died out in England, hung over Scotland for three or four years." "But what has been the case since? The Scottish people were so impressed during that epidemic with the value of vaccination, that compulsory vaccination has since met with no opposition. The Medical Registrar states in his last report that only one person in the whole of Scotland in the year 1880 objected to vaccination. I have carefully gone through the figures of the Scottish report, and it is clear that vaccination, in proportion to the number of births, has been carried on more effectively in Scotland than in most parts of England-certainly much more effectively than in London. what has been the result? Mr. Young, in papers issued by this Society, does not tell anything about Scotland, but merely about London. He does not tell us that in Scotland small-pox has been almost extinct for some years past. How

And

* I beg to call particular attention to the passage marked between inverted commas, which stands precisely as taken down by the Society's reporter, because I have been charged by Dr. C. Pearce with attempting to "conceal" this fact. The total number of deaths from small-pox in Scotland, in the four years of this malignant epidemic, was 6,260, or at the rate of 1,565 per annum; while the total number of deaths in four separate epidemic years of ordinary small-pox in the decade preceding the introduction of compulsory vaccination, was 6,188, or at the rate of 1,537,-a rate slightly less numerically, but considerably higher in proportion to population. The general average of small-pox deaths in the ten years preceding the introduction of compulsory vaccination having been (as already stated) 1,054, the general average of deaths for the whole seventeen years of compulsory vaccination, including the four years' epidemic, has been only 430,-thus showing a numerical red action of just 60 per cent.; and this reduction would be greater, pro rata, if the increased population of the later period were taken into the accounts.

In

many deaths do you think there were in the whole of Scotland last year-a country which has a population nearly that of London, namely, 3,700,000? There have not been a dozen deaths in Scotland a year for the last four years! Is not that a significant fact? Taking it generally, the like has been true for some years past in our large English towns. In nineteen great towns, the aggregate population of which is about the same as that of London, the mortality for the last three or four years (excepting 1881) has been little more than that of Scotland; and anyone who runs his eye over the RegistrarGeneral's report will see that over large areas of Great Britain there is a perfect blank against small-pox for years past. I think myself justified, therefore, in maintaining that London is in an exceptional position. We all know that the propaganda of this Society has had very considerable effect in London. There are in some districts 8 per cent., and in one or two 10 per cent., and in others less, that are never vaccinated. They commonly escape by moving into other districts. There is a large migratory population who go out of one district into another. There is no central authority in London. Leeds, Birmingham, Liverpool, and Manchester, there is one head vaccination-officer, and he keeps his eye on every quarter, and there is no escaping. Then I know, as a fact, that there are persons who will not register their children's births because of the vaccination that would be inflicted on them. There is therefore no doubt that there is a large unvaccinated residuum in London, and I maintain that that unvaccinated residuum is the cause of this continually-smouldering fire of small-pox in London. At times, small-pox has almost died out in London. In 1873 and 1874 there were not 150 cases in London. But the disease lighted up again. And why? Because here was a continual fresh piling-up of fuel on the smouldering fire, in the shape of unvaccinated children. That is my interpretation, and I think I am justified to a very considerable degree by the facts upon which I have laid stress. But I know I shall be met by this argument, that there are towns-Leicester, for instance, and still more, Keighley, and the Dewsbury district-where the anti-vaccination propaganda has been very active, and yet there has been no small-pox. Why not? Simply because small-pox has not established itself in the surrounding area. Even my opponents must admit that the absence of any deaths in these towns for several years past, shows that small-pox has not been effectively brought into them since the general epidemic died out. If such a focus of smallpox as there is in Hackney were now introduced into Leicester, all experience shows that it would spread. But fire does not burn without being kindled. I will give you a remarkable illustration of this from another disease, mentioned to me the other day by my friend, Dr. Playfair, who, having married an American lady, crosses the Atlantic every year to visit her friends. He was staying at Nahant, on the coast of New England, a watering-place which has a great repute for its salubrity, where many wealthy people have houses of their It is situated on a long and low peninsula,

own.

