power of revaccination. A woman coming from Gugan to Langon, brought with her the small-pox, which she communicated first of all to her mother and afterwards to her neighbours. Out of 2000 inhabitants 150 were attacked. It was observed that they were all above 12 years of age. A family of the name of Danoy was composed of seven members, the father, mother, and five children. The father and mother had confluent small-pox, the two elder children discrete small-pox, the two next varioloid, and the last escaped altogether; he was not quite 12 years old. In the neighbourhood was an old man of 70, who had lost an eye in a fierce attack of small-pox, the second attack deprived him of the other eye and nearly cost him his life.

Dr. Gintrac found that there was but one way of mastering the pestilence, and that was by revaccinating. He accordingly revaccinated all the inhabitants not only of Gugan but also of the two neighbouring villages of Matras and Teich. No sooner had he done so than the epidemy ceased, as a fire becomes extinguished for want of combustibles. "What better proof could there be," exclaims Dr. Gintrac, "of the efficacy of revaccination?"

It can surprise no one that this practice is continually on the increase. Those who have at first shewn the greatest repugnance to it, end by adopting it. They no longer fear to compromise the destinies of the vaccinated. Look at M. Adde-Margras who was formerly so bitterly opposed to it, now so confident of its value that he declares he knows no better method of reassuring the vaccinated; he has no longer any doubts on the subject unless it be concerning the quality of the vaccine contained in the new capsules; but what does that matter? that is not the question, let us return to it. M. Parmentier (of the Drôme) has up to the present period performed 360 revaccinations; 38 of these only have produced true vaccine pustules but all those revaccinated by him have profited to the same extent by the operation: not one, he affirms, has taken smallpox, whether the vaccine took or not.

Are further details required? In the month of May, 1854, a nun, Sister Louise, aged 26, though she had been successfully vaccinated, got a pretty severe attack of small-pox, from which she made a good recovery. M. Parmentier, alarmed for the safety of the convent, revaccinated all the young persons in it to the number of 51. Well, the epidemic ceased immediately, he adds, though the good sisters were in perpetual contact with small-pox. Similar

facts are met with everywhere. If we pass from the Drôme to the Aveyron, we find that small-pox having appeared in the philosophical seminary of Rodez, attacked 8 pupils at once. M. Bourguet revaccinated the rest, and it did not spread further. The same danger and the same success occurred at the seminary of St. Peter. There was still the large seminary of theology, but at this establishment the threatened attack was anticipated and warded off by revaccination.

Finally, M. Bourguet, from whom we learn these interesting details, declares that all the revaccinated, to the number of 500, were preserved from small-pox. And yet such was the intensity of the epidemy, that three persons whose faces were marked by natural small-pox, caught the disease a second time.

Dr. Puyoo, in the Basses-Pyrenées, says that an epidemy of small-pox having broken out at Pau, the Lyceum, the Convent of Ursulines and some other educational establishments, 66 were subjected to a new inoculation of vaccine, and thereby obtained complete immunity from small-pox."

Everyone expresses himself in his own fashion, but the conclusion is invariably the same.

In the Doubs, Dr. Bernard performed 300 revaccinations, 100 of which succeeded, a portion so large that he is vastly astonished at it, but he cannot doubt the evidence of his eyes. However none took small-pox. In one family there was a girl of 13 who took the small-pox; she had four brothers, two were revaccinated and escaped the contagion, the other two refused to be revaccinated and caught the disease. Again, a father of seven children was attacked by small-pox; the children who had previously been vaccinated were revaccinated and escaped the disease. This does not of course prove much, as the influence of the first vaccination might still have been present in the children. However there were some children in the neighbourhood with whom the same precaution was not adopted, and they took the small-pox.

After these facts, and many others which we omit to mention, who could refuse to be revaccinated? Does any one think that the interests of vaccination would be more promoted by concealing its defects than by pointing out the way to remedy them? In no country is revaccination held in higher estimation than in Wirtemberg. What says Dr. Hein, the historian of the epidemics of small-pox he alludes to ? After a rather prolix dissertation on the variola of the vaccinated, he gives the following resumé of his observations:

"Thus on the grand number of 1164 revaccinated individuals, in whom the effect was more or less complete, or nil, it is certain that none took either variola, or varioloid, nor even varicella, with the exception of two only; but as these two fell ill the day after being revaccinated, it is evident that they must already have had within them the germs of the epidemy before the preventive was had recourse to."

Dr. Hein makes frequent allusion to the happy effects of revaccination. He says elsewhere: "Hitherto there is no instance of a revaccinated person having taken the small-pox."

In England, revaccination, though not so frequently employed as in the North of Europe, is nevertheless often had recourse to. Dr. Donaldson states, in the "Edinburgh Medical Journal," that he revaccinated a great many persons during the prevalence of an epidemy of small-pox, and he adds that all those revaccinated were perfectly preserved from variola and varioloid.

Leopold Meyer, Wendt, Mohl, display the same confidence in revaccination. "It is sad," says Mohl, "that vaccination does not protect everyone for ever from small-pox, but I console myself by the reflection, that the operation has only to be repeated in order to obtain complete security."

