This is the same fact referred to by Dr. Skinner farther back. .
But we find no principle enunciated ++here by the Athenaeum; nevertheless, the results must be in obedience to the law of similars in prophylactics – homoeoprophylaxis.
Here M. Pasteur and his fellow-workers, just the same as the Jennerian vaccinators, and the anti-vaccinators-here, I say, they practically ignore the element time, and the altering nature of the protection. When people speak of “the necessity of re- vaccination, because vaccination loses its effect”, time is roughly reckoned with, but an arbitrary limit is set entirely devoid of any scientific basis.
On the other hand it has been often noticed that a healthy person gets variola soon after vaccination, which to my mind militates in no wise against a belief in the protective power of vaccination, but is to be interpreted as meaning that the vaccinial infection was more than enough; just the same as a little Aconite will lessen feverishness, while much Aconite will make the feverishness worse.
Continuing now to let x stand for the difference between a vaccinated and a non-vaccinate, we must keep well before our minds that x represents the remaining effects of a disease – vaccinosis and this is not a constant quantity; in an otherwise healthy person it must be continually growing less and less, and finally become extinct.
Therefore to determine whether vaccination protects against variola or not, we must first have the date of the vaccination in each case of varioloid or small- pox in the vaccinate. Were a considerable number of such cases tabulated, we might arrive at some idea as to how long a given vaccination continues to affect the individual sufficiently for the vaccinosis to leave no room for variola, provided always that the vaccinations were unipotential.
IS IT POSSIBLE FOR VACCINATION TO BE CONTINGENTLY EFFECTIVE, AND YET FOR THE MORTALITY FROM SMALL-POX TO BE GREATER?.
This question crops up and presents itself to ones mind thus: Vaccination protects from variola say the vaccinators.
Quoth the anti-vaccinators – That is impossible, because some of those who have been vaccinated do get variola, and the mortality from variola has actually increased, so where is the prevention?.
How can these things be?.
Let us ponder these points. And first of all let us not confound morbility with mortality. We really want three words to express our meaning well. Firstly, mortality , or the number of deaths; secondly morbidity, or the quantity of ill-health of the living; and thirdly morbility, or the number of those who actually take a given disease. I ask forgiveness for this word- coining; no one need use the words if they are useless or objectionable, but it seems to me that these three ideas must be accurately expressed if we are to adequately discuss the question.
In judging of the ill-effects of vaccination, only the mortality is considered as a general rule by the pro-vaccinists. By giving attention to the vaccinational morbidity (the vaccinosis of this little treatise), I have been enabled to do some notably good clinical work, and I put the facts observed before the world as a duty, and really unwillingly, as I am sure to be much misunderstood, but that cannot be helped, and besides I am now wandering away from my text.
Before we can scientifically reckon with vaccination we must take accurate account of the morbility, as well as of the mortality and morbidity. The practical physician alone has the necessary scope for making observation in respect of the morbidity arising from vaccination, i.e., vaccinosis. Unfortunately it is completely ignored as a general rule.
Any statistician can observe and arrange the facts relating to its morbidity, and the Registrar General might be got to deal with them as he does with those relating to mortality. But, I must submit that mortality statistics alone without morbility statistics cannot possibly lead to any real settlement of the vaccination question, for we want to know not only how many die of small-pox, but also how many get it and get over it.
Herein, it seems to me. lies the kernel of the nut.
And not only do we want to know how many get small-pox and recover, and how many get it and die of it, but also what is the morbidity of those protected by the vaccination.
What is the ordinary liability of the perfectly healthy to catch small-pox, i.e., what is their prospective morbility, morbidity, and mortality?.
Assuming that vaccination does protect, relatively and contingently, what do we pay for the protection, not in money, but in vaccinial morbidity, or vaccinosis?.
It seems to me probable that ordinary Jennerian vaccination is not efficiently protective in those whose proneness to catch small-pox is very great, while it is efficiently protective where the proneness to catch small-pox is less.
If we reflect upon this for a while we shall see that there is nothing unreasonable in this proposition.
