An enquiry on the subject of vaccination : addressed to the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society / by Benjamin Ridge.

  • Ridge, Benjamin.
Date:
1851
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An enquiry on the subject of vaccination : addressed to the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society / by Benjamin Ridge. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    AN INQUIRY, ETC. The medical republic lias its paroxysms and its g~eat wordy conflicts, the fruitful subjects of which are epidemics and their sequences, their laws or their causes ; and we find that the army engaged on each side more frequently end their disputes, after much talking and writing, precisely where they began them, than by any decisive victory on either side; the war terminating for a time as it were by a common consent or from exhaustion, only to break out again on the advent of another paroxysm. These periodical polemical campaigns are generally marked by more or less of rancour, or by opiniativeness, than of philosophy, and give rise to infinitely more ink-shed than argument; tending too often to justify the Spanish syllogism of Benito Geronimo Feijoo, who says, “ That which is dubious is unknown : in physic almost everything is dubious: therefore almost every¬ thing in physic is unknown. For/’ he continues, “ I see physi¬ cians almost universally divided in their practice. And if they have not ascertained truth, what need I apologise for my doubts ? I have not read many medical authors, but I have read enough to convince me that there is hardly an assertion in physic un¬ controverted. If I had read more, probably my doubts would have been increased, which was exactly the case of Ramazzini, who says of himself, “ Idem prorsus mihi evenire sentio ac Te- rentiano seni, qui cum in filii sui causa plures advocatos accer- sisset, eosque inter se pugnantes deprehendisset, incertior (inquit) multo sum quamdudumV Vaccination, the subject of the latest medical paroxysm, sug¬ gests a variety of topics for consideration—topics in regard to which a vast amount of practical faith is found in daily operation among mankind, as well as no small degree of prejudice, which the dissemination of scientific truth has hitherto failed to explode. I enter the lists as the advocate of no party. If I thought I should serve the interests of the profession as well by my silence as by my plain speaking, and had I not what I conceive to bemew views to explain or enforce, I should refrain altogether from polemical discussion, as wiser men have done; but being im¬ pressed with the conviction that there is a vein of truth to be explored in connexion with the ideas I have been led to entertain on the subject of Vaccination, I feel bound to give them utter¬ ance at the present crisis. In 1842 I made the discovery of two new membranes in the foetus and young of man and animals, and published an account of them in 1845. The first was a true membrane for the meconium ; the second a vascular net-work of vessels lying be-