Remarks on "Pasteur's discoveries in disease prevention" / by J. Dobson.

  • Dobson, J., M.D.
Date:
[1882], ©1882
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on "Pasteur's discoveries in disease prevention" / by J. Dobson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    and imputes a monstrous crime to those who vaccinate with such virus. There is no longer any mystery about the way in which small-pox is nurtured and retained amongst the people. A disingenuous attempt has been made to credit the brilliant results of Listerism to the theory of Pasteur. Where the analogy comes in is difficult to discover. Listerism is the antipodes of Pasteurism in that it seeks to annihilate all virus, and render it absolutely inert, whilePasteurism cuUivctUt the virus with the view to modify its virulence so as to make it available as a prophylactic. One method, Listerism, is eminently scientific because hygienic; the other unscientific and irrational, a fan- ciful illusion in the mind of the so-called discoverer. [t is not the purpose of this paper, however, to review at any length the rash and erroneous assertions of tha writers I have quoted; but rather to speak of Pas- teur's hypo thesis in relation to the Jenner- ian fanaticism ; which at present is being so rudely shaken as to create considerable concern in the medical profession at the prospective loss of a fruitful source of rev- enue. The analogy between Pasteurism and Jeimerism is so close as to practically amount to an identity. Both theories pro- ceed on the assumption which ha3 a thou- sand times been disproved, that the body is in it .subject to a second attack of certain dis- eases, and that by giving the subject a mild form of the disease by inoculation with its vim 3, the body may be protected from fu- ture attacks of the malady; or, if attacked, the attack would be shorn of its vir- ulence. Never did a more pernicious error possess the medical mind. Never was a more false and wretched superstition so carefully fostered. Never was irration- al empiricism practised with more disas- trous effects. But supposing the hypothesis were correct so far as the specific disease for which inoculation is practised is con- cerned wc are at onco met by an insuper- able difficulty in ils application by tho risk of imparting other equally dangerous or more fatal diseases than that sought to bo averted. If these disastrous effects should follow inoculation, its practice is criminal in the highest degree. The question then arises—Does the practice impart spic- and-span new diseases to healthy sub- jects ? For many years this question was met by the medical profession with a direct negative, and with all the dogmatic as- surance for which the profession is pro- verbial. The naked truth could not, how- ever, be eternally concealed. After much repression it finally broke forth, revealing a chapter of horror*, which multiplied with amazing rapidity, and made the re- flecting portion of the community stand aghast. Inquiry revealed more of the horrors so long silently and secretly en- dured; and thousands of tho best citizens and most careful thinkers have been led by experience, in spite of inherited opini- ons and prejudices, to array themselves against the practice. Whether the mis- chievous effects of Jennerian inoculation are also true of Pasteur's experiments i3 the purpose of this paper to show. We are told that in May 1881, Pasteur took twenty-five of a flock of sheep and inoculated them with attenuat- ed Bacteria virus early in the month. At the middle of the month he repeated the operation on the same sheep. None of them suffered seriously, and on the last day of the month the whole fifty were healthy and rigorous. Then Pasteur inoc- ulated them all with the genuine 'charbon' poison, and predicted that within twenty four hours the unprotected twenty-five would be dead, while the others would not be affected. The next afternoon, when the observers returned to the field twenty- j three of the unprotected sheep lay dead, the other two soon dying, while the others were cropping the grass as usual. The enthusiastic writer of the above