186 the president's address. 



It had been traditionally practised there a great many years, cen- 

 turies perhaps, and it had brought down the mortality from small- 

 pox to a very small figure indeed ; that had been superseded by 

 vaccination, and under the very able administration of the medical 

 officer of this district, the native prejudice against vaccination 

 had been removed, and the mortality from small-pox brought 

 down to next to nothing. But see what occurred during the siege 

 of Paris in 1870. There had been a very severe outbreak of small- 

 pox in Paris in the early part of the year, before the war broke out. 

 In the civil population of Paris — not the military — vaccination 

 had been very much neglected — re-vaccination especially ; there 

 was no authoritative performance of it excepting in the military ; and 

 in the French Army — the regulars — it had been on the whole very 

 satisfactorily performed or kept up ; and positively in June of that 

 year, when there were more than 1,000 cases — deaths — from small- 

 pox in that one month, in the civil population of Paris, there was an 

 entire absence — such a complete absence of small-pox in the large 

 garrison of Paris that the small-pox ward of the military hospital 

 was closed. Then came the war; then came the replacement of 

 the old soldiers of the garrison of Paris, who were wanted else- 

 where, by levies hastily got together. There was a great deficiency 

 of vaccine matter — many of these had never been vaccinated, and 

 many more not been re-vaccinated ; then came the shutting up of 

 Paris as the German Army drew near, the crowding of the military 

 hospitals, a very insufficient supply of food, and that not of a good 

 quality — a kind of feeding that was liable to induce land scurvy, 

 and what was the consequence? In November, 1870, there were, 

 I think, about 120 cases of the malignant form of small-pox in the 

 large small-pox hospital, which it had been necessary to institute — 

 the old hospital of the Bicetre. The reporter of this, Dr. Couran, 

 who is now, I believe, at the head of the medical service of the 

 Army, says that there has been no such epidemic of this malignant 

 type of small-pox during the last century in Europe. Now 

 observe, if you did not know that these patients had been subjected 

 to small-pox infection, and if sometimes the case did not go on to 

 develop the eruption — if they had all died before the eruption 

 appeared, as they very commonly did die after the 5th or 6th day 

 after the infection, we should not have known these two diseases 

 to have been the same, so completely and entirely different were 

 they in their types, and yet it was clearly small-pox infection 



