THE ARGUMENT AGAINST VACCINATION.
An English physician opposes compulsory vaccination on the ground that it prevents further discovery, and compels medical science to halt at just that point, because it forbids experiment upon methods of prevention that may prove to be better. He says: "It stereotypes a particular stage of scientific knowledge, and bars further progress. If I remind you of the great improvement thought to have been made by the introduction of inoculation by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu at the end of the last century, and ask you to suppose that Parliament might then have passed an act to compel every one to be inoculated, you will, I think, see what is meant. This method was tried for some years with great éclat, but afterward it was found to spread the smallpox so much that an act of Parliament was passed to forbid its use. Vaccination, introduced by Dr. Jenner, has followed, and this was another step in advance. I was the first child in my father's family vaccinated seventy-one years ago, several elder brothers and sisters having been inoculated. Both methods answered in our cases. But for many years I have been satisfied that other diseases besides the modified small-pox (called cow-pox) are now introduced by the old vaccine, and have steadily refused to use it, seeking rather, at increased trouble and expense, new vaccine. And the question which comes forcibly to the front is this: May not some other preservative be discovered which shall be a further improvement? This question cannot be answered so long as vaccination is compelled by law. There are no persons upon whom experiments can be tried." So far as it goes, this is valid ground for criticising vaccination laws. But the proof that small-pox is more disastrous to the human race than the evils that vaccination brings with it is so strong that there is little likelihood society will subject itself to the attacks of the greater enemy in order to avoid the lesser. The evils of the old system of using vaccine taken from human beings for new inoculations are now no longer inevitable. Fresh vaccine direct from the calf, and called "Bovine," can be had everywhere. A large establishment for obtaining it is situated near New York.
CURRENT LITERATURE.
Colonel Dodge's "Plains of the Great West"[O] is one of the most entertaining and important books of the kind we have met with. Whether he treats of the chase, the natural history of the wild animals found on our continent, or the Indians, he draws upon abundant resources of observation and experience. His description of the much talked of "plains" is new. He distinguishes three of these, the first lying next the mountains, the next known as the "High Plains," being to the eastward, and finally the broad surface of the lower plains. As the high plains are more fertile than either of the others (owing to diversities of soil), we have the singular effect of a country suddenly becoming more fertile as the interior of the continent is more deeply penetrated. Of other peculiarities exhibited in this region our author gives a vivid account, and it requires all our faith in his accuracy to have confidence in the following description of the famous Bad Lands, the scene of so much Scientific search:
The ground is covered with fragments of the bones of animals and reptiles, and the man must indeed be insensible who can pass unmoved through these most magnificent burying-grounds of animals extinct before the advent of his race.
Almost everywhere throughout the whole length and breadth of the plains are found, in greater or less profusion, animal remains, fossils, shells, and petrifactions. Bones are very numerous and in great variety, from the saurian and mastodon to the minutest reptile, ranging in point of time from the remotest ages to the present day.
His description of other features of this vast region is full of interest. The two remarkable belts of forest, called the cross timbers, stretching for a hundred miles through a trackless country, but not increasing their width beyond their normal eight to twelve miles; the extraordinary rivers, half sand, half water, the mazes of which confound the Indian, usually so acute in the field; the sand streams, which repeat in that material the puzzle of the cross timbers, and are even more inexplicable. While the desert does not narrow the cross timber belts, nor water widen them, the wind seems to have no effect on these sand streams, though the material that composes them is so light as to rise on every puff of air. Like the cross timbers, the sand streams pursue their way across the country, regarding neither wet nor dry, hill nor stream. Their origin lies in forces not yet known, and though they may seem to be the sport of existing conditions, they really maintain themselves indifferent to their surroundings. Things like these prove that Americans need not go to the Sahara for novel aspects of nature. Our author has a quick perception of what is striking in these scenes, and describes them in vigorous and pictorial language.