Then first, with blushing cheek, stood up the queen, All day upon the plain the sound was heard,- And in the palace of the king all night pp. 209-214. How those warnings were at the appointed period accomplished, Mr. Atherstone as yet saith not. We must wait to see his remaining books before we offer any opinion upon his chances of success. We certainly think that he has improved materially in the tone of his composition. He has risen to a higher strain, and may, eventually, if he catch but a beam of inspiration from the grand menaces of the Elkoshite, prevail upon the public to think that he has done something worthy to be remembered. ART. V.-Popular Summary of Vaccination, with reference to its efficacy and probable cause of failure, as suggested by extensive practical experience. By John Marshall, Esq. M. R. C. S., District Vaccinator to the National Vaccine Establishment. 8vo. pp. 95. London: T. and G. Underwood. 1830. NOTHING can be more timely than this excellent work. What with audacious quacks in the very sanctuary of the medical profession,-what with ignorant and presumptuous persons in parliament, who, just for a diversion, a party freak, or under the morbid influence of one of Bellamy's luxurious made dishes, uttered their unconscious phillipic against the Cow Pock, vaccination was well nigh undergoing a condemnation, from which the most frightful results were to be anticipated. Against the thousand objections of scepticism, of ignorance, of perverted ingenuity, we set the evidence of Mr. Marshall as perfectly decisive. This gentleman has been for upwards of a quarter of a century a District Vaccinator, and his testimony amounts, in a few words, to this, that Vaccination, when duly performed, is a perfect guarantee against the invasion of the small pox. This is conclusive. Twenty-five years' experience, and a sensible, enlightened mind, against the Reading-made-easy tyros, who began the book of nature only yesterday, are fearful odds. We always believed that the failures which were ascribed to the cow pock, as a remedy against that dreadful malady the small pox, arose from the negligent manner in which vaccination was performed. It was distinctly shewn, even in Jenner's own time, that this was the case; and when we know that numerous examples occur, in which the symptoms, to all appearance of cow pock, take place, without the genuine disease itself being present, can we wonder that so many instances of what is called the failure of cow pock should be enumerated? There is one fact which, we think, ought to set disputes on this point at rest,-namely, that of those patients admitted into the Small-pox Hospital, who have been unsuccessfully vaccinated, not one was vaccinated by the officers of the Vaccine Institution, a fact, which goes almost the whole length of proving that where the operation for communicating the cow-pock is executed with due care, it will prove an infallible security against small-pox. Mr. Marshall adds, that a spurious pock is in existence in this country, which will produce some of the characters of the true disease; will raise pustules, and cause depressions, but which has proved to be useless as a protection. The true virus, in the infancy of the discovery, was found in cows in fourteen counties in England, although now it is very rarely, if ever, detected in these animals. It is fortunate, therefore, that the peculiar properties of this virus are of such a nature as to allow of no alarm to be felt in consequence of the modern scarcity of the pock amongst the cows, because, to use the language of the last Report of the Vaccine Board, "the virus does not appear to be weakened or deteriorated by transmission through any number of subjects, in the course of any number of years.' In point of fact, the vaccine virus, which, at the present moment, supplies the whole world with a safeguard against small-pox, owes its origin to a very inconsiderable portion, which was drawn from a single cow, just thirty years ago, by Dr. Pearson. Mr. Marshall's History of Vaccination contains many curious and novel facts. Amongst the latter, we may mention, is to be found a statement for which we were certainly unprepared, namely, that vaccination was first tried by a Mr. Jesty, in the isle of Purbeck, nearly thirty years before the time of Jenner. Our author maintains, in addition, that the cow-pock having duly influenced the system, exercises for all time to come a wholesome power over it; strengthening the body, and rendering it less liable to the invasion of disease, or more capable of supporting an attack should disease occur. The popular notion that periodical re-vaccination is essential, Mr. Marshall treats as unworthy of science; however, with great good sense and propriety, he suggests, that as re-vaccination is attended with no possible danger, and with certainly very little comparative inconvenience to the patient, medical men should comply with the entreaties of mothers to repeat the process more than once. With reference to the mode of performing the operation itself, it would be perhaps a very unacceptable misapplication of our pages to occupy them with its details. We may, however, state that Mr. Marshall recommends that the matter with which a child is to be vaccinated, should be taken from the child affected with cowpox, on or before the eighth day from that on which the latter had been infected. The criterion indeed as to the time for taking up the matter is, according to our author, to be determined by the moment in which the vesicle is formed; that stage having arrived, (it generally ensues about the fifth or sixth day) the sooner the lymph is transferred for the purpose of being introduced into the arm of another child, the better. We well remember some years ago, we fear the notion still prevails extensively,—that the faculty, and, almost to a man, the whole fraternity of magisterial, clerical, and lady amateur vaccinators in the country, were taught to consider the lymph, or matter, of cow-pock, as perfectly unexceptionable, so long as it could be obtained in a transparent state from a patient. This important error is sufficient to account for all the failures that are upon record, because all the symptoms of the true disease were mimicked with curious perfection by the counterfeit one, and thus whole families were induced to lie in repose upon the edge of the precipice into which they were liable at each moment to be plunged. Some exceedingly curious anomalies in the natural history of cow-pock are enumerated by Mr. Marshall, for which we must refer the reader to the work itself. Parents are but too apt to accuse a medical attendant of unnecessary cruelty, when he multiplies the number of small incisions on the arm of a child in the process of vaccination. But this apparent cruelty is real humanity, for it is the means, and the only one, (the matter itself being unexceptionable) of securing the infant against the chances of failure. Mr. Marshall recommends from three to five punctures on each arm. This number may appear superfluous, but it will be thought so only by those who have not had the