The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 1870

Evening Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2122, 23 February 1870, Page 2

The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 1870

Thk letter of our correspondent Pater,” in another column, suggests very grave and serious considerations. It brings under notice the difficulty of dealing with one of the most direful •scourges of the human race—small-pox. How long this fell disease has preyed upon mankind no one can toll. If, as some assume, it visited Athens during the Peloponnesian war, and met with no successful treatment until the time of Dr Jenner, for more than two thousand year's it continued its ravages unchecked. How many millions of human beings have during that period been its victims, not even the most painstaking statistician can imagine. Climate seems to offer but small impediment to its progress, and wherever it finds a footing neither age nor sex is proof against its attacks. As it was sup*

posed, and is still considered, that vaccination is an effectual preventive to the the spread of the contagion, it has been made compulsory in every part of., the British dSminions by statute. It might have been imagined that the interference of the State would not have been necessary when so potent a means of prevention or at least mitigation of the evil was discovered. But all experience proves that wherever liberty of action is left to individuals, they are nob so deeply imbued with the moral obligation they are to be as careful of the well-being of I Society*as' of their own, as to adopt means for their mutual safety. ■ It is no wonder that in the first instance reluctance was manifested to adopt i acoiuation. Dr. Jenxer was not, previous! v to the publication of his discovery, known to fame. He lived in a small village, and had observed and experimented without assistance from others. He matured his views before he made them known, and when he published them, he was laughed at as a dreamer. Not only was he opposed by many of the faculty, but he had to encounter strong opposition from the people themselves. It is no new thing to call flic efficacy of-vaccination in question. Father* aud mothers used to have an extreme horror at tlm idea, of their children being inoculated _ with disease from one of the lower animals. They were willing enough that they should be fed with their milk, but not that they should be guarded from danger by matter drawn from their bodies. Sixty years ago, as in the present day, there were those who preferred inoculation with the deadly small-pox virus itself, to adopting the Jcnnerian process. We have seen this folly repeated in attempts to deal with the Rinderpest in cattle, and it is a icmarkable instance of the necessity for more enlightened modes of dealing with contagious .diseases. When it was left to parents to dictate to their medical attendants whether they should bring on 'small-pox by inoculsthjn with its vivjuj, expose their children to its attaaks without fortifying them against them by vaccination, or have them vaccinated, many preferred what they supposed to be inducing, fCumilder form of‘the disease by inoculation. But this ‘-.was naturally considered by the well informed to be a means of spreading and perpetuating it. Induced small-pox proved in many cases equally intense and infectious if the sufferer wore attacked" in the usual course, nor did it prove effectual in all instances against a second attack. Perhaps in no case is liberty so much abused as in dealing with “diseases. So long as ignorance centres its effects on self alone, comparatively little harm results. Men may without much injury to society take Morisox’s pills by the hundred, oi- dose themselves with brandy and salt, .Holloway’s pills as remedies for.,evils*brought on by the equally senseless practice of eating to repletion aful drinking to idiocy. But when their superstition extends to doiim that which may be of vital effect to . their neighbors, the State must step in and enforce the best known remedy. The paragraph supplied by our corresspondont is only a continuation of the old pgitation, but to our minds nothing can he more illogical than the conclu ikons drawn, from ft by the, medical gentleman .of Ihurtcen years elrpericnce. Ifc i.s by no means conclusive against vaccination. What seems to be the material question that medical men have to decide is whether the utmost care should not be taken to draw the vaccine virus direct from the cow. We think the accumulated of inahy fceaYsproves that ' with it—diseases ;d together foreign to cattle. We confess to frying a far greater fear of the virus becoming deteriorated by perpetuation through human agency than through the cow. Ihe .symptoms *ftro' nM those usuallv accompanying the YaTO,ll ‘ : ease, and no' general contusion can rationally be arrived at tVo.nV such sensational paragraphs. Whatever may have been the cause of the disastrous effects detailed by the correspondent of the 7 ekyro#/:,. until medical science • has discovered’' a preventive, equally potent ns vaccination, the'*wql 1-being of Society demands it should bo continued as’'■immeasurably the least oi two evils. Small-pox has more than once reached Melbourne —it may thus easily be imported into Dunedin. Many in the Colonies know litfle of its direful character,. ..we therefore, present our readers with ;V description of its effects from a medical article, in order that they may be le'd willingly to cooperate with the faculty and the State in guarding against its ravages :

Petechiie and an unhealthy exudation from the body often accompany this form of disease. Among the mucous membranes, tlie larynx and trachea suffer much, and children often die of suffocation from this cause. . . . Daring the secondary fever, an intense form of ophthalmia frequently sets in. which rapidly involves all the structures of the eye, and in the course of a few

days destroys its entire organisation. Although it is not common to have both eyes thus°aflected, still a large proportion of the blind at our public institutions owe their misfortune to this disease. Pleurisy, consumption, scrofula, obstinate diarrhoea, and a fetid discharge from the ears, attended wdth more or less deafness, arc the principal diseases liable to result from a severe attack of small-pox. Jhe immediate cause of this disease is *)eeiiliar miasm, or puison, ureiredinio the spsh m. jnnn an iitdindmd lahonm/ under the .same ajj'erfion.