Page:The healing art in its historic and prophetic aspects - the Harveian oration delivered before the Royal College of Physicians, Oct. 19, 1885 (IA b21908199).pdf/29

 Nor would it be satisfactory for me to pass over the subject of vaccination, the procedure by which that dire disease small-pox can be prevented or greatly modified. One fact is worth a shipload of arguments,' and therefore it will be sufficient to say that Ireland, stated to be the best-vaccinated country in the world, is practically at this moment free from small-pox; that since 1874 not a single case of death from variola has occurred in the German army, which dwells in the midst of a population protected by compulsory re-vaccination; whilst on the other hand we see at this moment in the city of Montreal, unprotected by vaccination, a frightful mortality. It is painful to contemplate such a consequence of ignorance or neglect; but, as Mr. Simon said in his letter on vaccination to the President of the General Board of Health, 'it goes with the credulity which characterises the present age to be incredulous of proved truth. Alike in rejecting what is known, and in believing what is preposterous, the rights of private foolishness assert themselves. It is but the same impotence of judgment which shrinks from embracing what is real, and lavishes itself upon clouds of fiction.'

I feel, Sir, that it would be almost impertinent in me to address such an audience as I see before me on the details of the improvements in our knowledge of pathology and the allied subjects, the diagnosis and treatment of disease. But when I recall the views quoted by me in an earlier portion of this address, as to the absence of progress in our science and the hopelessness of its future when I recall that these opinions have been held not only by men of science but by many others, I feel it to be one of the duties of the present occasion to indicate our real position in definite language, the echo of which may possibly be heard beyond these walls. It will, at least, reach the ears of some who will hear with satisfaction that the reproaches raised against us have no longer any