That perfect innocence disarms impurity, even among those who have fallen far below the ordinary standards of virtue, I gladly admit. None but brutish men can resist the exquisite, oftentimes unconscious pleadings of things intrinsically beautiful—whether in the form of a mother's love, a hero's exaltation of spirit, a maiden's sweetness, or "The fair pure soul of a little child Such things must touch, for the time being, the hearts of the hardened; but, alas! they are so seldom far-reaching in effect or enduring in result. In very rare instances, in the cloistered nun, possibly in a jealously guarded daughter, does complete innocence now exist. And an opening flower can not go back again to the constricting clasp of its budding life without violating the law of its natural development. Shall we surround it with artificial barriers, thereby restraining and delaying its blooming, or shall we encourage it to unfold and thrive in the air in which God has placed it? No young woman, properly impressed with the noble dignity of her calling, equipped with wholesome views of life and fearless in purpose, can fail to command the respect and admiration of all who cross her path. A licentious or loose-lipped man would cower before her earnest eyes as certainly as before the appealing innocence of a child-woman, nor ever attempt to breakdown the barriers with which nobility of purpose always encircles our most womanly young women. I am glad to see that many are now awakening to the necessity of abandoning the limitations of an old method which, while throwing a halo of romance around the barbarous and superficial chivalry of our knightly ancestry, in reality fostered the growth of a system of license whose many ramifications are to-day undermining the very foundations of our social structure. The latest work of our greatest English novelist portrays, as only his master-hand can portray, the need of woman's thorough comprehension of and co-operation in the treatment of this gravest moral problem of the age. Just how a young woman may work in this field I can indicate merely in a general outline, which the tact, native ability, and earnest judgment of those interested will fill out as circumstances permit. For the proper carrying out of this work, integrity of purpose is the primal requisite. Eliminate that, and I unhesitatingly concede to the medieval, convention-ridden methods the undisputed right of way. In many of our cities our college-bred and working young women are at the head of little bands whose foremost aim is to gather in the children from the streets; for in this, as in every reform, the root of the matter lies with the children. By the circulation of healthful books and papers, much is done to counteract the baleful influence of that vile printed matter which systematically inundates our public schools. Kindly, sympathetic talks are given, rarely bearing directly on these matters, but stimulating the indifferent to take advantage of all opportunities of selfimprovement, and all making for the uplifting of a sin-burdened world. Care is taken, as these children grow older, to secure for them honest positions, to teach the unsuspecting to avoid those glittering pitfalls where the largeness of the salary offered is compensation in part only for service rendered-in reality is a premium upon loss of character and self-respect; to provide temporary homes for young women-immigrants landing helpless in strange cities, until suitable positions can be obtained for them; and, most important of all, care is taken to impregnate the working-girl element with the sense of responsibility devolving upon every woman as a person of influence, urging the dissemination of this thought throughout all their home work in some such ways as these. By urging the discipline of self-reliance and selfrestraint, and the highest standard of purity, delicacy, and strength, equally on brothers and sisters; by discouraging the witnessing of certain popular but none the less indecent plays; by watching carefully over the reading of the younger members of the family, discountenancing the perusal of our so-called town papers by the boys as well as the girls (for no one can touch pitch and remain undefiled); by setting the example of avoiding the reading of details of popular divorce scandals; especially by guarding against that ubiquitous erotic literature which, masquerading in the attractive, fantastic garb of beautiful illustrations, claiming the prestige of realistic or classic origin, when divested of all its false trappings is, in all its hideousness, but a powerful excitant, stimulating the prurient imagination of the inexperienced, thereby starting many a child on the treacherous path down which it is so pitifully easy for the untaught to slip, and whose starting-point it is all but impossible to regain. This form of reading-matter is the most successful of all the recruiting officers from the vast army of the shameless. To carry this work on helpfully and practically, to gain a positive algebraic sum from these many efforts, must not our young women "know of the existence" of fallen men and women? Could they increase their power, here or in their home-influence, by "seeming to be ignorant of the existence of such people"? Ah! these young women are to be the mothers of our race: shall we not arm them with the knowledge wherewith to breast the future? Will not this knowledge in the average intelligent young woman, combined with the unsullied heart which is her birthright, make her a more worthy co-operator with her husband; a stronger spiritual sympathizer; one who will not flinch when confronted with the privilege of making noble women of her daughters, of saving her sons from falling victims to the sin which is dragging down to ruin so many of our finest young men ? "The height of the pinnacle," says Emerson, "depends upon the breadth of the base." Give, then, to our young women this broad basis of knowledge. as you wish the height attainable to be proportionate and exalted. T PROTECTIVE INOCULATION FOR CHOLERA. BY S. T. ARMSTRONG, M. D., PH. D. I would be difficult to say where the idea first originated of the possibility of artificially producing occult changes in the organism of a healthy individual, so that, if exposed to a contagious or an infectious disease, there would be an acquired resistance that would prevent the development of such a disease. Tradition states that, in the case of small-pox, the custom existed in South Wales of rubbing matter from the pustules of a small-pox patient on the skin of a healthy person's arm, in order to protect the latter individual from acquiring that malady; and, for a similar purpose, it was the custom in the Scottish Highlands to wind about the wrists of children worsted threads that had been