TO WHOM IS SUBMISSION DUE? A CURIOUS phenomenon of the present era is the tendency to discountenance the dogmas of the paid State theologian, and yet at the same time to accept without inquiry the dogmas of the paid State physician. Under the sway of this illogical state of the public mind, two brothers entering the professions may find that legislative proposals in furtherance of his class interests made by the churchman will be coolly received, while concessions similarly demanded by the medical brother will be listened to with respectful awe, on the new principle that on medical questions the duty of the laity is submission; and as in former times almost every important subject could be construed into a theological one, so now the whole science of bodily health and sanitation is the natural perquisite of the medical expert. The Conservative press of France has taken alarm at the evident intention of the modern doctor to wield over the bodies of the commonalty a power as arbitrary and unlimited as that claimed of old by his theological predecessors in intolerance. Le Conservateur de la Nievre of the 21st June sarcastically says, "The drooping and dying Chamber, which is on the point of giving up its soul if it has a soul, is suddenly taken with a beautiful zeal for the public health -it is occupying itself with a law to make vaccination compulsory." The reference is to Dr. Liouville's Bill enacting compulsion in the first six months of life and subsequent revaccination every ten years. The Continental press tells us that the first reading of this wild proposal was smuggled through with great speed; but Dr. the Baron Larrey persuaded the Chamber to consult the Academy of Medicine before proceeding further. The vaccine zealots stoutly opposed. "Had not the Belgium Royal Academy of Medicine already decided that vaccination was protective?" In this matter we find that France relies for proof upon Belgium, Belgium on Germany, Germany on England, and the English vaccine propaganda relies upon itself, its powerful trade combination, its electoral influence, and its statistic infallibility. In the discussion in the Academy of Medicine Dr. Depaul, the pride of France, declared that the proposed Bill was inquisitorial, vexatious, intolerant, and impracticable. "Parents have rights, and on this subject they ought to be free." Depaul quoted, amidst the applause of the Academy, the eloquent protest of Dr. Conneau, first physician of Louis Napoleon, against similar proposals of compulsion before the Senate in 1868-" England, the classic land of liberty, which has been universally recognised as the model and guide of individual freedom, now sees the father of a family submitted to the most vexatious of obligations, that of causing his child to undergo an operation which he may believe to be injurious to the health of all that in this world he holds dear. We do not believe it will be possible to inflict such a law upon France. How can we hope to render popular a proposal so contrary to parental feeling? At an epoch like the present, when liberty is invoked on every side, in everything and for

everything, is proclaimed the most enviable of blessings, is demanded by authors, professors, and thinkers of every school, why should we enact a law which would take away the dearest and most sacred of all liberties, the liberty of the parent to superintend according to his conscience the health and development of his child? A feeling of repulsion towards the vaccine operation is by no means rare. Even the profession acknowledge that very serious consequences may occasionally follow. Let truth work its own way. Let it be aided by persuasion and not by persecution. Let us use all our science to diffuse sanitary knowledge. Let us combat prejudice and ignorance, but do not let us try to stifle the rights and liberties of the parent." Dr. Hardy opposed compulsion: he would not attach his signature to a proposal which would convert the doctor into a sort of executioner. Dr. Guerin said a large number of medical men consider a general vaccination and revaccination to be in itself one of the causes of small-pox; a crowd of the newly vaccinated to be itself a dangerous centre of infection; and the 150,000 revaccinations in Paris during the siege to be in some degree responsible for the great epidemics of 1870-1. Dr. de Pietra Santa, secretary to the Société d' Hygiène, said, "The Senate of the Empire, authoritative, absolute, and dictatorial as it was, has rejected vaccine compulsion in the name of the sacred principle of parental liberty, and it is to a liberal, progressive, and Republican Parliament that the partisans of coercion resort, in the name of illdefined principles of social utility." Dr. Depaul said that the vaccine party spoke slightingly of the risk of contracting disease in vaccination. If such cases were not common, they were not impossible. At this moment one of our respected colleagues is being sued for 15,000 francs damages for death from syphilis contracted in revaccination." Dr. Depaul alarmed the compulsionists by advising the Academy to institute a full inquiry into the vaccination question. was too much. Inquiry, as vaccinating enthusiasts implicitly recognize, is doom. Dr. Fauvel said the opposition of Dr. Depaul was formidable on account of the weight and authority of his name. "Anti-vaccinators will trumpet it about that Depaul is against compulsion, and the public will believe that he is against vaccination also. His opposition reposes on the defence of personal freedom and on the rights of parents over their children. I hope the Academy will not be influenced by our honoured colleague."

