Page images
PDF
EPUB

commons ordered an edition to be printed. Roger Coke, who furnished us with this fact in his Detection of the Court and State of England, says that, in the troubles of this period, it was remarkable that the advocates of the king chiefly maintained his cause out of sir Edward's third Institute, although it was rescued from oblivion and published by the house of

commons.

It is unfortunate that sir Edward did not live to complete. and print these himself; for, owing to their incorrectness, they have never enjoyed so much authority as the Commentary upon Littleton or the Reports. Sir John Kelyng mentions a consultation of the judges upon some point of high treason shortly after the restoration, at which it was observed that, in these posthumous works of sir Edward Coke, of the Pleas of the Crown and Jurisdiction of Courts, many great errors were published.'-In 1669, also, Prynne, the celebrated author of Histriomastyx, published a volume of Animadversions on the fourth part of the Institutes, and in which he professes to have detected many illegal doctrines and many statements resting upon very slender proofs.

The exalted character of sir Edward Coke in public and private life conspired with the sterling excellence of his works to give them an authority more decided and extensive, than has ever been enjoyed by the legal writings of any other of his countrymen. The most discriminating lawyers have not scrupled to designate him as the great oracle of English jurisprudence. The influence of his works grew up with the gradual publication of his Reports, while he still continued one of the highest law-officers of the crown, and was accustomed to the deference of the bar, and the reverence of the rest of the kingdom, as the head of the courts of common law. When he stood forth as the bulwark of the commons against the encroachments on their rights, which the king esteemed it the prerogative of royalty to make, the celebrity of the patriot ensured celebrity to his legal opinions. The subsequent appearance of the Institutes,-of the first, which, bulky as it is, reached a second edition in the short space of a year, and of the rest, which came forth most opportunely at a time when the questions agitated between king Charles and his people made continual reference to the Institutes necessary,-the publication of these firmly established the credit of sir Edward Coke, and, as it were, caused his opinions to be interwoven

with the very fabric of the constitution of England. The Reports and Institutes cover the whole ground of the common law, from the prerogatives of the king and the privileges of parliament down to the lowest copyhold-tenure and the rights of villenage itself, expounding all the complicated doctrines embraced in these wide limits with a comprehensiveness in the design and a completeness in the filling up, which it was far beyond the skill of any of his contemporaries to out-do, excepting only sir Francis Bacon. And the writings of sir Edward undoubtedly effected no little of what the English Tribonian had so much at heart, namely, the amendment of the laws of his country by reducing them to an uniform system. For the English Institutes, although executed in a less masterly manner than the Roman, obviously stand, like the latter, between the old and the new jurisprudence, serving at the same time as a digest of the one, and as the foundation on which the other has been built up by the Hales, the Holts, the Mansfields and the Blackstones, who have flourished in England since the restoration of the Stuarts.

ART. XIV.—1. An account of the Varioloid Epidemic, which has lately prevailed in Edinburgh and other parts of Scotland; with observations on the identity of Chicken-Pox with modified Small-Pox: in a letter to sir James M'Grigor, Director-General of the army medical department, &c. &c. By John Thomson, M. D. F. R. S. E. Surgeon to the Forces, &c. London and Edinburgh. pp. 400. 1820. 2. A History of the Variolous Epidemic, which occurred in Norwich in the year 1819, and destroyed five hundred and thirty individuals; with an estimate of the protection afforded by Vaccination, and a Review of past and present opinions upon Chicken-Pox and modified Small-Pox. By John Cross, member of the Royal College of Surgeons in London, &c. London. pp. 296. 1820.

THE subject, to which the works before us relate, has within a few years excited much attention in Europe, both in the medical profession and in the public at large; yet it has scarcely been heard of on this side of the Atlantic. So completely have we been protected, in this country, by the practice of

vaccinatio the effica cannot be

the exister
rence in
surprise th
infested by
seems to h
however g
on the ex
necessary
those meas

lest hereaft
pected and
Europe.
An erupt

ance in Sco
rope, and pr
although in
attended by
that some

[ocr errors]

not a new C

on a differ mitted to d gion, and to ally observe the individua This epide prevailed, in who have p natural or fi peared in a n those who ha disease has b which charact or five-day s both of the ge blance to the they have be

most accurate

culty in maki same time that New Series,

vaccination, and the strictness of our quarantine regulations— the efficacy of which, with regard to truly contagious diseases, cannot be doubted-that we are almost in danger of forgetting the existence of the small-pox; and, if we hear of its occurrence in other countries, it excites no other emotion than surprise that any part of the world should still continue to be infested by a disease, which, as experience in our own case seems to have proved, might be so easily exterminated. Yet, however great reason we may have to congratulate ourselves on the exemption we enjoy, recent events prove, that it is necessary we should continue on our guard, and persevere in those measures by which we have been hitherto protected; lest hereafter we should undergo visitations of disease as unexpected and fatal, as those which have been experienced in Europe.

An eruptive disease has within a few years made its appearance in Scotland, in England, and in several other parts of Europe, and prevailed epidemically to a considerable extent; and although in general resembling the small-pox, yet it has been attended by so many circumstances apparently anomalous, that some doubt has been at times entertained whether it were not a new disorder of an analogous character, but dependent on a different contagion. It is now, however, generally admitted to depend for its existence upon the variolous contagion, and to present phenomena unlike those which are usually observed, in consequence of the particular circumstances of the individual whom it affects.

