ON VACCINATION 



117 



as the great corner-stone of the modern fabric of pre- 

 ventive medicine and beneficent legislation. 



Vaccination, as its name implies, signifies the introduc- 

 tion into the system of a non-vaccinated person of a virus, 

 the operation and influence of which, on that system, 

 confers immunity from, or protection under, the invasion 

 and attack of variola or smallpox. It is probable that 

 we have already succeeded in isolating its specific bacillus, 

 but we can scarcely as yet claim that we have identified 

 it or established its claim to recognition as the bacillus of 

 vaccinia. 



In the materies vaccine are discovered several bacterial 

 organisms, one or other, if not all, of which may play 

 the part, or a part, as the case may be, in the production 

 of the vaccine disease, and, hence, in the conferring of 

 immunity or protection from the major disease variola, 

 it, therefore, still behoves us to regard this question as 

 sub judice. 



Vaccination may be regarded as the type and herald 

 of what is now called serum therapy, and as the foundation 

 on which is being erected the modern beneficent institution 

 of ameliorative and preventive medical principles and 

 practice. Dr. Jenner may, therefore, be aptly named the 

 'John the Baptist" of the great modern forward move- 

 ment of militant and beneficent medicine alike, and to 

 represent a "man crying in the wilderness" or amongst 

 the arid but quickening places of medical thought and 

 action of the eighteenth century, and, like his great proto- 

 type, it should be claimed for him that he "lived for the 

 future," and that his name will be, or ought to be, retained 

 as a living influence amongst the latest generations of 

 mankind. 



The pre-Jennerian or natural vaccination was effected 

 by the entrance of the vaccine virus into abraded or open 

 surfaces on the hands, or other exposed surfaces or parts 

 of the persons, of dairymaids and others engaged in the 

 milking of cows, and had done its work of protection 

 against the lethal effects of smallpox or variola, no doubt, 

 for generations. Of the protective value of this acci- 

 dental occurrence nothing was known or dreamt', so far 

 as we know, by the profession of medicine until the 