This

Dr. Pigeon, of Fourchambault, is arranging a counter-project, to be presented to the Chamber, suppressing compulsion, both direct and indirect, and leaving the practice optional. It is expected that this counter-project will receive the adhesion of the best names in the French medical profession.

and however great the names of its supporters." Dr. P. says the small-pox is a far less dangerous complaint than most of the epidemic diseases, while the vaccine is liable to introduce maladies which may end in death. He concludes that in vaccinating an infant we risk its life under pretext of saving it from a problematic attack of small-pox. "But is the vaccine really a preservative?" is the pertinent question of the editor. "Ardent partisans (he continues) now admit the liability of the vaccinated." Dr. Pigeon says, "Every physician who has been engaged in an epidemic knows that a relatively large number of the vaccinated have been attacked;" and he goes so far as to say that the vaccine virus, instead of being a preservative, actively assists the natural causes of small-pox, and tends to render the attack more dangerous. Dr. P. also says that vaccination inoculates into the human organism whatever pernicious germs or impurities exist in the person or infant from whom the lymph is taken. "These things make us reflect," says the editor, in conclusion, of Le Conservateur.

We may well reflect when we consider that lymph may pass through a dozen or a score of children in succession. Who knows whether it is not capable of transmitting all their constitutional complaints? An influential French doctor says, "The demonstration of the inefficiency and also of the dangers of vaccination seem to me to be definitively established." A medical man writing to the Standard says he believes most of the lymph now in use to be worn out: it is still capable of producing a pustule, but fails to prevent small-pox. Meanwhile, in London, earnest upholders of vaccination at all hazards are engaged in proving too much, and "metropolitan statistics" can now be met with showing the imperfectly vaccinated with a lower death-rate than the vaccinated! H. D. DUDGEON.

Richard

FAINTING UNDER VACCINATION.-Dr. Neale of 60 Boundary Road, St. John's Wood, writes in the British Medical Journal of 25th June"During the last few months, I have vaccinated between three and four hundred patients, and of these six or seven have gone off into dead faints, in one attended with vomiting, but in no instance followed by convulsions."

AN ACCURATE INQUIRER.-M. W. S. writing from Glasgow says "I am impelled to further inquiry by the averment made that the advocates of Vaccination omit from their reasoning two very important considerations-1. The effect upon the prevalence of small-pox produced by the cessation of the condemned practice of inoculation. 2. The notorious fact that sickly children are legally exempted from the vaccination law. If the practice of inoculation was rightly put a stop to as tending to spread small-pox, its stoppage is an important factor in calculating results. Now if it be the case that the Vaccinators habitually ignore these two considerations, even in their best defences, their reasoning must be seriously vitiated. Even granting the truth of their statistics, their deductions from these statistics must be far from reliable. Besides this, there is the suspicious circumstance that the original claim of complete immunity for the vaccinated from attacks of the disease has had to retreat continually before advancing facts."

