PROTECTIVE INOCULATION FOR CHOLERA. zzj 



birthright, make her a more worthy co-operator with her husband ; 

 a stronger spiritual sympathizer ; one who will not flinch when 

 confronted with the privilege of making noble women of her 

 daughters, of saving her sons from falling victims to the sin 

 which is dragging down to ruin so many of our finest young men ? 

 " The height of the pinnacle/' says Emerson, " depends upon 

 the breadth of the base." Give, then, to our young women this 

 broad basis of knowledge, as you wish the height attainable to be 

 proportionate and exalted. 



PROTECTIVE INOCULATION FOR CHOLERA. 



By S. T. AEMSTKONG, M.D., Ph.D. 



IT would be difficult to say where the idea first originated of 

 the possibility of artificially producing occult changes in the 

 organism of a healthy individual, so that, if exposed to a conta- 

 gious or an infectious disease, there would be an acquired resist- 

 ance that would prevent the development of such a disease. Tra- 

 dition states that, in the case of small-pox, the custom existed in 

 South Wales of rubbing matter from the pustules of a small-pox 

 patient on the skin of a healthy person's arm, in order to protect 

 the latter individual from acquiring that malady ; and, for a 

 similar purpose, it was the custom in the Scottish Highlands to 

 wind about the wrists of children worsted threads that had been 

 moistened with such matter. Inoculation of healthy persons with 

 variolous matter had long been practiced in Oriental countries 

 when Lady Mary "Wortley Montagu introduced it into England. 

 And as recently as our civil war this procedure has been em- 

 ployed, because the usually mild attack of small-pox following 

 the inoculation is less dangerous than the ordinarily acquired 

 form of that disease. 



The discovery of the protection afforded by vaccination sug- 

 gested new working theories ; for it was as remarkable that the 

 contagious principle of small-pox should undergo some modifica- 

 tion in the human system as it was that it was decidedly modified 

 in the cow. It has been demonstrated by many experimenters 

 that, in a calf that has not had cow-pox, inoculation of small-pox 

 virus will cause that disease ; and, furthermore, that matter from 

 the eruption on the calf's udder will, if inoculated in an unvaccin- 

 nated person, produce the well-known phenomena of vaccinia. 

 Science, accordingly, learned two facts from this : that the virus 

 of a disease may be diminished, or attenuated, in its development 

 in an animal organism other than that in which it found its most 

 poisonous growth ; and that this attenuated virus, introduced into 



