ON VACCINATION.

TWENTY years have now elapsed since Dr Jenner, a medical practitioner of Gloucestershire, first announced this invaluable discovery to the British public, and twelve since they completed their munificent reward of Thirty Thousand Pounds to him. There appeared to be but one sentiment in Parliament upon the subject of the deserts of this eminent person, and all parties agreed that the national purse was never opened on a more worthy or a more important occasion. Ten Thousand Pounds were voted to him in the Session of 1802, on the motion of Admiral Berkeley, in consequence of his petition to the House, and in the Session of 1806, additional evidence was laid before Parliament on the motion of Lord Henry Petty; on this evidence a motion for a grant of an additional Ten Thousand was founded by the late Mr Percival, which, on the amendment of Mr Morris, was increased to Twenty Thousand.

It is not to be supposed that the Faculty remained silent spectators of the distinguished and productive honours bestowed upon a member of their profession, whose name had scarce ever been heard of beyond the circle of his own immediate acquaintance; for, although Dr Jenner had been the pupil and the friend of the eminent John Hunter, he had experimented in silence, he had examined and re-examined the proofs of the great question on which he was employed, until at last, unpreceded by

any pompous announcement, and unsupported by any venial panegyric, that discovery which was to benefit myriads yet unborn, burst from the obscure shades of Berkeley. The Faculty, as we have already observed, were not silent, and it is infinitely to their honour, that, by an overwhelming majority, strong not only in its numbers, but in the talents, learning, and professional character of those who composed it, they at once adopted the views of Dr Jenner, and evinced their sincerity by renouncing a highly productive branch of their profession; a branch not only valuable to them in a pecuniary point of view, but important as admitting them more intimately into the bosoms of the families of their patients, and making them, as it were, the arbiters of the lives and the beauty of nearly the whole of the youth of the empire. It is not, however, to be supposed, that the Jennerian discovery, important as it was, was at once to silence all opposition, and to produce among the inembers of the medical profession, that unanimity for which, to say the least of them, they have never been remarkable; this would have been, indeed, an event little less wonderful than the annihilation of that virulent and destructive malady which the discovery aimed at effecting. The followers of Dr Jenner were attacked at all points, according to the most approved modes of polemical medicine, and, after having gone through the usual routine on these occasions, and been dubbed enthusiasts, simpletons, and fools, it was at last very

plainly announced by some sagacious persons, that they were little better than Atheists, while some of the more moderate of their antagonists decided that they were at least opposers of the Almighty will; but apartial persons recognized, in these invectives of the antivaccinists, the very same spirit and practice which animated the opposers of small-pox inoculation in the early part of the century. When this first paroxysm had run its ordinary course, then followed, in regular succession, the usual distinctive symptoms which characterize the process of depreciating a new discovery;-first, the positive denial of the fact, that the cowpock had any power whatever of preventing small-pox,-then the assertion, that if it had, it was only rarely, or imperfectly, then a sort of half admission, duly qualified by doubts and insinuations, that if it was useful in some cases, it was not as universally so as small-pox inoculation, and lastly, that, admitting all its advantages, Dr Jenner had no merit in the case, as the whole business was well known before he was born.

We shall give our own account of this affair. It appears, that in some of the dairy counties of England, the servants who were employed in milking the cows, and who had undergone a certain eruptive disease, which they contracted from matter from the udder and teats of the cows, applied to accidental scratches on their fingers, were, in consequence of this inoculated disease, ever afterwards exempted from small-pox; it also appears, that a similar practice was known in the southern parts of Ireland from time immemorial. Dr Jenner never pretended to have been the original discoverer of this singular power, but the most unrelenting of his opponents failed in depriving him of the sole honour of having brought it forward in a philosophical manner, and of having applied an insulated and little known fact to a purpose of the most extensive utility to the interests of the human species. After having instituted repeated trials, Dr Jenner entered into some speculations on the origin of the discase in the teats of the cow, and he imagined he traced it to infection from the heels of the horse, while labouring under a disease well known under the name of grease, the matter of which he supposed to be

