Wheeling register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1878-1935, 1901-03-08

/, (slave) Of my own, long before I knew
that I'M Europeans o. ASians had the
least acquaintance with it, auc some
years before I was enriched with the
| communication of the learned foreign
ers, whose accounts | found agree
ing with what I received Of my SER
| want, when he showed me the scar o.
| the wound made for the operation;
and said that no person ever died of
the smallpox in their country, that had
the courage to use it. / have since
met with a considerable number of
these Africans, who all agree in one
story: that in their country grandy-
mandy dy Of the smallpox; but now
they learn this way, people take juice
, of smallpox and cutty-skin, and put in
a drop; then by nd by a little sicky.
sticky; then very few little things like
smallpox, and nobody dy of Il; and
nobody have smallpox n more
Thus in Africa, where the poor Great
ures dy of smallpox, like rotten sheep,
a merciful God has taught them an
infallible preventative. tbs a COM
mon practice and attended with a con
slant success.
In the Revolutionary army the raw
ages of smallpox were tremendous. In
! July, 1875, 1000 of our soldiers were
i'll of smallpox at Crown Point, and
John Adams wrote home to his friends
imploring them to tolerate and en-
courage incubation. Many people con-
found his process with vaccination,
which had not then been thought of,
a recent intelligent writer. for in
stance, saying of Jonathan EDWARDS:
HE left the Stockbridge in January,
1858, and he died in the sue
ceeding month of incubation to pre-
vent smallpox, or vaccination"
Enough has been said to show that
a deliverance was wrought by Jenne.'s
great discovery. The average death
rate in England was so great that IL
applied to the present population 1t
would give 10000 a year. III London.
before 1900, there were 2,01S deaths in
a million; in 1890, in a population Of
four millions, there was just enc death.
In 1886 there was not one death in
Massachusetts,, thanks to rigid school
and factory inspection, and in 1899
there were but three cases in the State
Of Connecticut, as no unvaccinated
pupil can enter a schooi.
1t was just at the period of the
American Revolution that Jenner in
EHgland-already a distinguished nat
uralist and physician-had had his at
tention arrested by the remark of a
milkmaid that she could have the
smallpox, as she had had the cowpoX."
1t is one of the most fascinating of the
fairy stories of science, how he perse-
vered against many and great disoour-
agements, till in 1796-twenty-tige
years after the first thought came to
him, Can this virus be inserted Oh
UNFAIRLY in a human subject?'-he was
able triumphantly to answer the ques-
ton by taking lymph from the hand
of a milkmaid, and inserting it by two
missions in the arms of James Phipps,
a healthy boy of eight, and then dem
onstrating its protective power by in
oculating with the virus of smallpox
by several missions. Later scientific
researches have demonstrated that
coWpox is the smallpox in the COW.
but how the virus becomes modified in
the tissues of the COW so as to produce
this harmless protection is one of
natures mysteries; yet the process it
self is the cornerstone of all Pasterr's
work in producing ~"attenuated' vir-
uses, and in his original explanations
to the French Academy he says: II
asked myself, Can | Jennerize this
lymph?"
now as to the prejudice against this
benificent measure. B~acteriology has
given us the key to the circumstances
from which it arose. There are dis
eases, microbian in origin, which, once
planted in the human organism, the
most skillful specialist knows only too
well how powerless he is to eradicate,
and he sees them go down from parent
to child even 10 the third and fourth
generations" There are undoubtedly
seeds of these diseases in some cases
planted in the "crusts," from which
vaccine virus was taken. in the only
way then known-the arm-to-arm vac
cination-and a few melancholy in
stances of great harm developed, which
were at once bounced upon by the fan
atical critics to hang upon the skirts
of every great advance. Among these
was a nobleman of great wealth, who
printed a book filled with colored carl
catures that out-Herod the worst
political cartoons that have disgraced
the most violent compaigns, and it Is
mournful to record hat he still has
successors. Such opponents are capa-
BILE of great mischief, as the recent ex-
perience ait Gloucester in England
| shows. A person by the name Of Tebb
came over here last year to preach
characterization. but he found Amer
leans hostile to his ideas, while they
| could also point to the immense Ger
man army, in which by compulsory
vaccination, and revaccination after a
certain period, the disease had been
stamped out.
OF course, an age of such scientific
"tctivity as ours was not going To rest
till some way was found TO eliminate
the danger, and bovine lymph IS
produced at vaccine farms in all for
eign countries and in nearly all the
States of this country, Here young
healthy calves are selected. and, after
being tested with tuberculin TO reveal
any lurking traces OF tuberculosis,
are i%noculated, with every possible
aseptic precaution, and a lymph which
is as pure as human skill al produce
is obtained. This pure lymph is giFen
to the poor in our large cities, Chicago
! distributing 10.110 tubes of pure gly-,
| p~arinatnd lymnh in October 1899. In