Morning journal and courier., 1882-03-20
SournaI aub Courier.
Monday Morning. March 20. 1882.
MORE ABOUT VACCINATION.

In the current number of the N0Tth Ame'- tcan Reoiea0 Dr. Henry Austin Martin, of Boston, ''goes for" the anti vaccinationists very vigorously. His qualifications for dis cussing his subject are excellent. During his entire professional life, period of about forty years, he has paid special attention to the study of vaccination, and has had both in civil and military life; great and continued opportunity to pursue the study. In the army he had, as surgeon in charge of hos pitals and medical director, extraordinary facilities for the observation of the protective effect of vaccination in large bodies of troops, and in three large towns, and rapidly accom- plished in each of the latter the stamping out" of an epidemic which had ragged with increasing extent and mortality for over a year. He had almost continuously under his direction large, sometimes very large, numbers of cases of smallpox. In civil life he has devoted quite exceptional attention to the practice of vaccination, having in one year made nearly eleven thousand vaccina- tions. For nearly twenty-five years, in the total absence of State or governmental pro- vision to that end, he has made a speciality of propagating and issuing to the profession the best attainable vaccine virus. In pursuance ot this enterprise, about twelve years since, he introduced into America the method of true animal vaccination, and for nearly nine years he has practiced that nethoo e1clu7Se- iy. This speciality necessitated vast mum Der of vaccinations of infants, and daily, hourlv otf 1nrinr tbeir whole course. It also placed him in direct correspondence with probably not far from half the medical profession of this country :; certainly, he says, during the entire period, an aggregate of twenty-five thousand physi clans of all schools in America and else where.
 As result of all this exceptional oppof- tunity to form a deliberate and accurate opinion of vaccination he writes ''I wish to say, with as much solemn earnestness as if it were my last earthly utterance, that have never known among those whom 1 have vac cinated single case of smallpox in any form or modification, except certain limited number into whose systems the germ of the disease had entered before the time of vac- cination, making itself evident within four teen days after the operation. I have never seen or suspected in my own practice one such case as Mir. Bergh asserts to exist by millions. have never had a patient die in any way that could be, directly CT indirectly, ascribed to vaccination. I have never had the slightest reason to even suspect, in sin gle instance, that vaccination had in any way impaired or deteriorated human vitality, but have seen several cases in which, besides pre- venting smallpox, it was the means of carry ing of certain trivial ailments, and of very decidedly improving the general health of the patient. I am very sure that my expe- rience is precisely similar to that of almost every physician who has given to vaccination the Bolicitous care that it merits and de- mands, and has omitted no part of his duty as a vaccinator."
 Dr. Martin admits that although he has never seen a case of vaccinal syphilis, he is convinced from his reading that such cases have occurred. He has seen in his own practice many of vaccinal erygpelas, but all recovered, and not single case has complicated or followed one of the great number of vaccinations which he has made with true animal virus. With his great ex- perience he thinks it strange that he has seen so little of the horrors of vaccination, while Mir. Bergh has seen so much.