This epidemic differs from the small-pox, as it has usually prevailed, in some important particulars. It has affected many who have previously passed through the small pox, either natural or from inoculation, and in these it has usually appeared in a mitigated form; it has attacked, very frequently, those who have been formerly vaccinated, and in these the disease has been still milder and exhibited the symptoms which characterize what has usually been called the modified or five-day small-pox; and it has presented in many cases, both of the genuine and modified small-pox, so close a resemblance to the disease called varicella, or chicken-pox, that they have been frequently mistaken for each other, and the most accurate and experienced judges have found great difficulty in making the diagnosis between them. But at the same time that these circumstances have been observed, the New Series, No. 8.

38

small-pox has been prevailing extensively in its most malignant and fatal form among those individuals who have neither been vaccinated nor previously undergone the variolous dis

ease.

and believing es of chickenliance upon the

These facts, which are so much at variance with the commonly received opinions upon the subject of small pox, seem to show; either that some change has taken place in the laws by which the disease is governed; that some of the facts relating to it have been hitherto overlooked or carelessly observed; or that a wrong explanation has been given of them. Certainly till within a few years one attack of the small pox was believed to render an individual secure against a second; for as no more than one in several thousands was supposed liable to such an event, the chance in any particular instance was diminished to almost nothing. Indeed many denied altogether the possibility of such cases, ascribing the accounts of them to the inaccuracy or mistake of their narr them to have been deceived by aggravated pox, or by some anomalous disease. The efficacy of the cow pox was little less entire, for although there had been a few instances of the variolous a..er the vaccine disease, yet it was easy to attribute these to imperfect or spurious inoculation; and although the modified small pox, had been for some time known to exist, produced occasionally in vaccinated subjects by exposure to variolous contagion or inoculation, yet this had been too rare and too mild a disease to excite any alarm, and had never been known to prevail as an epidemic. Under these circumstances it was not strange that much doubt and distrust should be excited, that the fa of many in the efficacy of vaccination should be shak d that various hypotheses should be resorted to, to explain e apparent anomalies which were presented. In or, however, to give a clearer view of the subject, before adverting to any explanation which can be given of the difficulties it presents, we proceed to give a slight sketch of the history of the epidemic, as it appeared in various places.

[ocr errors]

Its first appearance in Scotland, we believe to have been at Forfar in the month of October 1813. In that place it affected both the vaccinated and those who had undergone neither the vaccine nor the variolous disease. In the latter class of subjects, it exhibited very clearly, in the opinion of the medical practitioners, all the characteristic symptoms of small-pox;

but in th

as to occ disease, h the variol

to a hundr produced passed thr In 1815

designated prevails, appeared likewise in various ot same gene Dr Thot and fifty si burgh and

vation.

[ocr errors]

persons wh

pox, and th
true variol

the whole,
one in fou

a severe a

were affect natural or from ten da these, the d symptoms, which have pox, sheepown observa similar insta the whole, s in twenty-th individuals, time from a all affected the varioloi resemblance in its duratio secondary fe

st ma

e st

but in the former, its course and appearance were so different, as to occasion some doubt whether it were really the same disease, had it not seemed to have been always produced by the variolous contagion. The number of these cases amounted to a hundred and fifty; and in addition to them, the contagion produced small-pox in six individuals who had previously passed through it either naturally or from inoculation.

In 1815, the varioloid epidemic, for by this term it has been designated to distinguish it from the small pox as it usually prevails, appeared in Edinburgh; in 1818 and '19 it again appeared and was prevalent in that city. It presented itself likewise in Cupar in Fife, in St. Andrews, in Dundee, and in various other places in Scotland, exhibiting every where the same general aspect and confirming the same general facts.

Dr Thomson enters into a particular account of five hundred and fifty six cases of the epidemic, as it appeared in Edinburgh and its vicinity, which came under his particular observation. Of this number two hundred and five occurred in persons who had passed through neither small-pox nor cowpox, and these exhibited all the decided characteristics of the true variolous disease, in different degrees of severity. Of the whole, fifty died, giving a proportion of deaths nearly as one in four, and of course the cases were for the most part of a severe and dangerous character. Forty-one of those who were affected by the epidemic, had passed through either the natural or inoculated small pox, at intervals of time varying from ten days to fifteen years before their present attack. In these, the disease possessed the same general characteristic symptoms, but in a milder degree, and resembled the cases which have been formerly described under the names of hornpox, sheep-pox, swine-pox, &c. In addition to the results of his own observation, Dr Thomson became acquainted with thirty similar instances which occurred under that of others, and of the whole, seventy-one in number, only three died; about one in twenty-three. In the remaining three hundred and ten individuals, vaccination had been performed, at intervals of time from a few weeks to fifteen years before. These were all affected with the small-pox modified, or, in other words, the varioloid disease; a mild complaint bearing a general resemblance in its progress to the small-pox, but much shorter in its duration and leaving the patient without an attack of secondary fever. Of the three hundred and ten, forty had a

« PreviousContinue »