THE BATTLE OF THE LYMPHS. A CORRESPONDENCE in the Medical Press and Circular of 13th July is most instructive, and if the public could only see it, they would begin to understand what a hopeless jumble of practice is represented by the word Vaccination. It was started by Mr. W. J. Collins, B.Sc., M.R.C.S., who observed that his investigations had led him to the conclusion that calf or animal lymph is a name applied indifferently to at least three different commodities possessed of entirely different properties—

"1. There is the lymph obtained by Ceely, Badcock, Burrows, and Thiele, by inoculating the cow with human small-pox virus. This, it would appear from the experiments of the Lyons Commission, never produces cow-pox. When it produces anything, it is true small-pox, and is capable of propagating that disease by infection.

2. There is the lymph obtained by inoculating the calf with ordinary humanised lymph-retrovaccination as it is called; a plan which does not insure the elimination of the much dreaded human impurities.

3. There is the common source-the lymph got from cases of spontaneous cow-pox, and propagated on a series of heifers. This (bovine disease apart) would commend itself warmly to the minds of many, but strange to say, this very lymph has been denounced in no measured terms by 'the immortal Jenner' as unprotective against smallpox." (See pp. 7 and 8 of his Inquiry).

Dr. Warlomont of Brussels replies to Mr. Collins, asserting, 1st, that as a source of cowpox, the inoculations of Ceely, Badcock, Burrows and Thiele were utterly bad, utterly delusive. The Lyons Commission left not a doubt that from inoculated small-pox nothing could be derived but small-pox. It would be as reasonable to sow barley and expect to reap wheat as to convert small-pox into cow-pox by implanting it in cattle. 2nd. As for retro-vaccination, it is a good means for the purification and propagation of lymph, but it is not absolutely trustworthy. It is subject to accidents, and the stocks are liable to extinction. Hence he has dismissed retro-vaccination. 3rd. The true practice is animal vaccination-the inoculation of calves with spontaneous cow-pox, transmitting the virus from calf to calf without the intervention of any human organism whatever. This is the method pursued at the Belgian Vaccine Institute practice of sixteen years, no one vaccinated or with a success beyond expectation. After a re-vaccinated with calf lymph of the Institute has been attacked with small-pox. It is true that Jenner denied the virtue of such lymph, but the immortal Jenner was not infallible-in this matter, he was simply deceived.

Dr. Wyld, as usual, echoes Dr. Warlomont"Jenner was a great man, but he was not infallible, and he held some views regarding the origin of vaccinia in the heifer which are now abandoned."

Dr. Drysdale takes up a peculiar position. He believes in Warlomont's calf-lymph, and uses it, but adds

"I may say that the lymph of retro-vaccination has now been acknowledged by the best authorities to be non-protective. The present evidence goes

to prove that vaccinia is a modification of human variola, and that Ceely, Badcock, and Theile were right, and the Lyons Commission wrong.'

Lastly, Mr. George Fleming, President of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, says―

'Jenner was in the wrong when he asserted that vaccine lymph-i.e., lymph obtained from cows affected with so-called 'spontaneous' vaccinia --is unprotective against small-pox in man. He contradicted his own evidence, and that of others. Human small-pox is not vaccinia, and cannot be converted into that malady. All recent attempts to produce this conversion in France, Italy, and England have failed. The two affections are widely and specifically different. Inoculating cows with small-pox matter, and re-inoculating people can have only one result-but not that of producing the vaccine vesicle."

A continuation of the correspondence is promised, and we look for it with interest. The Editor in a leading article says

"If it be admitted that Ceely, Badcock, and others did not engender cow-pox by inoculating cows with small-pox matter, the question arises What did they produce? There is only too much reason to apprehend that they only produced a localised small-pox eruption, and that the virus they obtained from it was not that of vaccinia, but of small-pox. When we know that this virus was largely employed to vaccinate children, we can form our own conclusions as to the result."

VACCINATION PENALTIES. MR. BURT asked the President of the Local Government Board on 1st July, Whether a person who has been once fined under Section 31 of the Vaccination Act of 1867 is liable to be again fined within twelve months under the same order; whether the magistrates have power to grant as many fresh orders as may be demanded by the local guardians; and whether there is any analogy in other statutes for a repetition of fines under the same magistrate's order, or for a repetition of identical orders for an identical purpose, such repetition of fines or orders not being specially provided for by the statute.

