his labors, and to know that he had robbed small-pox of more than half its terrors. His discovery of a truth of such high pathological importance, and at the same time of such immense benefit to the human race, was at first ridiculed by many. But, as time proved its worth, and experience its value, it was not long before it met with the commendation of the first men of the day, and the approving judgment of the most learned men of the medical profession.

Dr. Jenner commenced his investigations, while quite a young man, in seventeen hundred and seventy-five. After twenty-three years of hard study, careful research and incessant inquiry, he gave the result of his examinations and experiments to the world; and so highly was it thought of in the kingdom of Great Britain, that, in eighteen hundred and seven, it had surmounted all obstacles, and Parliament, as a reward for his labors, voted him the sum of twenty thousand pounds sterling. He died of apoplexy, on the twenty-sixth day of January, eighteen hundred and twenty-three. The last words of this eminent physician were, "I do not marvel that men are grateful to me, but I am surprised that they do not feel gratitude to God for making me a medium of good."

The following very beautiful and appropriate lines are engraved upon his monument:

"Within this tomb hath found a resting place,

The great Physician of the human race;

Immortal Jenner, whose gigantic mind

Brought life and health to more than half mankind.

Let rescued infancy his worth proclaim,

And lisp out blessings on his honored name;

And radiant beauty drop her saddest tear,
For beauty's truest, trustiest friend lies here.""

The vaccine disease was introduced into the United States by Dr. William Yates, who died in New York State, in eighteen hundred and fifty-seven, at the honorable age of ninety years. He studied under Sir James Earl, in St. Bartholomew's Hospital, and attended the first course of lectures delivered by the celebrated Abernethy. Vaccina

tion-or, as its name implies, kine-pox-was first discovered in the cow, where it appears upon the teat in the form of a small vesicle. It is introduced into the human system by inoculation, and produces umbilicated vesicles. It is now in universal use throughout the globe, as a preventive of small-pox.

When the operation of vaccination has been successfully performed, there is an inflammatory action set up at the points of incision, and on the third day an elevation is to be felt or seen at the place of puncture. On the fifth day a vesicle is formed containing lymph, with a depressed center and elevated edges. The areola is visible the next day; on the eighth the vesicle is distended with clear lymph; and on the tenth day, the disease is at its highth. The vesicle is of a light gray or pearl color, looks very much like the pustule of small-pox, and is about one-third of an inch in diameter, while the areola is much larger. After this the vesicle bursts, the areola commences to diminish, a scab is formed in the center, and appears to be surrounded by one or two concentric rings. The lymph which remains becomes opaque; the scab increases in size, and matures about the twenty-first day, when it is thrown off, leaving a cicatrix which is peculiar to the vaccine disease itself; the edges appear ragged, and the center is depressed, pitted and striated. These marks of vaccination never become effaced in after life.

There appears to be a great difference in individuals in reference to their susceptibility to this disease. In the majority of cases we have some constitutional symptoms, such as fever about the eighth or tenth day, an enlargement of the glands in the axilla, and sometimes a slight eruption is to be seen; while in other cases the disease runs its course, and no constitutional symptoms are complained of by the patient.

Re-vaccination has been, by some, highly recommended. But when we vaccinate a patient a second time, after the lapse of three or four years from the time that the disease has run its course, in many cases there is no effect produced

whatever. The punctured places refuse to inflame. Where a longer period has elapsed, the virus may irritate, locally; the patient have an irritative fever; the scab form and come away, leaving, however, a cicatrix wholly unlike that which characterizes the disease. In others, a scab may form without any irritation, either local or constitutional, and the virus from these scabs will be found incapable of propagating the disease. In a few cases, however, vaccination may run its regular course, and the matter retain its power of propagation.

In those cases where the matter fails to affect the patient, he would, under all circumstances, effectually resist the infection of small-pox, even if endeavored to be introduced into the system by means of inoculation-as was satisfactorily proved by Dr. Jenner on many different occasions— while we are constrained to believe that those in whom the vaccine disease run its course the second time, would, under some circumstances, have been affected with the disease. But even in these cases, it would differ greatly from the disease, as it would appear in those who had never been vaccinated; and in place of being a severe and terrible disorder, it would be so modified as to be, generally, very mild and tractable.

