Human Physiology. 



generally effectual, the drug seeming to paralyse the nerves so 

 as to prevent the periodical effort of the system to expel the 

 poison of malaria. The result is that both poisons are retained 

 in the system, and their effects are felt for years. Quinine in 

 intermittent fever seems to act like mercury in syphilis. The 

 disease is masked not cured and the remedy may be worse 

 than the disease. 



It was once believed that vaccination, or inoculation from 

 pustules on a cow (said to have been caused by purulent mat- 

 ter from a disease of horses' heels, called the grease), was a 

 thorough preventive of small-pox. Recent experience has 

 shown that it may rage as an epidemic in spite of compulsory 

 vaccination, and there is abundant evidence that syphilis, 

 scrofula, and other diseases of blood-poisoning are sometimes 

 given with the so-called vaccine virus. As cleanliness, a pure 

 diet, and general attention to the laws of health, are perfect 

 protections against all danger from small-pox, there is generally 

 no necessity of taking one disease, which may be virulent and 

 even fatal, to guard against the risk of taking another. And 

 for a government to compel people to have their own or their 

 children's blood poisoned, rather than carry out general health 

 regulations, which our highest medical authorities assure us are 

 a safeguard against all zymotic diseases, is absurd despotism. 

 Hundreds of cases have been collected of children dying, ap- 

 parently, from the blood-poisoning of vaccination. Children 

 previously healthy become diseased and die, and their parents 

 go to prison rather than risk the lives of their other children. 

 Surely it is better to banish the unsanitary conditions which 

 make the spread of small-pox possible, than to poison even one 

 helpless infant to death according to Act of Parliament. 



Among the occasional causes of serious disease are animal 

 and mineral poisons in the walls of our rooms. Green wall 

 paper containing arsenic fills the air with arsenical vapour, and 

 persons gradually become poisoned by living, and especially by 



