passed the best competitive examination on the optical principles underlying the construction of microscopes.

Each examination demanded of the competitors a thorough mastery of the whole subject of optics, and he who won the prize felt that his labor of months had been amply rewarded, while those who failed consoled themselves with the fact that they had learned much that would be of value to them in after life.

The donors could not have chosen a happier way in which to arouse an interest in this charming branch of science, or in which to raise the standard of microscopy and histology in our medical schools.

The first year of its award the prize microscope was carried off by a student of the Chicago University. Then, for two successive years, the Chicago Medical College furnished the successful competitors. Following this, for two successive years again, it was taken by students of the Chicago Homœopathic Medical College.

The impulse thus given to this line of study will be felt for many years.

IT LOOKS LIKE A TRIUMPH. On the first day of this month M. Pasteur read a report before the Academie des Sciences, of Paris, reviewing his work in rabies inoculation, and claiming that his efforts have been crowned with success.

Since the inoculation of Joseph Meister, on the 6th of July, 1885, M. Pasteur has treated three hundred and fifty persons who have been bitten by supposed rabid animals, with but one death, and that occurred in a patient whom M. Pasteur treated under protest yielding only to the anguishing entreaties of the child's parents and the urgencies of his colleague because the period of incubation had passed before the subject was presented to him for treatment.

No one among M. Pasteur's admirers pretends to claim that all these three hundred and forty-nine people would have had the

hydrophobia but for the treatment which they received, but it now rests upon those who deride and deny, to explain why none of them have so suffered.

The burden of proof is now thrown upon those who doubt.

Never before in the history of medicine has there been a record of three hundred and fifty cases of dog-bite, with but a SINGLE death from hydrophobia!

And this single case does not weaken the position-it strengthens it! It is the one exception which proves the rule, and it is of all the more value since M. Pasteur, before operating, declared that it had passed the period when his method would have any protective power.

From Dr. Hedges' able article on Hydrophobia, in this number of the ERA, and from other sources, the following table may be made up:

According to these data, the number of deaths to those bitten averages about one in four.

Why, then, has there been but a single death among M. Pasteur's three hundred and fifty cases? Why have there not been nearly ninety deaths-the number which we would have a right to expect? Why is it that not one death has occurred among the one hundred patients treated prior to Dec. 15, 1885? Why is it that there has not been a death among the first two hundred treated?

We do not understand this, unless it be due to the prophylactic power of the treatment which they have received at the hands of M. Pasteur.

Will those who pretend to know more about the subject than either M. Pasteur or the members of the French Academy of Sci

ences, please explain it so that we may comprehend?

THE MEDICAL PRESS ON VACCINA

TION.

The editor of THE MEDICAL ERA sent communications to the editors of the leading medical journals in all parts of the country, making this inquiry:

Do you believe in the efficacy of vaccination, and advocate its use?

On reading the following replies, one is led to exclaim, with Dr. Porter, of Gaillard's Medical Journal: "Your inquiry seems a very extraordinary one at this late date!"

And so it is, for it is a subject concerning which Dr. Connor, of Detroit, truthfully says:

"If there is any medical procedure more certainly established than the efficacy of vaccination in protecting against small-pox, I am ignorant of its existence."

And Dr. Alison, of London, after reviewing an overwhelming mass of testimony on the subject, went so far as to say:

"From such evidence the inference is inevitable, that he who disputes it is equally unreasonable as he who opposes in like manner any proposition in Euclid."

The medical profession is, practically, unanimous on this subject, and the evidence which we here offer in support of this statement, is only a fragment of that which has been presented in the past, and might be again, did occasion require.

The anti-vaccinists simply do not understand the subject concerning which they carelessly express opinions. We do not believe that there is more than one medical journal in the United States devoted to the interests of the Montreal riots. Here is our evidence:

Do you believe in the efficacy of vaccination, and advocate its use?

[Cincinnati Lancet and Clinic.]

YES! CINCINNATI, O.,

January, 1886.

[The Canada Medical Record.]

I do most thoroughly believe in vaccination, and on every opportunity advocate its use. I feel very strongly on the point, and look upon anti-vaccinists as little short of fools. I have been twenty-two years in practice, and have never had any trouble from vaccination. I never have had a case of small-pox in a child or grown person whom I have vaccinated. During the late epidemic here I have had only two cases of small-pox in my practice: one a child, unvaccinated; one an adult-very light case-vaccinated (in Ireland) in infancy.

FRANCIS W. CAMPBELL, M. D., Editor. Prof. Prac. of Med., Univ. of Bishop's Coll. MONTREAL,

Jan. 27, 1886.

[American Lancet.]

If there is any medical procedure more certainly established than the efficacy of vaccination in protecting against small-pox, I am ignorant of its existence.

