The Sun.
London, England, 1869-10-05 00:00:00

HEALTH AND VACCINATION.

Dr. Symonds, in his address as President of the Health
Department, dwelt at some length upon the necessity for
efficient machinery and a greater number of workers, if
hygienic improvements were to be carried out to any ade-
quate extent. The men employed must be men accom-
plished in the sciences belonging to the department over
which he presided, and also men who had received a
thoroughly practical training. " They must be above the
control, and independent of the appointment of local
boards, for there must be neither favour nor fear
in their relations with local authorities and with
local possessors of property. If they are thought to
strain their power, and to encroach too much on public
finances, that is on local rates and taxes, let
them be amenable to censure and restraint from the hands
of the national administration. It is extremely difficult
for locally appointed inspectors and local boards to do
their duty when they have to deal with the dwellings
of the poor. They come into conflict with individual
interests, often with the interests of persons powerfully
influential in the locality. But there are a vast number
of subjects that would fall under the care and control of
such state officers, who would have no other duties to
perform than those which belong to their special
office." The President, after glancing at the representa-
tions that had been made to her Majesty's Government by
the joint committee of the Social Science Associatiouond
the British Medical Association for the appointment of a
royal commission to inquire into the operation of the laws
belonging to State medicine, which had been so far success-
ful that the commission had been appointed, though its
operations were limited to the provinces of England, con-
tinued thus : "It cannot be said that the public does not
altogether need to be instructed or roused to a sense of its
wants and its dangers, when we read in some of the

journals that it is highly doubtful whether vac-
cination should be compulsory, and that vaccination is
little better than a fancy or theory of the medical profes-
sion. It would seem that a semi-panic has been excited
by a report that cases have occurred in which there
was reason for suspecting that the virus of disgusting and
deteriorating disease had been diffused by vaccination.
Even were it admitted that a constitutional fault, inherited
from vicious parentage, can be communicated through the
vaccine lymph, still all that we have to be anxious about is
the selection of proper sources of the lymph. We do not
leave off eating bread because bread is sometimes adulte-
rated. And as to the infraction of the liberty of the subject
by compulsory vaccination, it must be borne in mind that our
object in forcing vaccination upon parents is not so much that
their offspring should be preserved from smallpox as that
their children may not become the contaminators of their
neighbours, and perhaps of the whole community. I have
just read a report of a quite recent discussion in the French
Academy of Medicine of this fear of contamination from
cowpox, ; and I am glad to say that the result was enormously
preponderant against the alarmists. And so I trust that
compulsory vaccination will not give an inch to this foolish
and petulant opposition." At its close the address of the
President noted that much confusion and darkness pre-
vailed in the work which the Department of Health under-
took ; but there was no reason to doubt that in all honest
scientific inquiries and strenuous endeavours to act the
great forces of nature, would be brought to act on the side
of human wants, and that the seeming hostilities would
be limited and subdued by human will. "As regards
health, men as they become better instructed
in the composition, and physics, and chemistry
of their bodies, and in the relation of corporeal processes to
the powers of nature, will take more heed to all that comes
under hygienic culture, and they will learn far more than
we in this age can know; for our inquiries, as I have just
remarked, are only on the threshold. It requires strong
faith, however, in the ultimate triumph of good if we ven-
ture to hope that the causes of hereditary diseases will de-
cline and die out, that new triodes of living, and new political
and social developments will eventuate in the growth of
stronger and higher human types, which types will become
dominant, and either transmit robuster and sounder frames
and more powerful faculties, or at least become the
objects of that passive imitation, which has been believed
even in historic times, to have insensibly moulded nations
into finer forms, with grander aims and larger capacities.
One of the strangest and saddest of the necessities of our
present degree of civilisationwill,long before such a state of
thisigs have fallen into desuetude • for we must call it a
necessity in the present state of the world, with its present
ways and opinions and practices : I mean that which fills
the columns of newspapers with experiments on explosive
compounds, that have no other object than the destruc-
tion or mutilation of that which this Association takes
under its special thought and care. That there should
have been coeval with this society such institutions, for
example, as the Ordnance and the Admiralty, will seem in
other ages an unintelligible anomaly. Nearly two thousand
years ago it was said si foret in terris rideret Democritus,
but how inextinguishable would be the laughter of
that resuscitated sage if, after we had commandad his
reverent and admiring attention to an exposition of the
religion of the Sermon on the Mount, and after we had
assured him that this religion had been publicly professed
in these realms for more than a thousand years, we should
then take him on one of our grand days to Shoeburyness !
Let us hope that the removal of this woe and disgrace of
nationalities may pass away even faster than can grow the
developments of our race, and the abatements of the evils
which press us down, and call for the efforts of this present
society." Many ages, doubtless, must elapse before such
changes were developed. " But," added the president," it is
in the nature of civilisation, unless checked by cataclysmal
events, to advance in geometric ratio. And at
all events we cannot suppose that our earth will
have lost her heat or our sun have ceased to burn,
before man has experienced and enjoyed the perfect evo-
lution of all those capabilities and faculties with which his
Maker has endowed him ; before all that is now only
potential and latent has come out into form and action.
Towards such a consummation the work of this society is
tending. Its success may be but small, and that glorious
end may be never reached ; but we may take heart and
comfort from the knowledge that its immediate operations
are helping to increase the amount of happiness and moral
good in the world, and to take away some of its evil and its
suffering. And so aiming, and so working,we may devoutly
say—God speed it."
Dr. Symonds's address was listened to with great in-
terest, and a cordial vote of thanks was passed, on the
motion of Sir Edward Strachey, who presided in the
absence of Sir Stafford Northeoto'
THE CONTAGIOUS DISEASES ACT.
Mr W. P. Swain, MJT.C.S., of Devonporb, read a paper on
the working of the Contagious Diseases Act in that town.
He thought thn Act of last Ei east oTi bore on the face of it
hasty legislation. Section 3 provided that if any woman
who comes for examination was in such a condition that
the surgeon could not propeflY examine her, and if he sus-
pected her of having a contagious diseaa, the W"1" -Was
1141310 to be detained in a certified hospital for five days,
until the surgeon could make his inspection. This Mr.
Swain objects to, thinking that by this clause a woman is
liable to be deprived of her liberty on police information.
As for dealing with drunken women, the provision only
met half the evil. 'When coming up for esattaination they
drink not sufficient to make them intoxicated ; but when
found diseased they are sent to the hospital—without
escort—and get drunk on the way. This difficulty could
be obviated by the police seeing all women to the hospital,
and they ought to be delivered in a sober condition at that
institution. On the Ist December, 1363, the Lock ward of
the Albert Hospital, Devonport, was opened with 25 beds.
in 1865 they were increased to 38, in 1866 to 62, and in
1868 to 162. Upwards of 3,500 cases have been treated up
to the present time ; and one of the most important facts is
that the percentage of syphilis cases has steadily diminished,
Thus from December 3, 1863, to March 31, 1865, the per-
centage was 57'45 of the cases admitted, whilst from
October 1,1868, to March 31,1§69, the percentage wag only