SOME DISEASES MENTIONED IN THE BIBLE. 273 



as the factor of the disease. But in small-pox lympli and also in 

 vaccine lymph are very minute particles of living matter which I 

 believe to be the actual disease-carrying germs. These are 

 figured in my work on Disease Germs, published about thirty years 

 ago, and also in my report on the cattle plague to the Royal 

 Commission. 



Unfortunately the public are not aware that vaccination is 

 practically harmless and absolutely certain in its action as a 

 safeguard. I do not believe that it would be possible to find a 

 single person who had been successfully vaccinated a few years 

 before, would take the disease if exposed to small-pox. The risk 

 of the vaccinated taking the disease after several yeai'S is 

 infinitesimal. But this fact, I regret to say, is not as widely 

 known as it should be ; and just as there are people whose main 

 object in life seems to be to oppose or object to many things that 

 are reasonable, there are some who condemn vaccination, and 

 object to anyone studying the circulation of the blood in a frog's 

 foot and many other harmless and very instructive proceedings. 

 Can there be a gi^eater reproach to us than the terrible epidemic 

 now raging, and which we all know to have been preventible ? I 

 feel sure that if the advice of the medical profession had been taken 

 years ago the present epidemic would not have been jDossible. 

 The enormous sums required for taking proper care of, and 

 treating the unfortunate patients who have contracted this 

 absolutely preventible disease, perhaps amounting to two or three 

 hundred thousand pounds, might have been saved. 



1 am sorry not to be able to ofTer any opinion whether any of 

 the diseases described by Dr. Chaplin should be regarded as small- 

 pox. The description which has come down to us seems scarcely 

 definite enough to enable us to judge. 



The Chairman. — Perhaps I may be allowed to make a few 

 remarks. I am not an M.D., but I can quite endorse what has 

 already been said that I believe medical men and clergymen, 

 nurses, and attendants on the sick are under a special pro- 

 vidence and enjoy a very marvellous immunity from disease. 

 I have worked under five bishops in London, and in various 

 parishes, and I do not think I have shrunk from visiting any 

 form of ailment except small-pox. I did "fight shy" of houses 

 where I heard there was small-pox. In my humble capacity I 

 can bear testimony to what has just fallen from Professor Beale, 



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