France has probably been the last country to adopt this useful practice. It was first resorted to in 1828, during the epidemy at Marseilles, of which so much has been said. M. Robert revaccinated 28 persons; in two only of these did the vaccination take, and yet all were protected from the small-pox.

Ten years later, a terrible epidemy of small-pox broke out; it attacked 57 vaccinated individuals. The happy results by the Marseilles practitioner were remembered, revaccination was adopted, and with complete success.

In 1832, at Malta and at Geneva, it was not considered enough to practise revaccination here and there, it was done on a grand scale, and the historians of those epidemics expressly state, that those revaccinated escaped the contagion, whether the revaccination took effect or not.

Is it not a remarkable circumstance, that the protection should be equally efficacious, whatever the result of the operation, whether vaccine pocks appear or no? And yet on reflection we shall find that easily accounted for. In the first case it is probable that the first vaccination had only partially extinguished the susceptibility to

In the last case the

small-pox; the second completes the process. organism was insusceptible to variola, and the revaccination was consequently useless. But how is this to be known? There is no

sign to guide the practitioner, and in his uncertainty he consults prudence, in the absence of the light of science. He revaccinates everybody, preferring to do a thing that may be useless to the greatest number, than to leave the others in a false security.

The essential point is, not to use for revaccination any vaccine of which one is not perfectly sure, otherwise the test will not deserve the slightest confidence. This precaution is not so absolutely necessary for the first vaccination. If good pocks do not appear we may repeat the vaccination two or even three times, until the resistance of the organism is overcome. But for revaccination the case is different; we rely on the first trial, and so much the more readily as the failure redounds to the credit of the first vaccination. And yet we have known practitioners who employed dry vaccine preserved between glasses; they generally failed, and from their want of success they immediately concluded that revaccination was utterly useless. To them we say that that experience is valueless, the negative result of which may be attributed to the improper mode of procedure, or to the unskilfulness of the artist.

On the use of Sulphate of Bebeerine in Menorrhagia.

BY PROF. A. P. MERRIL, M.D.

A few weeks ago I was summoned in haste to a lady suffering from an attack of menorrhagia. She had been long subject to excessive menstrual discharges, and uterine hæmorrhages, and had been treated for them by several physicians without success. I administered five grains of the sulphate of Bebeerine, which I happened to have in my pocket, and ordered twenty pills of four grains each, one of which she was directed to take every two hours until relief should be obtained. On visiting her the succeeding day, she showed me the twenty pills, and said the dose I had given her suspended the discharge before they were brought from the druggist, and she deemed it unnecessary to take them. One other case occurring about the same time, in all respects very similar to the above, was relieved, also, by a single dose of five grains. I could relate more than a dozen cases besides the foregoing, more or less severe, in which the sulphate of bebeerine has been successful. Several women of this

city are now in the habit of keeping the remedy always at hand, with perfect confidence, from the results of their own experience, of being able to restrain excessive menstruation and uterine hæmorrhage, whenever they may occur. In several cases, also, I have known it relieve leucorrhoeal discharges, and to give tone and vigour to the vagina, suffering relaxation from the effect of such discharges; and it is the only internal remedy upon which I have been able to rely, for the relief of pruritus vulva et vagina. Whether this remedy will prove to be as valuable as the above experiments would seem to indicate, remains to be proved; and it is with a view to elicit such proof, that this publication is made.-Memphis Med. Recorder.

Remedies for Hæmorrhage.

In the Monthly Homœopathic Review for December, 1856, Dr. Thomas directs the attention of the profession to the anti-hæmorrhagic virtues of the Hamamelis virginiana and the Acalypha indica. Neither of these remedies has been adequately proved, yet sufficient results have been obtained to show that they have certainly the power of causing hæmorrhage from various organs. The Hamamelis has been found useful by Dr. Preston, of Rhode Island, in epistaxis; active uterine hæmorrhage caused by a fall; passive uterine hæmorrhage; vomiting and purging of blood; melæna; chronic varices, and many cases of bleeding piles. Dr. Okie, of the same State, found it useful in a case of congestion and inflammation of the internal genitals in a girl, caused by a blow on the region of the left ovary; also in bleeding or painful piles characterized by burning, soreness, fulness and rawness of anus, with a feeling of weakness or weariness in the back, as if it would break. He has further found it of use in epistaxis, hæmoptysis, phlegmasia alba and varicose ulcers. Dr. Belcher, of New York, gave it (along with other remedies) in a case of variola, accompanied by epistaxis and purpura, and he conceives with good effect. Dr. Hering, of Philadelphia, has given it successfully in severe pleuritic stitches accompanying phthisis. He calls it a "union of Aconite and Arnica." He also employs it in some inflammatory affections of the eye.

The Acalypha indica has been successfully used by Dr. Tonnerre, of Calcutta, in hæmoptysis, which symptom he alleges it produced on his own person. We think it right to call the attention of our colleagues to those two remedies, as lately we observe there has