The Express.
London, England, 1860-07-19 00:00:00

12.111XXIA.

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LONDON, THURSDAY, JULY 19.

No one who pays the slightest attention to
Health Statistics can doubt that they are meet
ireful in teaching us the extent and conditions of
preventible diseases. When these increase, it is
Use duty of the enlightened portion of society
to do the best it can to diminish the mortality.
This subject has been moat forcibly recommended

to public attention by a very well written and popular
inquiry into the causes of the recent increase of
small-pox, and the means for its prevention, by
Dr. A Liman COLLISMON.

Of all diseases it fortunately happens that
smallpox, whatever we can say as to its cure, is
certainly the most amenable of all to prevention.
Of the many scourges that have visited the
human race it is one of the most fatal. When
taken in an ordinary manner, that is, when a
person not previously armed to resist it, either by
a former attack of the disease or by vaccination, is
infected by it, it destroys more than a quarter of
its victims, and blinds or maims for life more than
another quarter. No climate affords any stay to
its ravages. It is as fatal in the torrid as the
frown zone. Civilised and savage life are equally
exposed, the latter perhaps more fatally. Before
the immortal discovery of Jmixa mitigated its
direful effects the great mathematician BCION,UI it'
calculated that small pox deprived of life not less
than fifteen millions of human beings every
twenty-five years.

Fortunately for mankind this disease may be
more readily warded off than any other. When
once it has Tilted the human frame it very rarely
mots it again. When it is introduced into the
system artificially, by its virus being applied to a
scratched or abraded surface, it is generally milder
and lees fatal than if taken by exposure to an
infected atmosphere. Hence early in the history
of the dimes we find the physicians of different
soantries having recourse to the method
of eesreftie9 or isoestat ire) healthy persons
with the disease, to ensure their having it
in a milder form. Now, though this method is
favourable to the recovery of the inoculated, it
Mares the public at tarp in greater danger. Each
Maculated person is as much a centre and focus
of infection as the person who takes the disease in
sa ordinary way. Though inoculation may
save a sea's own life, it doss so at the risk of
bis neighbour's. Dr. J cam amens, that
whereas of those who take the disease naturally
one in every five or Gil dies, not one in fifty dies of
those who have been inoculated. Yet inoculation is
an artificial means of making smallpox an epi-
demic where it would not otherwise perhaps be
prupagated. The practice of inoculation, therefore,
on the whole, increased rather than diminished the
mortality- from small-pox. Mr. Moose Mates,
that at the beginning of the eighteenth century,
when inoculation was not much if at all used in
this country, about one-fourteenth part of the
population died of small-pox. During the
latter portion of the century, when in-
oculation was extensively practised, the
proportion of deaths decreased to one-tenth.
If no other means of mitigating the ravages and
fatality of small-pox than that of inoculation had
been discovered we should on the whole have had
little cause to be grateful to the healing art. The
destruction of human life, immense as it was from
the disease itself, was not the only evil. Most of
its victims who escaped with their lives were pitted
and disfigured. Many lost one or both eyes..
Not a few became early victims to scrofula and
other diseases excited into activity by this fell
scourge. J devoted a life of active and
careful observation to the discovery of a check for
small-pox, and found a means of guarding against
and warding off its attacks unknown for any other
disease. He discovered that there was a kind of
pustular disease to which cows in certain
dairies were subject. This disease was frequently
coin ' ted to the hands of the farm servants
who milked the infected cows. It was a popular ,
svpulion in the dairy counties that persons who
had once suffered from this cow - pox
were as safe from infection ea if they
had hail the smallpox itself. He put this to the
test, by inoculating those who had had the cow-
pox. lie found that in every case he tried, neither
by inoculation nor by any other method of in-
fection could he communicate the small-pox to
those who fuel taken cow-pox from the cow.
Instead of inoculating them with virus taken from
a small-pee patient, he took matter from the cow.
He found the milder disease could thus be propa-
gated artificially. Moreover, be discovered that
this cow-pox once reduced in the human being
could be transmitted from one to another. After
being transmitted thus artificially from one person
to mother for many persons in succession, he
found all alike unsuscepuble afterwards to thu in-
fection of the small-pox. The great advantage of
vaccination over inoculation Collelidll in this, that
the cow-pox. unlike small-pox, can only be propa-
esied by actual contact. The contents of a pustule
of eow•pns mist be actually applied to the abraded

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'or scratched skin of a hue er smug flydario
produce infection.
Hence vaccination properly performed...find is,
by the inoculation of real cow-pox taken from
• healthy individual, is as sure a preservative to
the person who takes the cow pox as if he had
passed through the small-pox. Vaccination has
this advantage over inoculatioo, that it preserves
life by the propagation of a far milder disease than
the mildest small pox, • disease never fatal,
confined generally to the number of pustules arti-
ficially produced, incapable of propagation by ordi-
nary means of infection, and when properly pro-
duced as sure a preservative as if the more serious
disease had been pealed through. Vaccination
does not absolutely secure a person who has the
cow-pox from small-pox, any more than small-pox
itself absolutely insures its victim from a recur-
rence of the disease, but perhaps it would not be
going too far to say that ordinarily not one person
in • thousand who has really had the cow-pox
ever takes the small-pox. Those who do, have
the disease so mildly that it has been
calculated from well-kept returns that not
one out of 450 who take small-pox after suc-
cessful vaccination dies. When the small-pox
raged at Marseilles in a very virulent epidemic
form in 1828, there was an estimated population
of 40,000 persons not above thirty years of age.
Out of 200 protected by previous small-pox twenty
took the disease and four died. Thirty thousand
had been vaccinated-2,000 of these were affected
by small-pox and twenty died ; while out of 8,000
Altogether unprotected by previous small-pox or
vaccination 4,000 took the disease, and no less
than 1,000 of them died.
If we could doubt the general efficacy of vacci-
nation rigidly carried out, Ds Casco and Sacco
report that in 1812 Vienna had been free from
small-pox for five years and Milan for eight. Sweden
and Denmark so effectually enforced vaccination that
for twenty years both countries were free from
small-pox. Had other countries as successfully
enforced vaccination as Sweden and Denmark,
the conviction of Jamie', that he had dis-
covered, "in the mild form of cow-pox, an anti-
" dote that is capable of extirpating from the
" earth • disease which is every hour devouring
" its victims, a disease that has ever been con-
" aidered the severest scourge of the human race,"
would have been demonstrated years ago.

