Circumlocutional vaccination.

Date:
1865
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Circumlocutional vaccination. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    tions for Easter Monday fairs. Huddled together in miserable companionship, a few ricketv vans, that had once been yellow, were already display- ing worn and blurred pictures of pink-eyed ladies, dwarfs, and boa-constrictors, which were certainly not to be seen inside; one giving a foretaste of its “ wonders of the wild woods, the jungle, and the prairie,” by hanging out two guinea-pigs in a rat-trap. A swing or two, and a roundabout, and a collection of dirty boards, evidently the materials for constructing shoot- ing-galleries and gingerbread-stalls. And it is fondly supposed inside those dingy tumble-down vans that there will be people on Easter Monday eager to walk up and pay their money to see the live lions stuffed with straw—that is to say, the two guinea-pigs in the rat-trap. T had the curiosity to revisit these scenes of wild delight on Easter Monday, and fouud one of the fairs— Chalk Earm—tolerably well attended. On the stage of the show where the two guinea-pigs were displayed, the very dirtiest wroman it has ever been my lot to see was banging a drum with a hole in it, while a man in ragged cordu- roys, whose corresponding dirtiness suggested a close attachment to his wife, belaboured a cinder-sifter with the handle of a carter’s whip. The “ ladies and gentlemen” who were invited to walk up, and who did walk up in scores, pay- ing their pennies with a lively anticipation of pleasure which was pitiful to behold, knowing the nature of the squalid treat that was in store for them, were entirely and exclusively boys and girls of the poorest and most degraded class— degraded only because neglected and uncared for. The Crystal Palace, though the return ticket aud “ entrance” amounted to only two shillings, was above them, and they were obliged to be content with what poor amusement the gipsy showman could afford them for a penny. Their greatest delight seemed to be the roundabout and the swing, and in the latter there were none the fewer female candidates for a seat because the great aim and pleasure of the proprietor was to fling them so high up in the air as to throw their petticoats over their heads. The shouts of delight that hailed this exhibition smote upon me with a saddening effect, when I remembered that the scene was being enacted within sight of the oak planted just a year ago to the memory of the Immortal Bard, the high priest of all kinds of moral and intellectual ele- vation. Here, as elsewhere, the fair was pro- moted by the public-house for its own benefit. It was inexpressibly sad, on the evening of Good Friday, and again on the evening of Easter Monday, to see the humble order of holiday- makers tramping homewards all weary, de- pressed, mud-stained, and draggled. The birds that had fluttered out so trim and gay in the morning, looked as birds always look when they have been in the rain. The young man—Molly’s star in the dark—was much dimmed in his lustre. His gait was heavy and lumpy, and his eyes looked out with a fishy stare from a great haze of beer. He had enjoyed himself dismally. We had all enjoyed ourselves dismally, and if you had seen us dragging our weary legs home- wards, as flics draemselyes across a beer- slopped taivfable, yoyvould have said we were the most jelly rghT'^nlj ctags you ever saw. I am ati\d the rainjyas responsible for the excessive qualfrities officer wa drank. Adjourn- ing to the public-house to escape the rain, we got out of one form of wet into another. But if the day had been never so fine, it would have been difficult to find real enjoyment in the Elysian Fields attached to public-houses of the very worst and lowest class. Would it not be worth while to centralise those humblest of the seats of pleasure in some second-class Crystal Palace, or palaces, where the open sesame would be the “ little sixpence,” or even less ? The people are over-lectured and under-amused. More decent amusement for the less decent among us, is much wanted on a holi- day. In practical remembrance of Good Friday, will the Bench of Bishops, or the Bench of Cabinet Ministers, or the Bench of Magistrates, or any Bench of all the many Benches that over-bench us, speak out wholesomely upon that honest truth? We should soon see a Better Friday than the Good Friday we see near popu- lous places now\ CIRCUMLOCUTIONAL VACCINATION. When, towards the close of the last century, Jenner, after innumerable experiments, devoted study, and in the face of the ridicule aud an- tagonism that usually attend the discoveries of the benefactors of mankind, established the re- sults of his researches into the great question of vaccination, it was supposed that that ques- tion was exhausted, in so far as that—the opera- tion once successfully performed—the scourge of small-pox which for centuries had spared neither age nor sex, strength nor feebleness, which made beauty hideous and destroyed the comeliness of youth, which brought blindness, deafness, and a hundred infirmities in its train, was for ever con- quered. And for many years the constant im- munity from small-pox that attended the per- formance of the operation, led mankind to regard themselves as entirely secure by such means. Certain medical men then, as since, declared that in transmitting the vaccine from arm to arm, hereditary diseases were also transmitted, and that thus it was merely the exchange of one malady for another—the exchange, moreover, of a malady to which successive generations be- came liable, for one to which only individuals were, or might be, subjected. Even these, how- ever, expressed no doubt as to the certainty of the prevention of small-pox by means of vacci- nation. During twenty-two years Jenner continued to experiment with unfailing success; the method of vaccinating from arm to arm being con- stantly employed during tin's period, and for nearly twenty-seven succeeding years, without a question of its perfect efficacy being raised. i