transferred by the farm-servants to the cow during the process of milking. It does not consist with our plan to enter into this part of the inquiry, nor is it of much consequence to the cause of truth; the antivaccinists, however, did not let slip the opportunity of dilating upon the multiplied sources of beastly diseases thus opened upon the public; they even went so far as to publish disgusting prints of alleged conversions of the human face into the resemblance of an ox; and we are not quite certain whether the credulity of John Bull was not assailed by some authentic accounts of incipient manes and tails!! It is not our wish to revive in our pages long forgotten disputes and personalities, disgraceful to those who were engaged in them; suffice it to say, that the language of vituperation and of panegyric were exhausted by the enemies and the supporters of the new practice. The practice itself, however, soon began to flourish with unexampled vigour,-prejudices gradually subsided,-parents were no longer inclined to withhold from their children the advantages of a simple, mild, and safe preventive of a most disgusting and dangerous disease ;--the most enlightened nations of Europe adopted the practice with enthusiasm, they gave a fuller trial to the experiment than had ever before been bestowed on any subject of inquiry, and even Spain shook off her apathy, and transported the blessing to her transatlan tic possessions. The consequence was, that the ravages of small-pox were most essentially diminished, and in some parts of the world, as Ceylon, the disease was exterminated altogether.

To the younger part of our readers, who cannot well discover the superior advantages of substituting one disease for another, or who have known small-pox only by hearsay, or by meeting it in the mild and moderate character impressed upon it by inoculation, it may be necessary to go back a little in our inquiries, and to unmask for them the genuine character of that disease as it existed before the beginning of the last century in many parts of the world, and as it would still exist in our own, if small-pox inoculation as formerly practised, or the incalculably preferable modifier and preventive, cow-pock inoculation or vaccination, were not adopted.

This loathsome and dangerous disease, in which the patients endured for several days the most acute agony, and were covered from head to foot with small suppurating sores of an insupportable fetor, possessed nearly all the infectious and fatal qualities of the plague, with the additional evil, that its tortures were more prolonged, and that where the sufferer survived the immediate violence of the disease, its consequences were frequently extended to the loss of vision, and almost constantly in severe cases to the loss of beauty, both from the marks left by the disease itself, and from the developement of the latent seeds of scrofula which it produced. Our fatal national disease, consumption, also was frequently excited by it, and any constitutional tendency to that complaint was decidedly aggravated. This scourge of the human species appears to have been generated in the burning sands of Arabia, and maintained its malignant powers unimpaired in Europe from the tenth to the early part of the eighteenth century. Some learned antiquaries have bewildered themselves and their readers in tracing the disease to still more remote periods, and our Hibernian fellow-subjects lay claim to the horror of having had their country afflicted by the disease so far back as 679. We shall not stop to dispute upon this point, but shall advert to the more certain fact, that millions of lives were destroyed by it in our hemisphere, and that entire nations of Indians were exterminated by it in America, whither it was brought by Columbus. From the Line to the Pole its destructive ravages were spread, and no later than the beginning of the eighteenth century, more than a fourth of the population of Iceland was carried off, while a few years afterwards (1733) Greenland was almost depopulated by it. We have singular pleasure in being able to inform our readers, upon the authority of a Danish physician, with whom we lately conversed, that in these countries, and throughout the whole of the dominions of Denmark, the disease is now unknown; the happy result of the universal adoption, and legal enforcement of vaccination, and of a most jealous examination of all persons admitted into the kingdom. From this gentleman, also, we understand, that young persons are not con

firmed or admitted to the sacrament, neither are marriages and other ceremonies of the church performed, unless a certificate of the parties having undergone vaccination is produced.