t

Well-kept Health-Statistics show how remiss
the country of JiNSUI'S birth has been in using
the boon he gave it. Our deaths from
small-pox have nearly trebled in three years.
They have risen from 2,277 for England and
Wales in 1856 to 6,460 in 1868. The mischief
still spreads. The Registrar-General gives 240
deaths from small-pox in the metropolis for the
last, the Midsummer, quarter of this year, against
27 deaths in the corresponding quarter of 1857,
and 34 in that of 1868. In 1859 it was 233. Hence
during the last two years there has been a fright-
ful increase above the mortality of 1858, in which
year more than a sixtieth part of the deaths from
all diseases in England and Wales was caused by
small-pox.
More than half the deaths from this disease
occur among children under five years of age.
It has only been within the last seven years
that vaccination by a legally qualified proc•
ntioner of medicine of all children has been
made compulsory by law. Yet as the 16th and
17th Viet., c. 100, only compels the registrar of
births to give notice to the parents at the end of
eight days from its birth that the child must be
vaccinated, while the parents are allowed three
months in which to vaccinate, and neither the
registrar nor any other authority is required to
see that vaccination is really enforced, the act, with
its penalty of 20s. for each omission, becomes a
dead letter. Vaccination can only be successfully
performed by skilled and well-educated persons.
Means are now taken to secure schools for vacci-
nation, as well as a supply of proper matter, in all
the principal towns in England. For the future,
by an order of the Privy Council made this year,
upon the urgent and valuable reports of Mr. SIMON,
no person is to be employed as a public vaccinator
who cannot show that he is properly qualified
for his office.

In the absence of further means of preven-
tion we would impress upon our readers in
general that every one should influence his
neighbours to the utmost of his ability to do
what they can, by recommending and enforcing
vaccination, to save human life. Dr. Silcox
and Dr. COLLLNSON bring another subject forcibly
before the medical profession and the legislative
authorities. Cow-pox has been proved experi-
mentally to be small-pox modified by transmission
through the cow. Wherever small-pox prevails
and cows are found, cow-pox can be generated.
As small-pox loses its virulence bypassing through
the cow, may not cow-pox be deprived of some of
its preservative powers by transmission through
thousands of human beings I Cow-pox is only
effectual when taken at the proper time from proper
subjects. It is admitted by all authorities that
during the last 20 or 30 years thousands
have been ineffectually vaccinated. Granting,
under favourable circumstances, that cow-pox
virus passed in succession through human
beings since the time of JECIZR may be
as effectual now as it was then, would it not be
sound policy to arm our properly qualified vacci-
nators with virus taken at once from the cow ?
Those who have used matter thus procured have
observed that the cow-pox so produced is far
more like that figured by JZNNZE in his immortal
work than that produced by ordinary matter. At
any rate, our death-books teach us that either
with or without legislative help every well-wisher
for his fellows is bound to do his utmost to
destroy the plague of small-pox by enforcing vac-
cination.

LORD MAYOR CARTER u &host too large-hearted
to compute nicely how much the guests he invites
will return in " drawing " power, otherwise
be certainly would have to regret the un-
profitableness of his entertainment last evening.
The dinner at the Mansion-house to Ministers is
generally looked forward to as a political event.
It may be unreasonable to expect a Premier who,
as the Loan MAYOR informs us, freluently
spends sixteen out of the twenty-four hours
in the House of Commons, to make striking
disclosures in addition at the Mansion-house
dinner-table : nevertheless the public has at times
been gratified to gather, on occasions like the pre-
sent, views of affairs, and indications of policy,
broader and more comprehensive than any that
can find a place among the hurried business of •
dying session. The characteristic of the speeches
last night was • masterly discretion—a quality by
no means to be undervalueci in these times, but
one which may nevertheless be carried too far.
Perhaps her Mairirea Ministers retvernbered the
excessive candour of Tuesday night's debate;
perhaps they feared that conflict of Conservative
principles and Liberal opinions which Mr. CLAY
recalled to their recollection ; perhaps they thought
that the least said is soonest mended ; at any
rate they carried reticence to its utmost limit.
Lord PAutzwurrox praised the Volunteers in •

S~PRlWitEller
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epee& which, being truly • British; wai- not
out of place at the Mansion-house because
it 'could not have been Out of piece any-
where; and Lord JOHN Rumen. reminded
his hearers of the fidelity of the Corporation
of London to the principles of civil and religious
liberty. But of present practical interests, Cl
the things which at home or abroad excite men's
apprehensions, hopes, or regrets, the two noble
lords said not a word. Their silence was no doubt
necessary, and we do not complain. We note the
difference as a sign of the times.