The Sun.
London, England, 1851-10-04 00:00:00

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LONDON, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1851.

The inhabitants of the good city of Aberdeen may
well exult in the proud position which they have
assumed, and which they now worthily occupy, in
the public estimation. An admission to the freedom
of their ancient city, a participation in the rights and
privileges appertaining to every citizen, is now re-
garded
as an honour that will confer additional
lustre on any man,
however exalted his rank, which
the most distinguished statesman may regard as a grace-
ful recognition of the services which he has rendered to
his grateful country, and not the least of the rewards
that may be accorded to his past exertions. The
municipality have achieved this distinction by the
judicious selections which they have made. They
have honoured none to whom honour was not justly
due. They have indeed been remarkably chary of
their favours. Were it otherwise—were the powers
confided to their charge resorted to with less discri-
mination—the compliment would lose the greater por-
tion of its value and be no longer regarded as so high
a privilege. It is the difficulty of attainment that
enhances the value in which it is held.

On Wednesday a gay festival was held in the
Town,hall of Aberdeen, in honour of the newly-
elected and youngest burgess of Bon Accord—Sir
JAMES GRAHAM. The banquet was of the most re-
cherche character. The company comprised not only
the aristocracy of the district, but what was far better,
the leading members of the industrious classes—the
merchants, bankers, shipowners, landowners, and
farmers of the vicinity. Though all rejoiced in the
important accession to their numbers which had just
been made in the person of the Right Hon. Baronet,
there was yet an expression of regret perceptible, a
painful feeling arising from the recollection of the
last meeting, when the freemen of Aberdeen had as-
sembled to do honour to their then " youngest bur-
gess," when Sir ROBERT PEEL had given expression
to his memorable vindication of his former policy and
to his future views.

This was, however, a subject on which the guest of
the day could fully simpathise—in which he, the
faithful friend, the powerful coadjutor of the deceased
statesman, could participate in the general feeling,
There could not indeed be found a more unexception-
able witness to the virtues of the man, than the Right
Honourable Baronet, of whom he beautifully and
truly remarked that " the blessings of millions
awaits the mention of his name, inasmuch as he was
one of the greatest of Ministers and among the best
of men." It did not, however, take away from the
interest of the meeting that a shade of gloom was dis-
coverable among the audience. Had it been other-
wise it would not have been so acceptable to the chief
guest of the day.

We shall not now allude to the personal compli-
ments which the Right Hon. Baronet so lavishly
distributed in the beginning of his speech. Such
things are always expected ; but, although they may
possess local, they cannot carry with them any ge-
neral interest. But it is very different indeed when
he gives expression to his impressions during his
northern visit, pointing out the relationship existing
between commerce and agriculture, and the
mutual advantages which each may bestow upon the
other. On this point we cannot do better than quote
the very words of the Right Honourable Gentle-
man :—" I am old enough to remember when I
resided on the border, seeing Aberdeenshire and other
cattle, lean and in bad condition, passing to the south
to be put on better pasture, to prepare them for the
London market. How different is the case now ! I
paid a visit the day before yesterday to a tenant-
fanner, and there I saw 100 cattle tied up and feed-
ing for the London market. And feeding on what ?
On oilcake from Russia, and turnips raised by guano
from Peru. Commerce and agriculture are thus
going hand in hand together. Well, these cattle, which
even in my memory were as I described them, are
now improved here by the best breeds, until they
have become the very prime stock in our London
market, and compete with the finest cattle in the
world. But recently a tenant-farmer from Aber-
deenshire competed at Smithfield with all England,
and carried off more than one of the prises. Looking
still at the mutual relation of agriculture and com-
merce, steam had, as it were, brought into subjection
sea and land, and where had these been more apparent
than here ? lam told that the supply to the London
market hence entirely depended, not long ago, on
steam navigation. Now there is a land competition,
with the usual effect of reducing the price of con-
veyance to London, and thereby the profit is in-
creased to the nearer of the stock, and the cost is
also diminished to the consumer. Prices being
reduced on the other side of the Tweed, is that
advantageous to Aberdeen ? I had the pleasure of
getting a hasty look at your beautiful harbour
this morning, when I saw some of the finest ships in
course of being constructed, and I was told that one
builder had orders for as many as he could execute in
two years; and as regards the construction of those
vessels, you are ahead of all others, for my friend the
Gallant Admiral GORDON has seen the English yachts
beaten by the Americans, and I am told that the bow
of their celebrated yacht is extremely like that of the
Aberdeen build ; and, if there be a hint to be taken,
I am sure my fellow•citizens will improve upon it,
and make the Aberdeen build yet more worthy of
your enterprise and intelligence, and that your ships
may continue in time to come, as they have in time
past, to carry our commerce to the most distant port
that is washed by the furthest sea."
These are hints that may well be considered beyond
the limits of the locality in which they were delivered.
'l'hey should be carefully pondered over by agricul-
turists and shipowners ; by all, in fact, who have any
dread of encountering
which Englishmen
sboutidhebegethneerlaalstcompetition from
which English shoUld be the last to shrink. The
mutual connexion of the
ffhaedo irffdesrethnt interests was seldom
better illustrated. I
the fable of " the bundle of sticks," commentary commentary on
standing the quaint and homely
raetnl
mannerlest w hi c hi
n, nwoht iht hi -t
is couched, conveys one of theb
that can be taught—" Union is
strength ica lessons
and in
place of each member of the community
enlPtin
to deprive his brother of the " scanty coverig
LocKE) provided by the father of the family,"nitg,aLuidlde
be the object to increase it to such an extent that eachu
might have amply sufficient. None can give better
instruction how this great desideratum may be
achieved than the distinguished author of " Corn
and Currency ;" and if Sir JAMES GRALIAM
should now direct his thoughts to the subject, and
bring his great experience and unquestionable talents

