342 

his child vaccinated, but this law is regularly set at 
defiance. Besides this, even if boards of guardians and 
vestries are disposed to carry it out, they have no means 
of finding out unvaccinated children. There is, it is true, 
the Registration Act, but that Act does not make registra- 
tion compulsory, and in some districts of London it has 
been stated that twenty-five per cent. of the population are 
not registered. There is no machinery yet set on foot to 
enable the inspectors of vaccination to lay hold of these 
children. Then there is the emigration of families from 
one parish to another. There is no plan of action for 
discovering these unvaccinated children in these families. 
It is vain for one parish to look after its vaccination, if 
other parishes do not. This is an Imperial question, and 
ought not to be left to Boards of Guardians. 
But what can we do at once, so as, if possible, to avert 
the further course of the epidemic ? We can hardly hope, 
from past experience, that the epidemic will cease at pre- 
sent, if nothing further be done. The measures which 
a knowledge of the nature of the disease would suggest 
are as follows : 
1. There should be a vigorous attempt made at once to 
secure the vaccination and re-vaccination of all persons 
who have not yet undergone these operations. It is of no use 
to wait till such persons seek this for themselves. They 
must be found out, and found out at once. At the rate at 
which inspectors are now finding out the unvaccinated, the 
epidemic will have spent its force, and little, if any, life 
will be saved. But if the Legislature would at once inter- 
fere, and insist on a house-to-house visitation with a body 
of men armed with vaccine virus, and ability and power 
to vaccinate, the whole of London might be visited, and 
every inhabitant inspected or vaccinated, in the course 
of the next month. These agents must be medical men 
or medical students, who should be paid so mucha day 
for their trouble. It is this question of paying that 
constantly hampers vestries and boards of guardians, 
They would rather see any number of people sick than pay 
to prevent their sickness. The Government must do it, and 
do it at once, or it will not be done at all. A few hundreds 
of pounds will do it, and it will save thousands that the 
small-pox would cost. 
2. Vigorous efforts should be made to stamp out each 
case of small-pox where it occurs. Every case of the 
disease should be reported to the sanitary authority of the 
district, on pain of fine and imprisonment. The person 
affected should be either removed to a hospital or isolated. 
If the latter, the isolation should be complete. Satisfactory 
evidence of the isolation should be given to the medical 
officer of health, and unless he is satisfied with the means 
taken, some method of punishing the erring parties should 
be devised. Contagious diseases of all kinds may be thus 
arrested. It is the difficulty of discovering the first cases 
that makes the spread of contagious disease so rapid and 
extensive. j 
3. Disinfection should be insisted on. This subject re- 
quires more thought and attention than it has yet received. 
All possible means by which the poison can be conveyed 
from one person to another should be prevented. The 
poison of small-pox retains its vivaciousness or reproduc- 
tive power more tenaciously, apparently, than any other 
animal poison. It can be conveyed in clothes, paper, 
thread, string, everything that it is possible to use in the 
NATURE 
[Aarch 2, 1871 
sick room. The doctor may take it to his patients, the 
lawyer to his clients, or the clergyman to his congregation 
if he has been visiting the sick. The Levitical laws 
against leprosy would be hardly too severe to prevent the 
spread of small-pox. Rules of the most stringent kind 
ought to be laid down for the guidance of nurses and all 
persons entering the sick room. Above all, in every district 
where small-pox prevails, there should be a disinfecting ap- 
paratus. This should be an oven not heated by gas, but bya 
stove. The oven should be long enough to receive beds 
and all kinds of bed-clothes and wearing apparel. These 
things should be conveyed to the store in a covered van, 
which could at once be placed in the oven without opening 
it to remove its contents. Filthy rags and beds of straw 
and shavings should be burned in the stove. Such an 
apparatus is at present at work in the parish of St. Giles, 
It should be forthwith erected in every district in London. 
Even when the small-pox has killed its utmost, such ovens 
will be useful for a future war with the demon of contagion 
in some other form. 
Will some philanthropic member of the House of 
Commons draw up a Bill embracing these suggestions, 
and get it passed into law as quickly as possible, so as to 
save the lives of some thousands of our population, and 
the faces and purses of many thousands more ? 
E, LANKESTER 


GUNTHER’S CATALOGUE OF FISHES 
Catalogue of Fishes in the British Museum. By Albert 
Ginther, M.A., M.D., LL.D., F.R.S., F.Z.S., &c, Eight 
volumes. (London, 1859-1870.) 
HE recent issue of the eighth and last volume of Dr, 
Giinther’s Catalogue of Fishes brings to a com- 
pletion one of the most laborious and important zoologi- 
cal- works of the present epoch. For Dr. Giinther’s 
Catalogue is not a mere catalogue in the ordinary sense of 
the word, but rather a more or less complete history of 
all the known members of the class of fishes. Not 
merely the higher divisions of the class, but the genera 
and species are all fully characterised, and to each species 
is appended a list of the specimens of it contained in the 
British Museum. References to other species, either 
doubtful or not yet acquired by the national collection, are 
alsoadded. When it is stated that our national collection 
of fishes now contains 29,275 specimens, some idea may 
be formed of the labour that has been involved in naming, 
arranging, cataloguing, and describing such a vast mass 
of materials. Each of these specimens has to be care- 
fully examined, in many cases internally as well as ex- 
ternally, and to be compared with its brethren of the 
same and allied species, before it can be satisfactorily 
determined. Let our readers go through this process in 
the case of one fish, and they will be able to form some 
sort of idea of the amount of toil involved in repeating 
this experiment some thirty thousand times over. Dr, 
Giinther has in fact expended about thirteen years of un- 
remitting labour on this great work, and has had the good 
fortune to bring it toa felicitous conclusion. No general 
account of fishes has been published since Lacépede and 
Schneider's edition of Bloch about the beginning of the 
prescnt century, as the celebrated “ Histoire Naturelle des 
