[October, 
648 Analyses of Books . 
as vaccination became more general? Why, in spite of com- 
pulsory vaccination, did deaths from small-pox rise in the year 
1872 to a number exceeding anything recorded in the previous 
seventeen years? Mr. Hart contends that the proportion of 
deaths from small-pox to the total pupulation from 1838 to 1853, 
being prior to compulsory vaccination, was 420 per million ; 
whilst during the succeeding twenty-six years of compulsory 
vaccination, 1854 to 1879? the death-rate in question had fallen 
to 208*5 per million. He argues that a great many persons, 
though nominally vaccinated, have not in reality been success- 
fully operated upon, and are consequently unprotedled. The 
proportion of deaths from small-pox in the earlier part of the 
century is not given, and indeed cannot be accurately ascei- 
tained, as there was in those days no accurate and general 
registration of deaths and their causes. Still it might be esti- 
mated as closely as the mortality from 1728 to 1 757 > an( ^ I 77 I to 
1780, which is given as 18,000 per million. This omission in 
Mr. Hart’s pamphlet is the more to be regretted as an impression 
prevails that the disease nearly died out from 1810 to 1830, and 
has since 1838 undergone a recrudescence. 
The contention that vaccination may be the means of intro- 
ducing other diseases, and especially syphilis, cannot be set aside 
as out of the question. J. Simon, F.R.S., in a paper on “ Con- 
tagion ” (“ British Medical Journal,” December 13th, 1879, 
p. 923) declares that “even in states of chronic dyscrasy, and 
even at times when the dyscrasy may be giving no outward 
sign, the infedted body may be variously infective ; . . . . the 
vaccine lymph of the syphilitic infant may possibly contain the 
syphilitic contagium in full vigour, even at moments when the 
patient who thus shows himself infedtive has not on his own 
person any outward adlivity of syphilis.” Of course no medical 
pradtitioner in his senses would knowingly use lymph from a 
syphilitic infant for vaccination. But does he always know the 
health-record of the parents ? It is therefore a wise precaution 
to use lymph which has not circulated through the human 
system. Had this step been taken years ago the only rational 
argument of the anti-vaccination party would have been rendered 
non-existent. It must, however, be noted that no case of the 
transmission of syphilis along with vaccine lymph has been 
demonstrated. Had such cases existed the agitators would not 
have been silent. 
The Brain as an Organ of Mind. By H. Charlton Bastian, 
M.D., F.R.S. London : C. Kegan Paul and Co. 
Dr. Bastian is chiefly known to the general public as an advo- 
cate of the somewhat heterodox theory of spontaneous generation, 
