diminishing its vigor as the fever progresses. This fever I desire to sustain, regulate, not destroy; and this I accomplish by giving freely and abundantly, highly nutritious articles of diet, and, if needs be, stimulants. The results of this treatment have been to me evidences of the correctness of my views of the nature of the so called secondary fever of smallpox.

NOTE.

On examining my statistics of smallpox, from which are excluded all cases of varioloid, I find that my percentage of deaths is 1 in 15.61. These results I respectfully present as demonstrating the correctness of my pathology, and the completeness of my treatment for variola. Knowing, too, as I do, that this low percentage of deaths contrasts favorably with that resulting from any other treatment.

"By its fruit shall the tree be known."

A PAPER

ON THE

PROPRIETY AND NECESSITY OF COMPULSORY VACCINATION.

BY

J. M. TONER, M. D.,

WASHINGTON, d. c.

A PAPER ON THE PROPRIETY AND NECESSITY OF

COMPULSORY VACCINATION.

THE reflection is not flattering to man's self-love that disease, or eminent susceptibility to it, is the almost invariable concomitant of his physical existence. But as an offset to this infirmity he is endowed with intelligence and reason capable, in a great measure, of relieving actual suffering, and lessening the liability to disease, by controlling the circumstances which surround him, and may thus render life a pleasure or a burden as he wills.

If it be true, as assumed, that man, by a wise forethought and the exercise of his best intelligence, can protect his health and control the ravages and mortality from specific and preventible diseases which overtake the ignorant and improvident, it is clearly a sacred duty for the custodians of the public welfare to see that the effort is made. It is eminently proper, if not the duty of physicians, who are by virtue of their profession the friends and advisers of the people in regard to their health, to inform them and their rulers of what is essential to be done, or to be left undone, to secure this end. Regulations for the preservation of the general health, we think,ought to be concerted between the legislative authorities and the medical profession, and should not only be recommendatory, but to a considerable extent compulsory in character. Fickle. ness is so common a weakness of human nature, that a duty which begins with the individual and extends to the public, and is left entirely to individual judgment or inclination, is in the end almost certain to be neglected, or performed in an unreliable manner. In the execution of most measures which protect and elevate the human race, the mass of mankind require to be governed and directed by positive law, or the force of an inexorable public opinion.

The assumption that the individual has the right to protect or abuse and neglect his own health at pleasure is false in morals, and, as we believe, equally in opposition to the social and statutory