1878.] Notices of Books. 109 
at a time when there is some hope that the Germans may aban- 
don their peculiar type, and thus place themselves in easier 
mental communication with the rest of cultivated nations. Our 
present characters, however irrational their origin, which is a 
totally irrelevant consideration, have the incalculable advantage 
that they are distinguishable from each other with little strain to 
the eye, and that very difference in size to which Mr. Harrison 
objects is therefore a valuable attribute. Letters formed on the 
author’s plan would require much closer examination to distin- 
guish one from another, and would, from their very trifling 
difference in size and shape, cause the eyes to “ swim,” occa- 
sioning serious injury to sight in people of studious habits. 
“ Why should any word,” asks Mr. Harrison, “ be more than 
one or two syllables in length ? ” And yet he is a poet! We 
have always protested against the length of the technical terms 
introduced into the sciences under pretext of “ significance.” 
But a language framed on our author’s principles would rival in 
“ mad monotony ” the “ Mission-room ” bell which is at this 
very moment throbbing and tingling through our brain. 
Mr. Harrison’s stridbures on some of the materialists of the 
day who yet cannot agree what matter is are much more valuable 
than his proposed printing-reform. His poems sometimes recall 
those of Hood, 
Does Vaccination afford any Protection against Small-Pox P 
By T. B. Sprague, M.A., a Vice-President of the Institute 
of Actuaries. 
Most persons are aware that compulsory Vaccination is one of 
the “ burning questions ” of the day, and that, instead of being 
calmly discussed in medical and sanitary circles, it is taken up by 
political agitators as a point of their creed. On the one hand we 
have the orthodox medical practitioners, who as a body put a 
somewhat exaggerated faith in the prophylactic virtues of cow- 
pox. On the other hand is arrayed a league who consider vacci- 
nation as not merely futile and dangerous, but when enforced by 
law as an outrage on their civil and religious liberties. But there 
is still a third party, who, whilst utterly scouting the vested rights 
of disease and considering the State fully justified in enforcing 
precautions for the promotion of public health, do not feel alto- 
gether satisfied with the evidence adduced in favour of the efficacy 
of vaccination. They ask how is it that we have still small-pox 
epidemics, assuming almost pestilential proportions, if vaccination 
is indeed a safeguard ? There are very few persons who do not 
undergo the operation once in life, and multitudes are re-vaccinated 
whenever the disease breaks out afresh in the neighbourhood 
which they inhabit. It is also declared that in the years 1815 to 