But in using the word vaccination I am careful to say that I mean by it more than many physicians are apt to mean. My idea respecting vaccination is briefly this: It must be done by the doctor only, and the course of the vaccine disease be watched as carefully

as a case of small-pox till the end of the case. I mean that only the best virus should be used, that the process be first done before teething, and repeated at seven or thereabouts, again at twelve, and still again after puberty. I advocate its intelligent, efficient performance upon every person. Further, I believe that the laity should be instructed in the facts pertaining to this process till they will of themselves seek to be vaccinated in the proper manner. Properly vaccinated the people of the United States (the wider the area of perfect vaccination the better the protection) would be practically invulnerable to attacks of small-pox.

LEARTUS CONNOR, M. D., Editor.

DETROIT, MICH., Jan. 26, 1886.

[New York Medical Record.] Medical opinion is practically unanimous. on the subject of the utility of vaccination, and it is idle to discuss its claims.

GEO. F. SHRADY, M. D., Editor.

Oct. 17, 1885.

THE MEDICAL COLLEGES ON VAC

CINATION.

The question-Do you believe in the efficacy of vaccination, and advocate its use?— was sent to those professors in all our colleges whose province it is to lecture on the subject of small-pox. The following are the replies received:

["Homœopathic," Cleveland.] Most emphatically, yes!

PROF. G. J. JONES, M.D.

["Hahnemann," Philadelphia.]

Your inquiry came this a. m., on the day of my lecture upon vaccination. In answer would say I am a believer in vaccination, and teach its practice.

["Hahnemann," Chicago.]

I am a firm believer in the efficacy of vaccination, and I teach its practice to my class. PROF. T. S. HOYNE, M.D.

["Homœopathic," Chicago.]

I am a firm believer in the efficacy of proper vaccination and re-vaccination. When duly and efficiently performed, vaccination as a preventive of small-pox has been a blessing to the race. PROF. J. R. KIPPAX, M.D.

["Pulte," Cincinnati.]

No. The majority of all cases and even of deaths from the disease have been vaccinated. While it (vaccination) has no power to prevent the disease, it doubtless induces others often worse than small-pox.

PROF. J. D. Buck, M.D.

WHAT THE DOCTORS SAY.

I can recollect the time, before vaccination became at all general, when one could not join in a social gathering or walk the streets of a town without meeting persons disfigured for life, and often rendered absolutely repulsive by the destructive action of small-pox upon the skin.-Dr. S. Yeldham.

I should like to have said a few words on the subject of vaccination as a prophylactic, but it seems to me that it is almost absurd for anyone to discuss that subject at the present day. Dr. Wm. C. Richardson.

Vaccination has been a great boon to the human race.--Dr. I. T. Talbot.

Jenner is now regarded as the greatest benefactor who ever arose in the history of medicine. Dr. George Wyld.

Statistics advanced by the anti-vaccinists cannot for a moment be compared, either in

weight or reliability, with the overwhelming

amount of evidence advanced in favor of universal vaccination.-Dr. S. Yeldham.

If vaccine matter is spurious, of course it cannot be relied on; if genuine and properly introduced, I consider it as certain-as infallible -as any agent can be.-Dr. E. R. Mc

Manus.

I have heard of very few cases of smallpox where vaccination has been practiced,— Dr. D. S. Smith.

If there is any point established in medicine, it is that vaccination is a preventive of small-pox. If that is doubtful, tell me what

there is certain in medicine?-Dr. Pemberton Dudley.

There is probably no fact better established by experience, than that of the reliability of vaccination, when properly done, as a prophylactic against small-pox.-Dr. B. F. Dake. About the year 1843 anti-vaccination was agitated. Small-pox broke out in Monroeville, O. Dr. D. L. Cole had five children that were never vaccinated-he denounced the practice. He did not believe that smallpox was as contagious as represented. After visiting a patient who had small-pox, he returned home without using any precaution in regard to his clothing. The children all took the disease, and three of them died -Dr. D. H. Beckwith.

The wickedness of encouraging the antivaccination agitation could not be more strikingly proved than by alluding to the outbreak of small-pox in Rotherhite. An antivaccinator, Escott by name, who had none of children vaccinated, has lost his wife and two children by small-pox, and two others have had the disease. Escott spread the borhood, and sixteen persons have been redisease to nearly every house in the neighmoved to the hospital. The two oldest of his children had been vaccinated in infancy and escaped. Brit. Med. Journal.

HYDROPHOBIA. By S. P. HEDGES, M. D. CHICAGO.

The word hydrophobia is from two Greek words, and signifies a "dread of water.” Notwithstanding the objections to this word as generally employed, it is perhaps better adapted than any other to the disease as manifest in man.

call a disease hydrophobia, when there was It would be straining a point, I think, to dread of liquids. Yet we are aware, at the same time, that this is only one symptom. A mere dread of water, with difficulty or inability to swallow it, does not constitute hydrophobia or rabies proper. There are other grave and fatal symptoms. But this dread of water is the characteristic symptom of this disease; is always present in man, and very properly gives name to the affection.

But the term rabies is more applicable when dogs and other of the lower animals are affected with the disease. Dogs, when rabid, are never afraid of water, but eagerly lap it