moistened with such matter. Inoculation of healthy persons with variolous matter had long been practiced in Oriental countries when Lady Mary Wortley Montagu introduced it into England. And as recently as our civil war this procedure has been employed, because the usually mild attack of small-pox following the inoculation is less dangerous than the ordinarily acquired form of that disease. The discovery of the protection afforded by vaccination suggested new working theories; for it was as remarkable that the contagious principle of small-pox should undergo some modification in the human system as it was that it was decidedly modified in the cow. It has been demonstrated by many experimenters that, in a calf that has not had cow-pox, inoculation of small-pox virus will cause that disease; and, furthermore, that matter from the eruption on the calf's udder will, if inoculated in an unvaccinnated person, produce the well-known phenomena of vaccinia. Science, accordingly, learned two facts from this: that the virus of a disease may be diminished, or attenuated, in its development in an animal organism other than that in which it found its most poisonous growth; and that this attenuated virus, introduced into the organism of an individual susceptible to the influence of the original disease, protected that individual by conferring an artificial immunity. To these known facts regarding small-pox was added that knowledge gained during years of observation by both medical and lay men, that one attack of a contagious or infectious disease protected the individual, as a rule, from a subsequent attack if exposed thereto in later years. Little or no perceptible alteration existed in the human organism, and yet it had acquired some singular quality that enabled it to resist the infection of that disease if ever again exposed thereto. It is to-day believed by excellent authorities that the processes by which this immunity is obtained vary as widely as do the processes of disease themselves. Each of these infectious diseases produces in the blood certain poisonous substances; and as man can be, so to speak, familiarized with a poisonous drug by the administration of doses that gradually increase from one that is harmless to one that ordinarily would be at once fatal, so there is probably a similar Mithridatic transformation in the character of the fluids of the body that have once met and conquered the toxic principle of an infectious or contagious disease. Working on this hypothesis scientists have been experimenting with the introduction into the animal organism of the poisonous substances called toxines, toxalbumins, leucomaïnes, or ptomaïnes, that are produced by the micro-organisms of the various diseases, in order to determine the possibility of preventing the susceptibility for acquiring these diseases. The discovery of a method that would protect an individual from cholera would be of great usefulness. For in India, the home of that disease, the average annual mortality therefrom in the cities is 332, and in the country 152 per 1,000 living. The army statistics show that 2:49 per cent of the European soldiers are admitted to the hospital for cholera, while only 0.95 per cent of the native soldiers are admitted for the disease; but the mortality, 33.69 per cent for the former, 35'5 per cent for the latter, is almost equal. In the various epidemic manifestations of cholera in various parts of the world the mortality has often exceeded 50 per cent of those attacked. In 1884 and 1885 cholera was epidemic in southern Europe, and in Spain in the latter year the official report states that there were almost one hundred and twenty thousand deaths. There were fifty-one persons affected in each thousand living, and the mortality was 36 per cent. These statistics stimulated investigators to attempt to solve the problem of affording immunity to cholera. In March of 1885 Dr. J. Ferran, living in a small town in Catalonia, sent a communication to the French Academy of Sci ences in which he described some experiments he had made with the specific organism of cholera, the comma bacillus, Koch's comma bacillus, the cholera spirillum, or the cholera vibrio, as it has been variously termed. By experiment it had been learned that the cholera spirillum, like many other micro-organisms, would develop plentifully in certain nutritive substances, such as a very rich beef broth or jelly if kept at a certain temperature. Such an artificial propagation of a micro-organism is called "a culture" of that organism. Ferran found that the maximum virulence of the cholera spirillum was obtained in a culture of rich, slightly alkaline bouillon, and that from thirty to sixty drops of this culture would kill a guinea-pig, if inoculated under the animal's skin; but, if a smaller dose was inoculated, a local inflammation followed that might slough though the ulceration would heal spontaneously without forming pus; and this animal would not be subsequently affected by the injection of a quantity of the culture of the cholera spirillum that would rapidly prove fatal in an unprotected animal. Ferran reasoned that if such a result could be obtained in the organism of a lower animal, why could it not be secured in the highest animal? Accordingly, he injected hypodermically in man, fifteen drops of his virulent culture: a hot, painful tumor, with local fever, and malaise followed, but without choleraic discharges from the bowels; and these symptoms disappeared in twenty-four hours. If a similar quantity was reinjected in the man a week later no general and few local symptoms followed. He therefore considered that by these injections of graduated doses he could arouse in each person's system that resistance to the disease that has been heretofore referred to. He did not believe that the cholera spirillum multiplied in the cellular tissue that is beneath the skin, but that it produced in the tumor formed at the point of inoculation a rapidly diffusible toxine that exercised some influence upon the nervous centers. The dangers of an attack of, and death from, cholera begin to disappear five days after the first inoculation, and each successive inoculation increases the guarantee of immunity; three inoculations, each of thirty drops of the bouillon culture, at intervals of five days, produced a profound immunity. He continued his experiments, and in 1886 sent another memoir to the French Academy of Sciences, wherein he stated that cultures of the comma spirillum in which the living organism had been destroyed by a high temperature, would, when inoculated, confer a tolerance that successfully resisted the effects of the living spirillum. He furthermore stated that an active principle was generated by the spirillum, that could be isolated by certain VOL. XLII.-15 |