Mr. Dodson replied-A person who has been once fined under section 31 of the Vaccination Act of 1867 is not liable to be again fined within twelve months under the same order; but the magistrates have power, when one order has not been complied with, to make a fresh order, and so on from time to time, on the application of the guardian. The Local Government Board have, however, frequently pointed out the expediency of discretion in the exercise of prosecutions thus repeated. It is not correct to say that the fines are repeated under the same magistrate's order, as a fresh order must be made before a second fine can be imposed; and the orders are not identical, as a fresh time is prescribed for the performance of the operation in each case.

Mr. Dodson's answer may be taken as accurate. The weak point is the recommendation of discretion to guardians, who are so often without discretion.

WILD EVIDENCE AND WILD TALK. A MEETING of the Metropolitan Asylums Board on 11th July was of more than ordinary interest. A report of Surgeon-General Bostock on the Stockwell Small-Pox Hospital showed that of 704 patients admitted during the past seven months, 191 were children under 12 years of age. Of these 83 were imperfectly vaccinated, 13 were doubtful, and 95 were unvaccinated. Of the vaccinated 2 died, the death in neither case being caused by small-pox. Of the 13 doubtful 9 died, while of the 95 unvaccinated no fewer than 42 died!

The report was received with appropriate expressions of horror. No one inquired what wretches that practise it; nor what were the imperfect vaccination meant, nor who were the origin and condition of the 95 children of whom 42 died a rate of mortality that in any but a company of vaccination fanatics would have excited suspicion and inquiry. The all sufficient cause was taken for granted in the absence of vaccination, and as people like to be harrowed on that score, up rose Mr. J. G. Talbot, M.P. for Oxford University, and said—

"I do hope these facts may be made public, as they show that Anti-Vaccination Leagues may properly be called Murder Leagues, so dire and direct is their influence in preventing children from having the protection which the law prescribes. The persons, however well intentioned, who join these Leagues devote their energies to a most dangerous crusade."

Poor Talbot! Is it possible to hail from Oxford and know very little of one's fellow creatures. The parents of the children in Stockwell Hospital probably never even heard of an Anti-Vaccination League.

Sir. E. H. Currie said that in his experience at Darenth he had found that even children born in a London workhouse were allowed to be

taken away without being vaccinated.

Mr. Bengough remarked that infants a fortnight old had been taken unvaccinated from a City workhouse simply because they were too young to endure the operation.

Dr. Bridges, Local Government Board Inspector, said there was no power to restrain mothers from taking away their infants unvaccinated.

Dr. Fowler, on the contrary, maintained that the Local Government Board had power in presence of an epidemic, or of an expected epidemic, to vaccinate all persons in poor law establishments. Under this power all infants born in workhouses should be vaccinated, and the earlier the better.

Surgeon-General Bostock added that infants born in small-pox hospitals were at once vaccinated and did well.

Mr. Proudfoot, seeing in the circumstances an opportunity for political business, thus delivered himself

"I would call your attention, gentlemen, to the fact that the anti-vaccination agitation, which causes the spread of the terrible epidemic, is not confined to the ignorant, but the name of Sir Thomas Chambers, M.P. for Marylebone, and, as Recorder for the City of London, one

for disregarding the law. If Sir Thomas Chambers would look at the facts which come before this Board, he would see he was inflicting a great wrong upon humanity in using his influence to prevent people from having the protection afforded by vaccination."

Perhaps it would astonish Mr. Proudfoot to be accused of false witness. Sir Thomas Chambers is not associated with any propaganda for resistance to vaccination, and never was. He is familiar with the statistics of small-pox and vaccination, and has not concealed his opinion of their tendency either in the House of Commons or elsewhere; but he knows too well his position and duty as a judge to appear as an agitator, or to be associated with agitators, however good their cause.