It has been stated by the distinguished physician, M. Levret, from his own observation of between "seventeen hundred and eighteen hundred cases of small-pox occurring in his own private practice, and in the hospitals, that cases of a second attack were equally as numerous, in proportion, as attacks of the disease after vaccination."

The mortality in small-pox of those not vaccinated, is laid down at one in eight; after vaccination, one in sixty. So that, admitting, as some assert, that cases do occur after vaccination, yet the disease is so modified as to make it very mild, and to render it less fatal; thus showing conclusively the immense importance of the discovery, in a pathological point of view, and the great benefit which may be derived from it by the human race.

The Necessity of a Constant Change of Air and Food for the normal maintenance of the Animal Functions.

BY TOM W. NEWSOME, M. D., SANDERSVILLE, GEORGIA.

The wisdom of nature is made manifest in all her works, but not more so in any of its operations than in the process by which life is sustained in the animal body. Though this subject has engaged the life-long labors of many of the ablest minds the medical world has yet produced, it still furnishes a vast and varied field for investigation.

That the blood is the source of all nutrition and growth, has been a settled question since the days of the immortal Harvey; and the elements which we receive into the stomach to support nature, are only subservient to this purpose so far as it contains in its composition the elements which constitute the blood, and enable it to perform its several functions relative to the increase and maintenance of the animal body. Notwithstanding the various parts of nature contribute to our support, they no less furnish a means of our destruction. The air in which we breathe, as well as our food, conduces to the impurities of the blood by being constantly composed of heterogeneous particles from animal, vegetable and mineral substances, which, being received into the blood by means of the lungs, minister as much to its corruption as the vital air to its purity.

From accurate chemical investigation, the blood is composed of a proper combination of water, albumen, fibrin, crystallizable fatty matter, extractive matter, oily matter, albumen combined with soda, chlorides of sodium and potassium, alkali and phosphates, sulphates and subcarbonates lime, magnesia and iron; and when any of these elements are increased beyond their due and natural proportion, or by any means decreased, the blood becomes impure, and, as a natural result, lays the foundation for disease. For instance, animal food in general contains great quantities of those elements which form their basis, with the vital air and nitrous acid--especially salted and dried meats; for though the salt prevents the entire decomposition of the fleshy substance by putrefaction, yet

part of it will be decomposed and rendered corrupt, which corruption, entering after digestion into the chyle and meeting the vital air from the lungs, will, in part, be converted into nitrous acid. The effects of this acid are known to be dreadful. It dissolves the fibrous parts of the blood, and, in consequence, prevents it from replenishing the several parts of the body with new material necessary for its support.

Vegetables, too, when taken alone, are known to be quite as pernicious in furnishing to the blood an excess of alkali, which increases the fluidity, destroys its tenacity, and prevents fibrication. Scurvy is sometimes the result of this diet, and should be corrected with animal food and common salt. Thus we see a composition of animal and vegetable food is absolutely necessary to the good and wholesome nourishment of the animal frame; and among the various compounds which may be applied to this purpose, milk seems to be designed by nature as the most salubrious, as it consists in its composition of animal, vegetable and mineral salts, which, being properly blended in the lacteal ducts, is the best fibricator of the animal solids. But it is not less from drink, than meats, or vegetables alone, that the blood is rendered impure. The habitual and inordinate use of alcoholic stimulants, as rum, brandy, whisky, etc., is the cause of many serious affections, not only of the blood and nervous centres, but of the digestive organs. Every one knows that dyspepsia, hypochondriasis, visceral obstructions, dropsy, paralysis, and not unfrequently mania, are, in many cases, the results of its use.

The air which we breathe, as we have intimated, also furnishes a means of our destruction. It being nicely composed of a nearly uniform proportion of oxygen and nitrogen, an extremely small quantity of carbonic acid gas and watery vapor, any derangement of these constituents, either in its excess or diminution, must necessarily in a measure affect the animal economy.

As it is a fact well known to most individuals, that the same air repeatedly respired--in consequence of being