The Science of Therapeutics - Classical Homeopathy Online

Full text of "The Science of Therapeutics: According to the Principles of Homeopath...Page 454 of 653Treatment, Before speaking of the remedial agents that mayhave to be used for small-pox, we will express our views concernithe great preventive of small-pox, vaccination. "Without questioning the right of the State to require the individual citizen to m688 Acute and Chronic Contagious Diseases.himself or his children sick ; without meaning to inquire whethermorbid matter can be transmitted by vaccination, for this mightbe avoided with due caution ; simply looking at the fact whethervaccination is really useful or not, we feel bound, from this sinpoint of view, to declare our opposition to tliis proceeding, forreason that we do not believe the vaccine-virus possessed of theleast prophylactic virtue against variola, by which we mean againthe transformation of the pock into a suppurating pustule. Ifepidemic small-pox is so much less dangerous and extensive at thepresent time than it was a hundred years ago, this can be just aswell accounted for by the undeniable fact that epidemics graduallincrease and decrease in intensity, as by the universally practisprocess of vaccination. If persons who are not vaccinated, die atthe present time more frequently of variola than those who are, tcause may be that only those remain unvaccinated at the presenttime, who, living in the worst conditions of society, are more apto fall victims to epidemic diseases. The last epidemic among ushas shown very satisfactorily that the danger of small-pox isderived from accompanying local circumstances, not so much fromthe fact that vaccination had been neglected. In the city of Hanover, where we have not had any malignant epidemics since theyear 1846, we have had numerous small-pox cases for the least yeawith only few deaths, whereas more northward, in our marshydistricts, where severe epidemics have prevailed during the lastyears, small-pox has likewise claimed a larger number of victimsspite of vaccination. We, therefore, have no hesitation in admitting that we belong to the number of those who repudiate vaccination, and we favor the more and more rapidly spreading movementthat has been initiated against this measure. It may be difficultentirely do away with this peculiar institution ; but what can beaccomplished is, that, if people insist upon being vaccinated, thoperation should be performed under appropriate circumstances.We deem the following points essential to such a purpose: Frequenrenewal of the lymph by cowpock- virus ; — extreme precaution inselecting the children from whom the vaccine is taken ;of the statute which makes it obligatory upon parents to have thechildren vaccinated in the first year of infancy ; — ^insertion ovaccine in only a few places with a view of diminishing as much apossible all unfavorable consequences to the organism. In thisrespect we maintain that, if vaccination has at all any protectinvirtue, one pustule ought to protect as much as a dozen. SpeakingVariola. ^.^ 589: )http://www.archive.org/stream/sciencetherapeu00kafkgoog/sciencetherapeu00kafkgoog_djvu.txt