In the year 1717, the celebrated Lady Mary Wortley Montague addressed a letter (the 31st in the collection of her well known correspondence) to a female friend in England, on the Turkish mode of divesting small-pox of its horrors. She submitted one of her own children to the experiment, and, in 1722, two of the Royal Family underwent the operation with complete success; and, notwithstanding a violent opposition, both from the press and the pulpit, and a great degree of popular clamour, the practice of inoculation for the small-pox gradually forced its way over Europe, and became an established practice among medical men, not, however, without a few occasional accidents, which were most assiduously magnified by the old gentlewomen "of both sexes," who made a point of conscience, of submitting their families to the unmitigated violence of disease, and represented every attempt at evading it, as a most contumacious procedure, and a decided tempting of providence.

Valuable as this Turkish practice evidently was, it soon became obvious, that, although in individual cases, the small-pox were rendered infinitely milder, yet, upon the whole, the deaths were increased by the very extensive propagation of the disease, a fatality to which the bills of mortality, between the years 1722 and 1800, bear ample testimony. It was a little before this latter period that the discovery of Dr Jenner was announced, Nov. 1798. Of the incalculable importance of this happy discovery, we never entertained but one opinion, viz. that it ranks among the very highest blessings that were ever conferred on mankind, but we are by no means among the number of those who think, that any examination of the sum of benefits conferred, goes at once to substantiate a charge of ingratitude against the examiner; nor are we so distrustful of the intrinsic value of the Jennerian doctrines, as to deprecate all inquiry into them. While impenetrable ignorance and unblushing effrontery united to assail vaccination in every possible way, it required

all the alertness and all the enthusiasm of friendship to defend it; but now, when the assailants have retired discomfited, we surely may be permitted to re-examine the defences which we threw up to repel their desultory and reiterated attacks, On instituting this self-examination, and impartially reviewing the results, we have decided ly arrived at the following conclu

sions.

First, as to the superiority of cowpock inoculation over small-pox.

That it is beyond all comparison milder;-that it is not contagious ;that it does not endanger life, or vision, or elicit scrofula, or consumption, or leave behind it disgusting marks; and, above all, that it is, in a great majority of cases, a certain preventive of small-pox, and in all a most powerful modifier of its violence, should it ever afterwards occur, and at whatever period. Nay, we will go farther, and assert it as our positive conviction, that it is as certain a preventive of a subsequent occurrence of fatal small-pox as small-pox itself. Secondly, as to the failures in, and the errors committed by the friends of, vaccination.

That there are certain peculiar constitutions where a person may have undergone vaccination, and be still liable to suffer from small-pox to a great extent, or even to the loss of life: That several of these cases have been glossed over by the friends of vaccination, as either having been chicken-pox, or having been the consequences of improperly conducted vaccination, although there has been no evidence whatever to entitle them to suppose that the vaccinating process was not properly conducted, or not performed with genuine lymph: That, in several instances, their distinctions between chicken-pox and small-pox have been entirely hypothetical, and that, upon this point most particularly, they have, in many cases, substituted sarcasm and assertion for fact, thereby materially weakening the confidence that impartial men would otherwise have reposed in their discrimination.

Lastly, with regard to the expediency of the universal adoption of vaccination in preference to small-pox

inoculation.

That the superiority of the former is established by the most clear and incontrovertible evidence, and

that we have the very greatest encouragement to persevere in our at tempts to eradicate small-pox altogether from these islands; and that to co-operate to this most desirable ena, although we have no direct proofs that the power of the vaccine preventive is diminished by having passed through numerous individuals, still it would be a wise and prudent measure, to renew the infection from the cow as often as it can possibly be done, in order to avoid all chances or suspicion of a deteriorated lymph.

Before we entirely dismiss this interesting subject, we must advert to the very curious circumstances that have transpired in the course of the epidemic small-pox which have lately appeared in this city, and which now rage at Lanark, at Perth, and in the northern parts of Ireland, as we have been able to collect them from the work of Dr Monro, from a paper by the head of the Medical Department of the Army for Scotland, and other documents recently published in the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, † as well as from our own personal experience.

If the matter taken from a person labouring under small-pox be appli ed beneath the skin of another who never had the disease, the disease is communicated in its genuine form; and the same happens if the poisonous matter be taken in by respiration, or by simple contact.

