4x6 
Analyses of Books . 
rjuly 
Remarks on Certain Medical Principles and Publications. By 
Dr. Joseph Hamernik, of Prague. Translated from the 
German by F. Marks. London : F. Marks. 
The author of this pamphlet is apparently given to “ views.” 
He is an anti-vaccinationist and vegetarian, probably a teetotaller, 
an opponent of modern sanitary reform — in so far at least as it 
seeks the cause of epidemics in polluted waters. He is also op- 
posed to blood-letting, to purgatives, to mineral waters, to the 
parasitic theory of disease, to disinfection, and to the antiseptic 
method in surgery. Personally he appears to have a strong ob- 
jection to Prof. Virchow, to Klebs, to Henle, Semmelweiss, and 
the “ medical bureaucracy ” in general. In his objections to 
vaccination — which are possibly the cause why the pamphlet has 
been translated into English— we find little that can be novel to 
our readers. He maintains that various diseases, and notably 
tuberculosis and syphilis, are propagated by means of vaccina- 
tion ; that it affords no protection from smallpox ; that during an 
epidemic vaccinated and unvaccinated are alike attacked, recover, 
or die, the appearance and conditions of the disease presenting 
no diversity whatever. He denounces medical statistics and 
medical logic in toto. He writes that “ when a few years later 
[we presume after the introduction of vaccination] smallpox 
happened to occur less frequently, and in a milder form, the 
alchemical artists [sic /] thought it quite natural that, though 
only from 5 to 6 per cent of the population was vaccinated, the 
diminution of smallpox was due to vaccination. Before the 
great epidemic of 1870-72 the population was vaccinated within 
about 5 or 6 per cent, large numbers having likewise been vac- 
cinated more than once ; and the vaccinators and their adherents 
were short-sighted or barefaced enough to pretend that the 5 or 
6 per cent of the unvaccinated were to blame for the epidemic, 
and even for the appearance of smallpox at all.” 
The following a priori argument against the possibility of a 
preventive against smallpox does not throw a very favourable 
light upon Dr. Hamernik as a reasoner : — “ What kind of world- 
order would that be into which each speculator or impostor could 
introduce changes in which, for instance, smallpox and anti- 
smallpox both had place ? Would it not be simpler and more 
natural to omit both?” If the author would look around him 
he might see the whole world full of conflicting agencies, devised, 
say the teleologists, to keep each other within bounds, which 
might have been omitted. 
On the liability to take cold Dr. Hamernik writes — “ This 
effeminacy is largely brought about by our artificial and unnatural 
mode of life, especially by the prevalent custom of eating meat 
and drinking spirituous liquors.” Does the author suppose that, 
e,g the Red-skins of North America, the white trappers who 
