to the atomic theory in the minute division of particles, whether by trituration or solution. Our readers do not need to be told, but Dr. Laycock does, that homeopathy is not founded on the infinitesimal hypothesis, but may be practised and proved without the employment of infinitesimals at all.

Dr. Laycock returns again and again to the charge against homœopathy, but only to shew his utter ignorance of what the system is he is attacking. Thus, at p. 134, he takes the homœopathic provings as illustrating the influence of suggestion and expectation. After asserting that it is "amongst the established truths of mental physiology, that ideas may become realities without the co-operation of the consciousness," which is about as true as though one should say, "that words may become things without the co-operation of Nostradamus"; he proceeds to tell his pupils how our provings are made. "The prover,' "" he says, "takes, as he believes, an infinitely minute dose of a supposed medicinal agent (but, more probably, no portion whatever of it), and then mentally watches, or listens, or feels, as it were, with his attention, for the results that have been suggested to him by theory or otherwise." Now, all our readers know, though Dr. Laycock does not, that our provings have almost all been made with large and oft-repeated doses of drugs, and that the provers were generally left in ignorance of what they were taking, in order to prevent the occurrence of "fallacy from the influence of suggestion and expectation."

Again: "A change of habits of life, of diet, or of regimen, in homœopathic treatment, is equally efficacious with or without globulistic medicaments." By "globulistic medica

is meant, we presume, homœopathic medicines, and if so, we should like to know how homeopathic treatment is possible without homœopathic medicines, and where Dr. Laycock, who is such an inveigher against false theories and assumptions, has witnessed or read of such non-medicinal homœopathic treatment.

But we need not further expose Dr. Laycock's utter

ignorance of the system of medicine on which he pronounces so dogmatically, and which he condemns so. unreservedly. He reminds us, in his attacks on homœopathy, of those witches of old, who, when they wished to injure anyone they had a spite against, made a figure of wax, on which they inflicted frightful wounds and gashes. It was necessary, however, in order that this witchcraft should be effectual, that the artificial figure should resemble the victim. But we are unable to trace the slightest likeness to homœopathy in the object of Dr. Laycock's vengeance, and so we may anticipate that his sorcery will be as potent as the following apocalyptic effort is edifying and intelligible.

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"It is often asserted and lamented," he writes, " that medicine has no such great principle-[as that of gravity in astronomy]—no great primary FACT to which all theories and researches shall point, and by which they all shall be guided. . . . . I demur to these views altogether. I not only am satisfied that medicine has, like other sciences, its great primary fact or principle, but I can speak positively, because from experience, as to its value and uses." Well, and what is this great primary FACT, which Dr. Laycock finds deserving of capital letters? Here it is: "The primary or fundamental principle of life is the unity of structure and function of organisms both in time and space. This, then," he proceeds, "is the point to which all your theories should tend, the principle by which they should all be regu lated. This should be ever present to your thoughts, this should ever guide your observations. Thus used, it is the bond that will bind science, and observation, and tact together, and confer upon you the highest qualities of the practitioner, namely, the power to take profound philosophical views, and the ability to apply those views to the practice of your art. The principle thus announced will doubtless be severely questioned, and its truth controverted, but it will finally be almost universally accepted." (p. 181.) "This great principle," he further says, "ought to be alike the basis and the climax of your theories, but it need not by any means be the starting point of all." We presume this to be a specimen of

form of tobacco smoke or infusion of the leaves. From these well known facts he (Mr. Haughton) was led to believe that these powerful poisons might be used as antidotes to each other's action, and with the view of testing this conjecture, he made several experiments. Four of these went to show the effects of the two poisons separately. The fifth and sixth are important, as they appear conclusive to Mr. Haughton as to the action of nicotine in retarding, and in certain cases in completely counteracting, the effects of strychnine. In the fifth experiment, a frog had lived for 47 minutes in a mixture of two solutions, of which one would have destroyed life in four minutes, and the other would have produced paralysis in one minute, and destroyed life in 23 minutes; and yet in the mixture the animal had lived for 47 minutes, and afterwards for 24 hours. In the sixth experiment, the frog immersed in a similar mixture of the poisons for 10 minutes had ultimately recovered, the effect of the strychnine being completely obviated by the action of the nicotine. Mr. Haughton expressed a hope that further enquiries would be instituted into the action of strychnine and nicotine upon some of the warm-blooded animals, as he believed that in nicotine, which was always easily procurable in the form of tobacco-leaf infusion, would be found a valuable antidote in at least some cases of strychnine poisoning, whether intentional or accidental. Medical Times, 6th Dec., 1856.

