evils arising from a continued compression of the lungs. The so-called typhoid appearances, are always bad, indicating as they do a purulent or sanious deposit; and if pneumothorax be already present, there is little hope. In cases in which the deposit is more serous, the prognosis is unfavourable. A sudden additional effusion, attended with acute symptoms, is always to be dreaded. In hæmorrhagic pleuritis, cure is never effected; and we should be exceedingly cautious in stating our opinion of the course of the disease whenever we have recognised a hæmorrhagic effusion; for tuberculosis is a very proteus of diseases, and the anticipations of to-day are stultified by the events of to-morrow. The fatal termination alone is certain, but the turns and duration of the disease is altogether uncertain. The prognosis is naturally rendered unfavourable by all complications of the disease, with other dangerous affections, as well as by debility and bad habit of body of the patient.

CHAPTER XII.

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A FEW EXTRACTS FROM THE WORK, DEFENCE OF HAHNEMANN AND HIS DOCTRINES," INCLUDING AN EXPOSURE OF DR. ALEXANDER WOOD'S " HOMEOPATHY UNMASKED.

It would appear that in every age the reluctance of mankind to reform their opinions has betrayed itself in the same way, and that the genius of discovery has a heavy penalty to endure a sort of tax to the demons of falsehood and ignorance, by way of compensation for the injuries they receive. Truths in all departments of research are so far akin, that every genius of evil bands with his fellows, as in a common cause, be the discovery of what sort it may, to stimulate the works of perversion and abuse. The demon of false science needs his tribute of distortion and sophistry; and the demon of profligacy must have his due in personal calumny and foul insinuation. Harvey did not escape the universal lot. When his discovery could no longer be gainsayed, the rancour of his adversaries was turned against his moral character.

We may inform the general reader, that the officebearers of the Royal Society of London declined to print the "Inquiry into the causes and effects of the Variola Vaccina" in its transactions; and in reply to Jenner's application, gave him the "friendly admonition, that, as he had gained some reputation by his former papers to the Royal Society, it was advisable not to print this, lest it injure his established credit."† Jenner was, therefore, obliged to publish his treatise for himself in 1798, confident that no patronage was needed for a work which promulgated a discovery of such incalculable utility.

* In the conclusion of his work, the learned author observes,-"That the fact of this pamphlet being anonymous should not impair its authority, as the original sources from which the statements are derived are cited;-and that our only reasons for withholding our name, is, that we would not have it coupled even in the way of opposition, with that of the author of "Homœopathy Unmasked."

† Moore, p. 20.

A

"A great fermentation instantly arose, and the subject was hotly discussed, both in professional circles and in general society. Many of the sanguine, and a few of the profound, were at once convinced of the truth of Jenner's opinions; but the cautious suspended their judgment, while the superficial and self-sufficient pronounced at once that the whole was an absurdity." We may safely presume that the gentlemen who deserved to be distinguished by the epithets which we have put in italics, formed a very notable majority of the profession in that day, as they do in the present. Yet, besides these gentlemen of the Wood class, it appears that "some grave and learned persons doubted all the assertions contained in the inquiry, and of course set no value on the reasoning connected with them."* The "ignoble opposition" will be found, in all its humiliating details, in the works from which we have quoted; and we recommend to Dr.Wood the attentive perusal of those samples of kindred liberality, truthfulness, and wisdom which he will find in the productions of doughty Benjamin Mosely and veracious William Rowley; because, as he has an aptitude for blushing, he will have abundant occasion for the exercise of his talent, when he perceives how closely his spirit resembles theirs, and how surely he is destined-if destiny can be predicated, without a laughable use of the term, of a writer so ephemeral-soon to occupy the same place with them in the estimation of the public.

Does the parallel between the persecutions of former times and our own hold good in respect to the motives as well as to the conduct of the opposition? "The present controversy (says the historian of vaccination) did not arise, like many medical disputes, from the obscurity of the subject but from another prolific cause. The smallpox was a source of considerable emolument to every member of the Faculty of Physic. So perilous a fever called for the costly, regular attendance of physicians; and as the act of inoculation was in the surgeon's province,

Baron's Life of Jenner. Vol. 1 p. 302.

this often secured to him the future treatment; while the apothecaries profited by compounding the prescriptions of both. Unless, then, the whole practitioners of medicine had also been practitioners of virtue, they could not unanimously have approved of a project likely to destroy so lucrative a branch of business."-p. 37.

The homoeopathic system threatens far more grievous detriment to all classes of practitioners than vaccination could ever have done. The greater part of the emoluments of medical men of the old school arises from the imperfections of their practice. Whether they have the wisdom as many, especially the more experienced of them, profess, to "do very little, and let nature take her own way;" or, with the impatience of youth and inexperience, deal pill and potion right and left, cut, burn, blister, bleed, and purge, in abundant pennyworth for their fee; their patients lie long on their hands, for the most part, and the attendance is profitable in proportion. Again, the utter incompetency of the means they use to cure a multitude of chronic ailments, so far from being an evil to them, is a great and universal benefit; for the unhappy persons on whom they practice, failing to find relief from one, hie to another of the same trade; and thus, from year to year, make the dismal round, spending, it may be, all their substance on physicians, like the woman of old. Homœopathy, by curing recent diseases more promptly, and besides curing more certainly, demanding less frequent visits to those labouring under the more protracted, just because the operation of its medicines does not need to be suspected and watched, as is notorious in the case of the allopathic drugs, cannot fail to make deep inroads into professional incomes, and to lessen very much the number of practitioners that shall be needed to meet the altered circumstances of the public. Then, as to the apothecaries, they of all persons connected with the profession have the most reason to dread the general adoption of homœopathy; whether, as in Scotland, they subsist by merely vending drugs; or, as is the case in England, are at the same time practitioners, who are

paid by the quantity of medicine which their employers swallow. The reader will perceive what sort of motives these "practitioners of virtue" have for their opposition to homœopathy. And if there are some whose disinclinations to examine the improved system we cannot fairly ascribe to such sources, we shall not be far wrong in suspecting that nine-tenths of them owe their reluctance to a dislike of innovations which would overturn the system with which all their own labours are identified, and necessitates the relinquishing of dogmata and methods by which they have been accustomed to be guided, for elementary studies and a new experience, not to be acquired without much application and fatigue, both of body and mind.

Vaccination was not many years in triumphing over all opposition; but we question if many of our readers have sufficiently considered the means by which its general adoption was so speedily effected. The simplicity of the subject, and the ease with which its pretensions could be determined, gave it, doubtless, a great advantage over Homœopathy, in respect to the time during which the opposition to its claims could be successfully exerted. The latter does not aim at the introduction of a new practice into a solitary branch of the medical art, but demands for the field of its sweeping reformation the whole territory of practical medicine; joins issue with the old system on every inch of its possessions, and has to beat it from its fastness among the morasses of false experience, and the jungling of crude hypotheses. Yet it was not to the mere limitations of its object and the simplicity of its character that Vaccination owed its rapid extension among the practitioners of medicine. It is a fact, not the less undeniable because overlooked, that the part which the general public, and especially persons of rank and influence, took in reference to it, had a prodigious effect in converting the profession to the practice, and in silencing the clamour of opposition. The King, the Prince of Wales, the Duke of York and Clarence, Lords Egremont, Hervey, Aylesbury, Ossory, and many