"Murder Leagues"-Mr. Henry Pitman wrote to Mr. J. G. Talbot, M.P.-"I see by the Times that you call the associations for repealing the Compulsory Vaccination Acts 'murder leagues.' I can assure you that the members of these leagues consider that they are working for the abolition of murder by Act of Parliament. Why these opposite opinions? Both cannot be right. We have examined both sides. Have you? If not, I send you some materials for doing so, including the opinions of many of your fellow legislators."-The reply of Mr. Talbot showed that his strong abuse was based upon a weak and oft refuted argument "HOUSE OF COMMONS, 15th July,-"I should have thought the condition of our people now, as compared with the times, not so very distant, when every household bore marks in the faces of its members of this fearful scourge, was alone sufficient to settle the question. I only wish to explain that I give credit to many of the antivaccinators for excellent intentions, and that when I used the expression murder leagues,' I meant leagues which would surely end in death. Of this I have no doubt."-The rejoinder was that the decrease of marking mainly arose from better habits of life and improved medical treatment; and that it could not be owing to the Jennerian nostrum, seeing that severe cases of small-pox had increased with compulsory vaccination. When the Archbishop of York raised this objection about pock-marked faces, an answer appeared in the Inquirer for 1879, p. 35. Mr. Talbot credits many anti-vaccinators with "excellent intentions," but he fears that our leagues will "end in death." Yes; in the death of vaccination.

CLEANLINESS WITHOUT AND WITHIN.-It is said that "cleanliness is next to godliness"; but is not cleanliness a part of godliness? The cleansing and saving process of regeneration will prove harder to a dirty person than to one who is clean. A daily bath in clean water is a wonderful promoter of cheerfulness as well as health; and if everybody were cleanly both in body and soul, there would be no need of vaccination, fever hospitals, or prisons. - WM. BIRCH in Free Trade Hall, Manchester.

THIS woodcut represents the vaccine disease in a well-developed stage on a young heifer in the vaccination stables of Dr. Bessey of Montreal. The animal, which had been vaccinated' seven days previously on the inside of the buttocks, first clean shaven for the purpose, was literally covered over the vaccinated region with welldefined cow-pox pustules, singly and in groups of six to ten.

Another heifer stood in a stall awaiting vaccination from this animal, one being vaccinated from another consecutively. The eruption has been kept up in uninterrupted succession from the original case of spontaneous cow-pox found upon the Leney Farm, Longue Pointe, in 1877; and there has already been furnished from this source lymph for the vaccination of over 50,000 persons. It is now used by the profession from Halifax to Winnipeg, and by a goodly number of the profession in the border States. Lymph has been sent to members of the profession in England, and to Dr. Buchanan of the National Vaccine Establishment, Whitehall.

The history of the Longue Pointe stock of vaccine may be given briefly as follows:-On November 6th, 1877, Dr. Bessey visited the farm of Mr. John Leney at Longue Pointe, and found there six animals affected with cow-pox in various stages of development. From these beginning, and on November 7th, the first child cows sufficient lymph was taken to make a in Montreal (one Michael O'Mara) was vacciAnimals at nated successfully with lymph. Logan's farm were inoculated with it, and from animal to animal, and child to child, the stock has been kept up ever since.-(Quoted from the Canada Medical Record in the Medical Press and Circular, 18th May, 1881.)

MR. WHEELER AND DR. CAMERON, M.P. In the following correspondence the question of the proper classification of cases of small-pox is fully discussed. Dr. Cameron holds that classification by vaccination marks after the manner of Marson is a sound system; whilst Mr. Wheeler maintains that it is illusory, contradictory, and unscientific. Let us, he says, range cases of smallpox under heads expressive of the various degrees of eruption-discrete, semi-confluent, confluent, virulent, and at once we find ourselves in contact with reality, and an order that is harmonious and scientific with predicable results.