opportunity of knowing the perils to which vaccination is liable. The danger of failure in the forming of the vesicle is obviously less in five punctures than in three; then, where the vesicle does form, it may be broken prematurely by any accident-from which we have a security in a number. The best age, according to Mr. Marshall, for the operation, is from six weeks to three months. The younger age is, in our opinion, to be preferred. In the first place, the child being vaccinated at six or seven weeks old, will be aloof from all the irritation which accompanies dentition; its exposure during the run of the cowpock to diseases that are contagious, will be, on account of its helplessness, infinitely more limited than when it grows older; and lastly, its consciousness of the seat of pain will be a mere vague sense of suffering that will never lead it, in a moment when the eye of the mother or nurse is averted, to interfere, itself, with the sore in any of its stages. Parents ought to be apprized that tearing off the covering, however unsightly it may be, which nature places over the punctures, is almost sure to invalidate the whole process, and render re-vaccination indispensable. Nothing can be more satisfactory than the confident tone with which Mr. Marshall assures us of the infallibility of cow-pock as a guarantee against the small-pox. He certainly mentions cases in which vaccination has been resisted; and, what is more singular, he adduces instances in which small-pox, after making no impression by inoculation, was contracted in the natural way. But there is no part of this Treatise deserving of more attention, or, indeed, which is calculated more to arrest it, than that portion of the work in which he undertakes to prove the extinction of smallpox in many parts of Europe, and that solely by the agency of vaccination. In France, Germany, and Italy, travellers agree that the traces of small-pox, particularly in the junior part of the inhabitants, are scarcely to be seen; whilst in England, the birth-place of this transcendant discovery, the small-pox is allowed to indulge its predatory habits with the most perfect impunity. If vaccination be but a pretence, why does the legislature recommend it at all? If it be a sovereign security against a pestilential distemper, why is it that the same legislature should give to so invaluable a blessing no more than the hesitating and half-withdrawn encouragement of a miserable pittance, scarcely sufficient almost to afford shelter to the wretched infant, even for the moment that it is under the hands of the charitable officers of the National (!) Vaccine establishment? It is astonishing how much the government has to do—or we might rather say-undo, in order to correct the laws which relate to the domestic economy of the country. They constitute, we will venture to say, the most absurd and wicked system that is to be found in any community, however barbarous. In connection with the very subject which we have now brought before the reader, we may notice an inconsistency on the part of the government no less incredible than it is perilous. They have, for many years, been appropriating sums of public money to the support of a vaccine establishment, with the avowed intention of extirpating the small-pox; but for aught that they have ordered or provided to the contrary, a worthless vagabond, who has contracted the small-pox, may wander at large, may carry the contagion wherever he pleases, without let or hindrance; and literally, in one hour, may scatter through the land more devastation than has been previously prevented by the outlay of tens of thousands of pounds sterling! This is not speculationit is downright fact. Every effort, in whatever quarter it is made, to prepare the state for a better order of things, ought to be hailed with satisfaction, and ought to be marked with gratitude. We therefore give our most cordial thanks to Mr. Marshall for a work so important, so likely to have weight amongst those whom it is of any practical use to influence in such a matter; and, above all, so seasonable at a juncture when heterodoxies, the most pernicious, are besieging the public mind on the great doctrine of vaccination. 534 ART. VI.-Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands, from 1809 to 1815. By Captain J. Kincaid. 8vo. pp. 351. London: T. and W. Boone. 1330. THE theme of military adventure during our late wars, is still, it seems, far from being exhausted. We imagined that the number of volumes which had issued from the pens of various warriors, since the appearance of the "Subaltern," must have told the world every thing that was to be said of personal history of the Wellington armies. But we were mistaken. Here comes forth another ex-combatant, a Rifle-man, who calls out that he too has his story to tell, and of all the stories which a soldier has ever told, we think it will be found the most amusing. Captain Kincaid gives himself no sort of trouble about any other regiment than the celebrated 95th, with which he fought, we believe, in every action in which it was engaged, and a pretty long list of victims the rifles of that corps numbered for the grave. As little trouble does he take in painting the scenery of the battlefields through which he ranged, or the array of the forces brought into them on either side. He describes only his own movements, and those of his immediate companions in arms; and the result is, that although we may derive from Napier a better idea of the whole of any particular battle, we obtain from Kincaid a nearer, though a more limited, view of the strife; we enter into all the dangers of the day; catch, here and there, through the dust and clouds, glimpses of the enemy; listen to the roar of the artillery and musketry; follow the murderous path of the rifles, and observe how frequently, by their wild bravery, they turn the scale, or secure the possession, of victory. And then the cheers that fill the air, come upon us with a rush that sends the blood bounding through our veins, as if the scene were going on before us in its living, moving reality. This power of putting the thing so palpably under the eye is, however, not the only or the greatest merit of Captain Kincaid. He brings us with him to the tent or the bivouac, as well as to the battle, and is, withal, so fond of a laugh, that it seems as if he went to the war rather for amusement than glory. In every situation, whether feasting or starving, for he has seens omething of both extremes-whether by his fire-side, or in the presence of the enemy, he seizes the most ludicrous objects with such felicity of tact, and brings them forward in such numbers, and with so much rapidity, that it is pop, pop, pop,-a kind of rifle-shooting of jokes throughout his book. We have not laughed so much for an age as we have in the company of this adventurer. We shall introduce him to the reader in a characteristic way, on his voyage from the Tagus to join the army at Coimbra : : Sailing at the rate of one mile in two hours, we reached Figuera's Bay at the end of eight days, and were welcomed by about a hundred hideous |