If the same matter be in a similar manner applied to a person who has had the cow-pox, and gone through it in a proper manner, in an immense majority of cases no result follows; but, in some cases, and especially where the small-pox is peculiarly ac tive, as it has been during the late prevailing epidemic, a modified disease follows; which is either so mild as to escape notice altogether, or else is very violent at first, but stops all at once, as if an impenetrable barrier had

Observations on the different kinds of Small-Pox, and especially on that which follows Vaccination; by Alexander Monro, M. D. F. R. S. E. &c. 8vo. Edinburgh, 1818.

An Account of the Eruptive Diseases Hospital of Edinburgh, &c.; by John which have lately appeared in the Military Hennen, Esq. Deputy-Inspector of Military Hospitals for North Britain. Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol XIV. p. 409.

been opposed to its further progress, and goes off rapidly without any ill

consequences.

If the matter of this last disease be applied as before, to vaccinated persons, a similar mild disease is sometimes produced; but in a great majority of cases no result follows. If, however, it is applied to others who have not gone through the small-pox or the cow-pock, it is capable of producing in them genuine and fatal small-pox of an infectious nature.

It is a most curious and remarkable fact, that it also produces a modified disease in those who have gone through small-pox before, as appears by the history of the patients in the military hospitals of this city alluded to above, out of nineteen of whom five had previously had the small-pox.

The history of these cases is briefly this. From a perfectly vaccinated child who had caught the modified disease, six children who never had any complaint before were inoculated; in one a severe disease was produced, in two others it was less severe; and in the remainder very mild. The disease spread by infection to three other children, and to four adults, who had been either in the room with or nursed the inoculated children; all these adults had the small-pox before; in one the second attack was very mild, and in the three others very severe; from one or other of these last cases the disease spread to a fifth adult, who had never had small-pox,

and he died.

We have already occupied so much of our readers' time on this subject, the importance of which we hope will plead our excuse, that we must here close; but before doing so, we must earnestly entreat all parents seriously to consider the mildness and the efficacy of the preventive, and the danger and malignity of the poison which it is meant to counteract; a poison which would soon depopulate the world, had not providence wisely determined that it should be governed by the general rule of only attacking once through life; a rule, however, not without its exceptions, to which more have occurred within these very few years, and within our own view, than perhaps ever before were observed in any one epidemic recorded in the annals of medicine.

N.

ON THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE ANCIENT COINS OF SCOTLAND.

MR EDITOR,

THERE is, perhaps, no subject upon which antiquaries are more divid ed in opinion than upon the classification of the ancient coins of Scotland. Should any of the facts I now propose to state, tend to elucidate part of the medallic history of this country, they will, I trust, apologize for thus intruding on the literary world.

In the catalogue of coins and medals, I had the honour lately to bring before the public, there were two numbers, 558 and 566, which, as I had expected, gave rise to considerable discussion, I ought perhaps to say ani madversion; for, in many of the letters then received, it was remarked, that 558, penny of David I., must be a mistake, as he had no coinage," and "566 must also be wrong, as Robert Bruce had no mint at Dundee." Thus the opinions of Cardonnel were, as anticipated, re-echoed on all hands.

The haste with which the catalogue (the latter part of it at least) was drawn up to meet a particular season, and the state of confusion in which ĺ found the whole collection, prevented me taking notice in the catalogue of some particulars respecting the coins in question, as well as some others, which determined me in fixing the class to which they belonged. I was gratified, however, to find, that these reasons, when detailed to the gentlemen present at the sale, and which I shall here briefly notice, proved to their satisfaction.

No. 558, called in the catalogue a penny of David I., will be found engraved under that monarch's coins, in plate 157 of Anderson's Numismata Scotia. Cardonnel no doubt affirms, that there is none of the money of David I. extant; but, without pretending to say which of these authors is in the right, as Cardonnel has given no engraving of the coin in question, and as Anderson has, and classed it with those of David I., I feel justified in following his example.

With regard to the coin of Robert Bruce, as it is engraved neither in Anderson nor in Cardonnel, and in type and execution bears a much. greater resemblance to those ascribed by both authors to Bruce, than to