Darlington, 20th June, 1881. Sir,-Regarding you as much a public character as doctor, I may be excused, I hope, for asking a question, which the Times would not permit me to put through its columns.

In the Times of yesterday you say, "The most fatal of all the cases of small-pox recorded up to that date, 1830, are those which occurred in the old small-pox hospital, and even among them the deaths amounted to but one in twenty." Would you kindly tell me where the record spoken of can be seen. I have the early reports of the hospital, but not 1830. I have taken the liberty to send you a paper of Dr. H. Böens, which I think will not be tedious to read. May I in conclusion venture to ask you to look into the subject of small-pox and vaccination from a medical point of view. Is the disease (small-pox) altered in its character and fatality? Take a hospital. Look at the cases clinically. Leave out vaccination. Did Sydenham behold a disease different from that which you have in hospital wards to-day? Does it assume the same character, run the same course, carry off the same number of victims, and take the same erratic epidemic course? I would like to see you treat the subject scientifically and in "the light of recorded facts as means for ascertaining truth.'

I believe you would come to a true result, which would be uniform in all experience, clear and unfailing; not to results baffling in their diversity and want of homogeneity.-I am, with respect, sincerely,

Dr. C. CAMERON, M.P.

ALEX. WHEELER.

80 St. George's Square, S. W., 23rd June, 1881. Sir, -The figures to which I alluded are given in Dr. Gregory's lectures on Eruptive Fevers, 1843 edition, p. 212. Dr. Gregory was physician to the small-pox hospital. As to small-pox being the same now as in Sydenham's time, I have no doubt as to its specific identity, but recorded statistics seem to me to prove increased virulence. I have received Dr. Böens' paper, for which thanks.— Yours truly, CHARLES CAMERON.

Mr. A. WHEELER.

You see

Darlington, 26th June, 1881. Sir, I am obliged by yours of the 23rd. I have not the figures you give of Dr. Gregory's; but his article in Vol. I. of the Library of Medicine, 1840, p. 305, gives the epidemic of 1838, in which the "vaccinated" cases were 298, deaths 31. this is over one in ten, not one in twenty, so that your argument does not run with all the evidence, even taking it as given-Does it? And I do not think you can find any accuracy outside the classification by disease, instead of by vaccination. You say in your note that recorded statistics seem to you to prove increased virulence in the disease. Let me refer you to the enclosed Table.

80 St. George's Square, S.W. 27th June, 1881.

Sir,-The figures you send me are not at all new to me. I willingly accept them as recorded facts, but they are by no means all the facts which have been recorded. You ignore all that has been recorded as to the mortality in vaccinated and unvaccinated cases respectively at different periods during this century, and you ignore all that has been recorded in vaccinated cases divided according to the extent to which traces of vaccination remained. I suppose you know all about these; but they are recorded facts which probably do not suit your hypothesis, and you ignore them, exactly as the other side do many facts which seem to tell against them. That was precisely what I said in my letter to the Times.-Yours most obediently, CHARLES CAMERON. To Mr. A. WHEELER.

Darlington, 28th June, 1881. Sir, I am much obliged by yours. Do you not do me a slight injustice in saying I ignored the vaccinated? I quoted 298 of them from the But of course the question was epidemic of 1838. in another direction. You said you thought the small-pox was proved by evidence to be more virulent now than before 1830. There seems to me to be only two ways of proving this. First, by an appeal to the general mortality of the town and country, and secondly, by an appeal to the hospital statistics of the disease. I expect you know perfectly that the general mortality is not excessive in small-pox epidemics. In 1871, for instance, it was 200 per million less than 1875. I took this as settled, and as a generally accepted fact, namely, that when there was severe epidemic small-pox the death-rate was not very high. There only remains the appeal to hospital experience. This I gave as candidly as possible. Taking all the experience possible from the pre-Jennerian times, since Sydenham's improved treatment began, and comparing it