A COWPOX CHARLATAN.
Yet, incredible as it may appear, it is with the praise of this impotent cowpox, attended with no erysipelas, that the public have been deafened, and for which the most extravagant assertions are made. Dr. Martin, one of the chief producers and vendors of the article, appeared at the British Medical Association in 1881, saying, “I am called upon at times, at the very shortest notice, to vaccinate whole cities; and when I left America, I had just completed the vaccination of the city of New Haven. The custom is to send for me, or my son, wherever smallpox breaks out, with orders to vaccinate at once the entire population of the city, town, or neighbourhood. It is done immediately, the result being that an epidemic is completely stopped in a week.”
Thus spoke the charlatan, with the acquiescence of the medical assembly. When churchmen deplore the scepticism of the age, and the decay of faith, it is to be observed that the habit of mind is limited to certain modes of opinion, and that in general we are as credulous as ever. Human nature in its structure is curiously immutable. Wherein is the advantage to disbelieve in witchcraft and to believe that epidemics of smallpox can be stopped with cowpox?