to the solution of the difficulties by which it is en-
compassed, we have no doubt that the Lord of
Netberby may accomplish that which we had fondly
hoped would have been the crowning achievement of
/113 great associate, a suitable companion to the legis-
lative recognition of the glorious doctrines of free
trade.

It is now somewhat more than half a century since
Dr. JENive T 1 propounded to an admiring and grateful
world the wonderful discovery of the prophylactic
powers of vaccination, a discovery second in import-
ance to none ever propounded, a discovery which
has added to the comfort, the health, the numbers, and
the comeliness of the human race ; and has perhaps
done more to impart higher ideas of the standard of
beauty among the masses than have all the picture

galleries or sculpture galleries ever opened to the
public. Half a century back small-pox was the
scourge of the human race, the plague of temperate
climates. We were alarmed, and justly alarmed, two
years since, at the fearful increase in tho number of
deaths in this country, occasioned by the visitation of
the cholera; but the deaths from cholera, even when

it was raging must fearfully, were as nothing compared
with the annual aggregate of deaths from small-pox
during any one year of the eighteenth century. The
annual aggregate of deaths from small-pox during
the ;last quarter of a century has not amounted in
any one year to a quarter per cent. of the population.
But it was not in its lethal effects alone that small-
pox was felt to be the scourge of the human race ; a
large per-tentage of the population who recovered
from the loathsome disease were permanently dis-
figured ; so common in those days was it to behold
persons seared and scarred from the effects of small-
pox, that the possession of an unmarked and smooth
skin was considered as alone sufficient, to constitute
beauty, whilst many were permanently deprived of
sight, and a still greater number had their
sight permanently weakened from the effects of
this horrible disease. In many instances, too,
the seeds of scrofula, which but for the bouleverse-
ment of the constitution by the small-pox, might have
lain dormant, were roused into malignant action, and
the unhappy sufferer only recovered from the small-
pox to die by the more lingering and more torturing
action of a disease as surely fatal as small-pox itself.
It might have been imagined that the brilliant results
of the experiment of vaccination, an experiment which
has been performed for the last half-century in every
quarter of the globe, and everywhere with a greater
degree of success than has attended any ether expe-
riment, would have been sufficient to have silenced
detractors, and that the man who in this year of our
LORD, 1851, should deny the efficiency of vaccination,
would be classed in the same category with him who
should deny the efficiency of steam power. It is very
true, that in certain instances, steam-engines have
burst ; but, surely, no one will therefore contend that
steam power is uncontrollable ; it is equally true, that
in about an equal proportion of cases vaccination has
failed to guard those who have been subjected to its
influence from the subsequent infection of the small-
pox, but inasmuch, as in many of those instances, the
persons so affected by small-pox after vaccination,
have, after recovering from the first attack of
small-pox, taken the disease again and again,
we are inclined to consider these cases rather
as anomalous instances of a peculiar idyosyncrasy
than as cases on which to rest an argu-
ment against the general efficacy of vaccination.
It was, therefore, with feelings of surprise that we
learned that amongst the Members of the Royal
Medical and Chirurgical Society of London a ques-
tion had recently been raised on the value of vaccina-
tion, that its efficacy had been subjected to suspicion,
and that the society, without venturing openly to
attack vaccination, bad acted in such a manner as to
encourage others to doubt as to its efficiency. As has
been well observed by Dr. BENJAMIN RIDGE, in the
dedication of his admirable pamphlet* on vaccination
to the President and Fellows of the Royal Medical
and Chirurgical Society
"To you the profession will naturally look for the
enunciation of some definite principles in relation to the
subject; while the public at largo may expect to receive
at your hands something like an authoritative decision,
giving them an assurance that agreement upo❑ a matter
which increases daily and hourly in importance is not
altogether impossible.