On Revaccination.*

There seems to be a general tendency in the departments to talk about the subject of revaccination this year. This is a new phasis in the history of vaccination. As long as it was thought that vaccination was invulnerable, the idea of repeating it never occurred to anyone. New facts have, however, come to light, which have produced a change in both the doctrine and the practice. But if vaccination has lost its prestige of infallibility, it has within itself the power of recovering it. Thus revaccination attests at once the weakness and the strength of vaccination: the weakness, because it sometimes allows itself to be assailed by variola; its strength, because it suffices to repeat it in order to restore to it what it has lost. There are two modes of proving the utility of revaccination,

* Extract from the report read by M. Bousquet, to the Academy of Medicine, June, 1856.

VOL. XV, NO. LIX.—JANUARY, 1857.

M

argument and observation, and if observation might do alone, without argument, the latter has undoubtedly the advantage of satisfying the mind and strengthening the conviction.

Let us commence by argument, and first let us recal the facts on which it rests. It has been noticed, that even in its aberrations, variola follows a kind of rule in regard to vaccinated individuals. It does not attack them indiscriminately as might have been supposed; it makes a kind of selection; it respects the newly vaccinated; it rages among those who have been vaccinated a long time. Why does it display this partiality? What protects the first? Undoubt edly the vaccination. But why does it not also protect the second as well? Because the revolution it effects in the organism is gradually effaced in the course of time. We must then come to its assistance; we must strengthen it. The mode of doing so is plain and palpable: it is to recommence; it is to temper the economy at the same source, as we temper iron in order to harden it. What vaccination has done once, why should it not be able to do it a second and a third time? There are also subjects and temperaments for whom one attack of variola is not sufficient to extinguish all their susceptibility for this disease; they require several. Should we, however, say, that the second was useless, and adds nothing to the first? The argument we employ in the case of the repetition of the variola, we employ also in the case of the second vaccination, and we consider ourselves the more justified in doing so, seeing that, in our opinion, vaccinia is in reality nothing but a small-pox. Such is our conviction on this subject, that in place of being astonished that vaccination protects from the small-pox, we should feel much more so if it did not protect.

For those who want facts we shall now proceed to give some. They abound in the correspondence for 1854.

M. Those observed 229 cases of small-pox; 140 on vaccinated, 88 on non-vaccinated persons. The proportion, as everyone may sec, is considerable; he is astonished at it himself; but he soon recovers from his astonishment, when he considers the modification which vaccinia effects in variola, even when it is found to yield to the latter. "In the vaccinated," he says, "the confluent form occurred in the proportion of less than one-seventh (19 in 140); on the contrary, in the non-vaccinated, the confluent cases amounted to more than one-half (58 in 89).

But that is not saying enough: in general the variola of the

vaccinated is so slight, so rapid, so short, that it scarcely runs a course equal to half that of the ordinary variola. It has nothing of variola except the premonitory symptoms and the commencement of the disease up to the suppurative stage. Arrived at that point, it has not sufficient strength to advance further, and it becomes spontaneously extinguished before the resistance it encounters, and rapidly runs into the stage of desiccation. This is so striking that many medical men for a long time refused to acknowledge a true variola in this eruption; they still designate it by a particular name, viz., varioloid.

However variola or varioloid, it may easily be promoted by revaccination; M. Those is one of the most devoted and the most enlightened partisans of this practice, and how could he be otherwise?

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Hitherto," says he, "we have always succeeded in warding off threatened epidemics of small-pox, and none of those who have undergone revaccination have been attacked, although in constant contact with small-pox patients." None except one girl of 18, who had six pustules of varioloid. She married two years afterwards, tended her husband who was attacked by small-pox, caught the disease and died.

The report of the Department of the Rhone, drawn up Dr. Roi, is a long and interesting argument in favor of revaccination. He gives his reasons for the practice. The first is the circumstance of the liability of small-pox itself to attack an individual more than The report gives five cases of this description, and of these three died; for, as we have said, and repeat, the second attack is more serious and more often fatal than the first.

once.

But, after all, this is not the chief reason. It is not to save those who have had small-pox from the chance of its recurrence, that revaccination has been proposed: the revaccinated alone have been thought of. For them revaccination has been established. However the vaccination committee of Lyons wished to limit its employment to periods when small-pox was epidemic; no doubt the danger is then greater, but the means for warding it off are so simple, that they ought to be used at all times and in all places. Dr. Roi affirms that revaccination extends its protective power to all those revaccinated.

The Department of the Gironde makes use of similar language. We owe to Dr. Gintrac, Jun. the account of an epidemy of smallpox, in which he made the most successful proof of the protective