with no drainage. The houses have cesspools, and yet, as the place is very healthy, it might be argued that it is salubrious to live over cesspools, just as your Society says it is more salubrious not to be vaccinated than to be vaccinated. Some sanitary reformers, such as my friend, Mr. Chadwick, firmly believe that cesspools breed typhoid fever. My late friend, Dr. William Budd, demonstrated to the conviction of most medical men (I believe Dr. Murchison was the exception among those who studied Dr. Budd's proofs) that typhoid fever is a disease that requires a disease-germ; and the case of Nahant affords a most remarkable exemplification of it. There were people who had been living in good houses over cesspools for twenty, thirty, or forty years, and no typhoid fever occurred; but two people came from New York, who were attacked with typhoid fever. What was the result? The fever immediately spread throughout Nahant. It broke out in the best houses; and my friend Dr. Playfair and his wife took fright, for it appeared in the house of Mrs. Playfair's father, and they immediately took their departure.

Let me finish with a singular case, illustrative of the argument I have been developing this evening. San Francisco is a large city, with a total population of about 230,000, and a Chinese quarter inhabited by about 20,000, adult males mostly. This Chinese quarter is a most squalid place, where all pig together in filth and bestiality. There is no compulsory vaccination in any part of the United States, as I learned from my friends last summer. When an outbreak of smallpox takes place, then the Municipalities require the people to be vaccinated, to stop the epidemic. About five years ago, this town having been visited with a very severe epidemic of small-pox (doubtless originally imported from Europe), the Board of Education determined that every child then in the schools should be vaccinated, and that no child should thereafter be admitted without a vaccination certificate. Thirtyfour thousand children were then vaccinated, and about 50,000 since, mostly with the heifer lymph. A smouldering fire of small-pox has been kept up among the Chinese, on whom vaccination could not be enforced; but there was no general renewal of small-pox until the autumn of 1880. What happened then? In November of that year 147 cases occurred in the best part of the city, generally in respectable houses, and 140 more in December. I should tell you that the general death-rate of the city was singularly low. Including even the Chinese, it was only about 18, and, excluding the Chinese, only 17 per thousand; whereas in London it is generally from 23 to 25. Now, how did the Chinese come to affect the general population? Why, in this way. These Chinese are laundrymen; they go about into the best houses; they are artisans of various orders. They manufacture articles and send them out. They have been known to be making slippers, for instance, in a room where there was a body lying dead of small-pox; so that the Chinese colony furnished a focus of small-pox.

Mr. A. EMERY.-I rise to a point of order. The learned gentleman said he would confine his observations to London. What is the use of

going to San Francisco, where we cannot test his epidemic, namely, more efficient vaccination. I statements ?

The CHAIRMAN.-I have two remarks to make. First, it is plain that the statement of Dr. Carpenter bears on the general question that the mere salubrity of a town does not of itself prevent small-pox. The second is, it is true that Dr. Carpenter has exceeded his time, but pray remember that he has come here, at great cost to himself, into the lion's den, and surely you are not going to annoy him if he occupies a few extra minutes.

Dr. CARPENTER.-I fully admit that the reduction of the general death-rate, as indicating the improved sanitary condition of London, has its bearing on the position. I do not wish to exclude that consideration; but I say that no sanitation will exclude small-pox, and San Francisco is a case in point. Sanitation did not exclude small-pox from the houses of kings, queens, and nobles in the last century. I shall be met by the assertion that those houses were very unhealthy; but San Francisco is the most healthy large town of which I know; and there a focus of small-pox is kept up by the Chinese, who convey it into the most healthy habitations. The demand for vaccination was immediately very great. The panic amongst the "upper crust" was such, that all who had not been vaccinated, rushed to be vaccinated. Of the 80,000 vaccinated children, only ten, or twelve took small-pox (it is not stated that any of them died); and not a single case occurred among those that had been vaccinated with the heifer lymph. This experience of San Francisco has made a very strong impression upon my mind; but I would not have detained the meeting with bringing it in, had I not felt it necessary as an answer to Mr. Tebb's remarks. I do not say that the time may not come when sanitation may be so perfect that all exanthematous diseases may be extinguished, but it has not as yet reached that mark of perfection. Look at the worst parts of London, look at the worst parts of Glasgow. There are places in Glasgow as bad as any in London, and yet smallpox has been practically stamped out in Glasgow. There were two deaths there last year, when there were 2,371 in London.