The unvaccinated are not equally prone to catch small-pox; we vaccinate them all alike.
Now is it even conceivable that the vaccination has rendered them equally immune, when some of the unvaccinated were already immune?.
My line of argument here stands thus :- Vaccination is preventive of small-pox, when the proneness to catch it is small; and when the proneness to catch it is small, those who do get small-pox do not die of it, therefore vaccination affects the morbility rather than the mortality of small-pox. I refer to the ordinary Jennerian vaccination, and not to microscopic homoeoprophylaxis.
If I am right then we can affirm on aphoristic grounds that ordinary microscopic vaccination will diminish the morbility but increase the mortality, i.e., fewer will get it, but more will die: the mortality will be greater.
How so?.
Vaccination is a homoeopathic diseasing measure; one disease is given to prevent a like one-vaccinia to prevent variola. If the diseasing process of vaccination fail to protect, then the vaccinated person will be more likely to die because there is the homoeoprophylactic aggravation: the two diseases combine to kill the patient just the same as too much of the homoeopathic remedy will aggravate the disease to which it is highly homoeopathic: with, perhaps, the like result.
This is manifest, for in vaccinating a person we are diseasing him; we communicate vaccinosis to him: if he, in addition to the vaccinosis, now get small-pox he is more likely to die the worse he has the vaccinosis.
If y represent the prospective mortality of the unvaccinated and x the difference between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated, i.e., vaccinosis, then the chances of dying of the vaccinated person who gets small-pox are y + x.
DYNAMIC OR MICROSCOPIC HOMOEOPROPHYLAXIS.
WHEN In began with this little essay I meant it to be on the one hand a contribution to the clinical history on Thuja occidentalis, and on the other hand a plea for the recognition of the clinical importance of vaccinosis, particularly in chronic neurotic headaches. But as I went on I felt impelled to say a few words on the subject of what I have called homoeoprophylaxis, and now I cannot bring myself to concluded without dipping a little into the dynamics of preventive medicine according to the law of likes.
Strewn about in literature there are examples of small dose homoeoprophylaxis; see Hahnemannian homoeopathy.
Then vaccine “lymph”-pus-has been dynamized more homoeopathic and given as a prophylactic against small-pox in epidemic times, and apparently with effect. Thuja occidentalis has been used in like manner by more than one homoeopathic practitioner, and they claim that it is effective. The eminent Dr. David Wilson of London, has, I hear, long used Thuja, in dynamic dose, as a sure preventive of variola.
Speaking for myself, I have for the last nine years been in the habit of using vaccine matter, in the thirtieth homoeopathic centesimal potency, whenever small-pox was about, and I have thus far not seen anyone so treated get variola.
Dr. Masoto inoculated the diphtheritic exudation in an epidemic of diphtheria, and that with success.
It seems to me that the requirement of the age is to systematize the prevention of disease according to the law of similar, AND IN DYNAMIC DOSE. Clearly the dynamic dose is essential, or at any rate the very small dose, for otherwise the homoeoprophylactic aggravation would be a serious detriment in every way. It is easy to see that M. Pasteur and his fellow workers are sailing down straight on this rock, whereon they are sure to suffer shipwreck. .
M. Pasteurs latest communications to the Academie des Sciences are as follows:.
“If the virus of rabies be transmitted from the dog to the monkey, and then from monkey to monkey, it will be found that after each transmission the virulence of the virus had become enfeebled. If the virus thus enfeebled be transmitted to a dog, or an animal of that species, it will remain still attenuated. By a few transmission of the virus from monkey o monkey, there can easily be obtained a virus so attenuated as shall never communicated by obtained a virus so attenuated as shall never communicated by hypodermic inoculations, the disease to a dog.
Burnett was one of the first to speak about vaccination triggering illness. This was discussed in his book, Vaccinosis, published in 1884. He introduced the remedy Bacillinum. He authored twenty books, including the much loved "Fifty Reason for Being a Homeopath." He was the editor of The Homoeopathic World.