"-The expe.rience of more than half a century should,
it might have been thought, have afforded a sufficient
test of the merits of a practice which is in operation
every day and everywhere; and it appears to mo that
nothing short of the production of certain new, impor-
tant, self-evident, and incontrovertible facts bearing upon
the subject of vaccination, will be held to justify your
society in countenancing a suspicion of its efficiency."
To this appeal the society has as yet vouchsafed no
answer:; they have chosen the safer plan of acquiring
a reputation for wisdom merely by keeping silence.
That investigation, which they have neglected
to undertake, has been, however, undertaken and
admirably conducted by Dr. RIDGE, and the re-
sults are contained in the very valuable pamphlet to
which we have above alluded. Of all men living, Dr.
RIDGE is, perhaps, the man of all others the best
qualified to conduct such an inquiry. For many
years past he has made the physiology and pathology
of the infant state the objects of his peculiar study,
and by his discovery (announced to the world in
1844) of the existence in infants at their birth of two
membranes theretofore unknown to anatomists,
which membranes gradually disappear during the
first year of existence, he put himself in possession of
the elements for the satisfactory solution of this most
important problem relating to vaccination. He found
that infants during the existence of these membranes
are more able to throw off or avoid diseases of a cha-
racter like small-pox, and he argues most logically
that, " if infants have this innate power of counteract-
ing natural diseases, they have equally the power of
throwing off that which is thrust upon them, or
whatever they are inoculated with ;" and he adds,
"I do not think that there is as much dependence to
be placed in the preventive action of vaccination, if
performed within the first three months, as when it is
done after that time. If it is now a wonder that
small-pox is taken after vaccination (when performed
according to JENNEE'S rules), it may hereafter be
shown to be no wonder at all. Experience has led me
to think that vaccination should not be performed on
an infant under three months old ; or, if it must be
done previous to this time for the parent's satisfaction,
that it should be done again within the year for the
child's safety."
Dr. RIDGE commenced his researches on this
important subject by carefully studying the original
treatises of Dr. JEICNER in search of information
bearing on the matter. lie gives the following as
the results of that study :

"In reading carefully through Dr. Jenner's first
treatises on his new discovery, that which is most appa-
rent is the spontaneous inoculation of persons in
adult life by actual contact with the disease in the
cow—which persons were found to resist the contagion
of small-pox as well as those artificially inoculated for
that disease. Dr. Jenner then tried the operation upon
adults wherever they would submit to it, as well as on
all young persons under tho adult age, with apparently
the same results. After this he tried it on children;
and all that seems wanting to complete his great dis-
covery is that of the most fitting time for the performance
of the act, so as to insure immunity from small-pox in
after•life."

We will not here enter into a detail of the various
scientific arguments adduced, or experiments insti-
tuted by Dr. RIDGE in the course of his most interest-
ing and valuable researches—scientific arguments are
in general out of place in the columns of a newspaper ;
but as the results at which Dr. RIDGE has arrived,
and the rules which he has laid down, are matters of
practical importance to every man, woman, and
child in the world, we feel it a duty incumbent upon
us to do all in our power to give them publicity. " I
have been making many inquiries," says Dr. RIDGE,
since this subject was mooted at the Royal Medical
and Chirurgical Society, and find that whenever
small-pox has occurred after vaccination, vaccination
had been performed on these subjects under three
months old." He tells us that in his own practice he,
wherever he can, delays vaccination until the infant
shall have attained the age of nine or even of twelve
months, and that where he has from circumstances
been compelled to vaccinate at an earlier period, he
always re-vaccinates after the infant has attained the
age of twelve months. The 'following observations
as to the preservation of the vaccine virus are most
Important :

well
stopperedAc atrog thebeod
t, t
lapreservation
todof r theym,yavni
mind,
scaufleaartemonotdien.uitVirus allowed to dry between two pieces
sn:d inclosedh
teh ivory
fittesta points,s.m and a
of glass is deteriorated or destroyed by crushing mole-
lancet soon decYora;
and oxygenised by
panoscleaLirtuhse
setaererliebdecoomnintghedepcooinmtpoosfeda
the fluid. This is the most unsafe
practice of any, and the dirtiest."
Weoannot cone. lude without recommending to the
attentive study of the members of the
sion this the most valuable medical profes-
on vaccination
work
which has appeared since the days of JENNER. We
have contented ourselves with directing the a
of the public to those portions of it only in wh ttention
all
mankind have an interest, and which all mankind can
understand ; and we urge upon all parents the neces-
sity of insisting that the operation of vaccination on
their children shall be performed at the proper time
and in the proper manner.

"An Inquiry on the subject of Vaccin
ation
dressed to th© Royal Medical and Chirurgical Soci'etay
By Benjamin Ridge, N.D., &e, London;
John Churchill.

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