The CHAIRMAN.-In the position to which I have been summoned, the duties are purely regulative and judicial, and in fulfilling these duties I should be exceedingly glad to have presented to you a summary of the admirable address we have heard from Dr. Carpenter; but the time is so far spent, that I shall at once call upon the next speaker in reply to Dr. Carpenter, Mr. Enoch Robinson.

Mr. ENOCH ROBINSON. - Time being so precious, I hope you will take it as read that I, a general practitioner, rise with diffidence to reply to so eminent a man as Dr. Carpenter. There are two points in his address to which I shall direct your attention. The first is the assumption that the difference between the prevalence of small-pox in the provinces and in London-a difference we all admit-is owing to vaccination. I deny the truth of this assumption. The second point is the remedy, suggested by Dr. Carpenter as being needed in London in order to get rid of the continuous small-pox

[merged small][ocr errors]

shall contend that this remedy does not rest upon a scientific basis. The sheet of statistics placed on the wall by Dr. Carpenter will serve my purpose very well in discussing the first point. In order to give vaccination the credit for the better condition of the provinces at the present time as compared with London, it is necessary for the vaccinator to assume that in the time of natural small-pox the condition of the provinces would not bear the same favourable comparison with London. Dr. Carpenter has acted more fairly to-night in the use he has made of the small-pox statistics of the last century than either he or other advocates of vaccination have done in the newspapers and periodicals. In his writings in the Spectator and the Times, in order to persuade people to adopt vaccination, he vividly described the disastrous effects of small-pox in past times as compared with the moderate effects of recent days, leaving the reader to suppose that if vaccination ceased in this country, we should of necessity return to the frightful conditions he described. But Dr. Carpenter's descriptions were of the small-pox inoculation period, and not of the period of natural small-pox, the latter period having terminated in 1730, when the inoculation practice began. To compare the present time with the inoculation period, with a view to frighten persons into the adoption of vaccination, is not logical, and is somewhat cruel, because, if vaccination were done away with to-morrow, we could not return to the inoculation period, with all its disastrous effects, for two reasons-first, small-pox inoculation is now a misdemeanour; and second, the common-sense of the people is sufficiently enlightened to prevent its re-introduction. The period upon which we should enter if vaccination were discontinued, and with which, in past times, the vaccination period should be compared in order to find out what the real effect of vaccination has been, is that of natural small-pox. In consequence of the two successive practices of animal disease inoculation (small-pox inoculation beginning in 1730, and vaccination beginning with the present century), the present generation has had no experience in this country of natural small-pox uninfluenced by animal disease inoculation. The statistics on the wall will suggest the great changes in the sanitary state of the country that took place from the middle of the seventeenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth century. Notice the very large general death-rate in the first period (1660-79), 80,000 per 1,000,000, and the great diminution in the next (1728-57), 52,000 per 1,000,000, whilst the small-pox mortality increased from 4,170 to 4,260. These striking results arose from definite causes. In the first period there was the Great Plague, accounting for the high general death-rate. The unsanitary state of London at that time must have been frightful. Green says:"In six months (1665) 100,000 Londoners died of the plague in its crowded streets." Notice the word "crowded." But this mortality was, fortunately, from a sanitary point of view, followed by the Great Fire, the greatest act of purification, probably, that London ever had. Hence the fall in the general

