The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1900-03-14
PHOPHYLACTIC.

People will watch the results of the
incubation of Dr. Wood with the pro-
phylactic with great interest. He stat
ed yesterday that he felt like a patient |
in the first stages of the plague. That |
is probably the first feeling that any
one has under the circumstances, the
practical working of the injection is
the giving of plague to healthy per-
son, letting it run it's course in a light
form, and then the patient is immune
from the disease.
This was, after all, the policy of the
Turks, which Lady Mary Wortley Mon
tague introduced into England in 1921
with regard to smallpox. 1t is doubt
full whether the modern physicians give
that lady and the Turks the credit they
deserve for being forerunners of mod
ern science. We all go back to particu-
lar discoveries within recent years, but
after all, they are but the elaboration
of the principle laid down several CEN
turtles ago. Only the people of that time
did not know what great thing had
been brought to them, and the people
of modern times get puffed up with
their own conceit and say, How great
are we; we have made a discovery"
The essence of the principle is old, the
only thing is that it is worked more
| thoroughly than before.
The difference between direct inocu-
lation of smallpox and vaccine inocu-
lation is after all only one of degree.
! 1t means the introduction into the sys-
tenn of a disease analogous to smallpox
which makes the human frame immune
to the disease Curiously enough, both
the direct incubation of Lady Wortley
! Montague and the indirect incubation
of DR.. Jenner, which we call vaccina-
ton, came under the ban of the church.
The inherent right of people to lie of
disease was a matter which the various
churches felt was a serious affair which
ought to be preached against, and the
pulpits duly Numbered.
Strangely the thunderers are dust,
and the pulpits from which they
/ preached have been made into kindling
wood long ago. Other generations nave
lived and passed away, but the seed
sown by Lady Mary and Jenner, and
before them by the Arab physicians,
and even long before them by the Latin
with his similia similibus curantur,"
has borne it's fruit in the theories of
Pasteur and Koch. and we no longer
allow our bishops and clergymen, and
parsons, readers and Christian workers,
to deride the works of science and the
| WI he Il
and made fit to carry on the battle Of
life.
Looking back from today, where Dr.
Wood has made an experiment in the
full faith of science which he knows
bar conditions which neither he nor
anyone else could forsee, is as accurate
as the revolutions of the heavens-look-
ing back, one may say to the past when
there was no such confidence, when the
president of the Board of Health would
have been regarded as a fanatic and
a madman-for to take your own medi-
cine in the past was such an act-Dr
Woods act is a brave one, and more
than anything, is a proper one. The
doctor has set the example of using
a preventive from plague. He has not
ordered or recommended any one to
undergo the process before he has tried
it himself. Seeing is believing, but the
example that DR.. Wood has put before
our eyes is an excellent one.
But it is curious that exactly the
Psame line of action had to be taken
one hundred ired and fofty years ago, TO
prove a very, Similar Or at least, an
81 allied theory. Verify, s@istory repeats
itself, and it is always happy in finding
those who viii repeat it in its noblest
and highest works.