SMALL-POX.

Thames Guardian and Mining Record, Volume I, Issue 249, 26 July 1872, Page 3

SMALL-POX.

The Sydney Morning Herald , in a leading article on this subject, says : —The columns fo notices in reference to the smal-pox, which appeared in the Herald of yesterday, would cause, in many a heart, a thrill of anxiety. The appearance of a disease so virulent in several points at once, within a few days’ distance, are facts not to be lightly passed over. Of all diseases known to man-kind, if wo except some forms of plague which have occasionally prevailed in the East, none is so malignant and destructive as this. It was until the commencement of the eighteenth century the scourge of man, against which there seemed to be no posible protection. In some countries millions of persons perished, and almost in every country an annual visitatiou swept off multitudes in every class of society. The biographies of those times which give the incidents of private life, often mention the removal of princes and nobles by this death, often record the utter defacement of feminine beauty, and describe the prevailing terror against which natural affection found it hard to bear up. Old Pepys, under the date IGOO, records in his diary that the Duke of Gloucester was seized on the sth of the month aud died on tiie 12th; and insinuates that it was through the neglect of the doctors. A perilous relief was proposed to England by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, the correspondent of Pope. She had attempted to arrest the malignant form of smallpox by inoculation ; that is, by the injection of its milder lymph into the arm—a practice which continued to the present century. A gentleman in this office bears the mark of inoculation. This treatment greatly abated the virulence of the disease, and was almost an infallible protection against its recurrence. A few cases are, indeed, on record when smallpox has been taken naturally after inoculation. The discovery l ->y Jenner or vaccination is though by many to have been the greatest event of the last century, since it has saved more lives than war has destroyed. It is Wonderful that ages should have passed before a fact which struck Jenner led to the discovery. He observed that the virus taken by the dairymaids from the cow when milking almost invariably protected them from the smallpox, and reasoning from this fact, lie concluded that the same remedy, artificially applied, might protect from the deadly alternative.

It was long, however, before the English mind received the remedy with perfect confidence; and even now there are some who allege that vaccination destroys more then it saves. There is no great weight in the objection that it is not an absolute preventive. It was stated in a publication of the Poor Law Commissloners that Sir Henry Halford, President of the College of Physicians, said that the failure was from defective vaccination, and that wherever it was properly applied no single instance of inefficiency was known. The number of persons who died from small-pox was reckoned at 12,000 a year iu 1808 ; in 1840, the number who

died in London was 360, as against 4000 in the same district, in Borne previous years. A select committee of tho Houso of Commons gave a report on the subject of vaccination in 1808. Is slated that formerly the deaths were as one in ten of tho persons infected but not vaccinated, but that they had become less than fivo in a hundred of persons infected who had been vaccinated. The number of persons vacciuated who become infected with small-pox was as lin 2000. From this statement it would appear that ineffectual vaccination did not remove the danger of small-pox, and that at the same time out of 2000 persons vaccinated not above one afterwards received the disease. Among the causes of death has been the treatment of the disease, which has undergone a complete revolution. The shutting-up the patient in a .close and

pestiferous apartment was not only injurious to himself, but gave fatal power to the contagion, although it is said by the reports now before us, that in similar circumstances tho small-pox is as virulent as ever, and equally fatal to life. The statements of mischief from vaccination by transferring disease from one subject to another have been strongly asserted by some medical men, but tho lymph applied b} T Dr Jenncris said to have passed through 80,000 persons. If it possessed any power to diffuse disease, it has therefore had a frightful opportunity. It is not, however, the possibility of mischief, against which a careful practitioner may be on his guard, that can deprive mankind of a remedy, tho efficacy of which is now demonstrated from long experience of the world. The Legislature early in the present century enacted a law prohibiting inoculation, and at about the same time it made provision to pay fees to doctors, amounting to Is 9d per head, for every child vaccinated. Under the

prohibitory law, persons who inoculated for the small-pox might be imprisoned for often the practice introduced the rihle disease into neighborhoods where was before then unknown. Vaccination has tho great merit that does not extend by contagion. It fectly dear that vaccination must < (he constitution during its progress, therefore requires reasonable care, or, simultaneously with it, fatal disease may be prodin'ed. One of the most public spirited men in England, wdl-known in the religious world, Sir Cullen Haridley Smith, was vaccinated at the same, time as his tenants and neighbors, Uiat he might encourage them by his example,, and lost his life in that war from which there is no discharge. The history of the small-pox coni inuullv reminds the public that its virulence is nartly dependent upon general sanitary laws, and often their neglect is followed ay terrible retribution.