ANOTHER FASHION OF THE SEASON.

Evening Post, Volume XXII, Issue 32, 6 August 1881, Page 4

ANOTHER FASHION OF THE SEASON.

Vaccination (says the Home News) is highly fashionable just now. Every Westend doctor when he can capture a healthy British baby holds a levee which crowds of the most distinguished patients attend. Everybody is being "done." "Oh, take care of my arm," ia the first remark of the &6butantn at a ball when preparing to dance ; and socioty generally carries its arm in a sling. Making duo deductions for panic, it is no doubt high time that people looked tho matter in the face. The emall-pox is making alarming progroaß The hospitals in the metropolis are full to overflowing. Tho Lorda of the Admiralty have offerel the services of a hulk line-of-battle ship with steam tendera, &c, to be u=ed &% a floating hospital in theThame?. In the country one heard of families suffering from the ravages of the fell disorder. The disease may be caught any day in a four-wheel cab or in the underground railway And yet there are hundreds who hesitate to make thorn solves safe by re-vaccma-tion, a matter, according to the most recent medical statistics, which may be considered almost a certainty. The opposite side have BO much to Bay. We hear of an old woman who lost her arm from inflammation ; of one young fellow who developed tetanus ; and of another who has felt the effects of vaccination for nearly fourteen years. These ridiculous exaggerations, together with many unfair imputations against the "lymph" in general use, tend to damp and dissuade people. No doubt vaccination when it really " takes' is in the nature of a febrile or zymotic attack, and is something more than an inconvenienc •. In addition to the painful irritation of the place itself and tho swelling of the neighboring parts, there is a liability to pick up any smaller malady, and a general sense of malaite, to which the only immediate relief apparent seems one's razors or the nearest river. But a week of this ia not bo bad as a couple of months of malignant illness which may either terminate fatally or leave one frightfully scarred for life.