death-rate. Why did not the small-pox mortality fall in an equal ratio in the second period? Because of the introduction in 1730 of the pernicious practice-small-pox inoculation. Dr. Carpenter's own figures, therefore, bring vividly before us the great increase in the small-pox mortality positively caused by inoculation, and in spite, even, of the great improvement in the general mortality. In allowing only one-fourth as the increase from the practice of inoculation, Dr. Carpenter has not allowed for the great decrease that would have taken place in small-pox mortality, coincidently with the decrease in the general mortality. Not only did inoculation undo the good influence of the improved sanitary condition, but it actually, as we see, raised the small-pox mortality from 4,170 to 4,260. But not only did inoculation produce this disastrous effect in London; in the provinces its fatal influence was still more strikingly manifested. In Barron's "Life of Jenner," I find the following:"The numbers who died of small-pox in the last thirty years of eighteenth century (1770-1880) was 95 in 1,000, while in the first thirty years (1700-30) the proportion was only 70 in 1,000. Sir Gilbert Blane adds that this is, perhaps, more strongly exemplified in the country than in London, since there were many parts of the country in which, previously to the practice of inoculation, small-pox was not known during periods of twenty, thirty, or even forty years; so that a great many passed through life without ever having been affected with it in any way; whereas at present (1801) both from inoculation and from the free and extended intercourse between the most distant parts of the United Kingdom, an adult person who has not had smallpox is scarcely to be met with or heard of." So that, if we want to know what would be the state of the provinces as to smallpox prevalence and mortality, if we were to give up vaccination and return to a natural small-pox period, we must go back, not to the period of small-pox inoculation so vividly described by Dr. Carpenter, Mr. Ernest Hart, and Mr. Simon, but to the antecedent period, that of natural smallpox, when the provinces had periods of twenty, thirty, and forty years of entire freedom from small-pox; and when men might live long lives without coming into relation with the disease. We have not such periods of freedom now. vaccination be such a beneficent influence as its advocates so persistently assert, why have we not at least as long periods of freedom from small-pox in the provinces now as were enjoyed by the people previous to 1730? Can it be because "the minimised form of small-pox, which vaccination is," to quote Simon's classical phrase, is, like small-pox inoculation, diffusing, it may be more slowly but more thoroughly, through the United Kingdom, the small-pox disease? At any rate, we ought not to be worse off now than in the first thirty years of the last century. Where are these long periods of freedom from small-pox gone to? We say, give us back the time of natural small-pox, free from any form of animal disease inoculation, and let us have the chance of fighting the disease with improved sanitary agencies of the present day. That we should be in a better condition than we are now is demonstrated by

If

the experiments made in this direction in the face of the most powerful official opposition in the towns of Keighley and Leicester. Dr. Carpenter has admitted in his address that vaccination in these towns is grossly neglected. Why have we a nearer approach in Leicester and Keighley to the natural small-pox period, with its greater freedom from small-pox mortality, than in the other towns of the provinces? We say, give us back the period of natural small-pox by striking out the compulsory clauses of the Vaccination Acts. The absence of any basis of comparison within the memory of the present generation, between natural small-pox and small-pox intensified by vaccination, has done more to deceive the people than probably any other single condition. I now come to the second point in Dr. Carpenter's argument, namely, that increased efficiency in vaccination is the need of London, to bring it up to a level with the provinces. This question is to me of more importance than the one I have just dealt with. I am not specially qualified to deal with figures, but, as a general practitioner, I am extremely anxious to get at the scientific aspect of this vaccination question. Now, our position to-night is not one simply of destructive criticism. I should not stand upon this platform to-night to oppose Dr. Carpenter, if I had not as strong a faith in an agent other than vaccine lymph, as Dr. Carpenter has in vaccination. There is an agent which I maintain is more scientific in every respect than the cow-pock disease, which officialism at present so urgently thrusts upon the attention of the community. Dr. Carpenter, in his address, has referred to the degraded condition of the blood, to the changes in its colouring matter that attend the worst forms of small-pox; and, therefore, I may be excused if, in describing the agent in which I have confidence, I refer to minute details of a physiological character. When Dr. Carpenter tells us that the need of London is greater efficiency in vaccination, I have a right to suppose that he knows the nature of the agent and the method in which it works. If a man claims to be able to detect degrees of efficiency in the working of a machine, such must possess first a knowledge of its structure and the principles involved in its action. Do the vaccinators know what is the essential nature

a man

And

of vaccine lymph? Can they tell us how it performs its protective function in the body? If I ask Mr. Simon what is the essential nature of vaccine lymph, he will tell me that it is human small-pox modified by the skin textures of the cow; and if I turn to Dr. Cameron, M.P., and ask him, he will inform me that vaccine lymph is "sui generis," and must have no relationship whatever with human small-pox. if I open two of the leading medical journals of last Saturday, I find in the British Medicul Journal a letter from Mr. Fleming, I think President of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, in which he denounces in decided terms the idea that true cow-pox can have any relationship with human small-pox. Whilst in the Lancet, there is a letter from a surgeon in India, who, at the time of writing, had inoculated three heifers with human small-pox, and had produced the vaccine vesicle. When M. Pasteur was in London last

« ПредишнаНапред »