Part 19 (1/2)
”My dear Nicholson,
”I have been pressed to make some reply to Dr. Henry's Vaccination pamphlet; but excused myself on the ground that it was not pleasant to me to be in public opposition to him, for he was son of an intimate friend of mine;... I have no special knowledge. I look on it from outside the medical art....
”Now in the contents of the pamphlet I read: 'Small-pox--never produced at present _de novo_.'...
”I make sure that it never _could_ have spread, unless the conditions had in all the other places been highly congenial.... Predisposing causes cannot long acc.u.mulate and fester, without curdling into vital action. The _provisional a.s.sumption_ with me concerning smallpox, is, that wherever its predisposing causes exist, there the disease will not long be absent.
In new foci it may meet new influences which modify its aspect, so that medical men do not recognize it; but that signifies not....
”Now, what is Dr. Henry's proof?...
”Is there so much as one disease, the origin of which has been recorded scientifically? What he calls 'the primitive origin' of small-pox has not been recorded to us scientifically: yet he does not on that account doubt that it did once arise 'spontaneously.' I judge just in the same way, when it breaks out now in an English country village. What does the 'scientific record' mean? We cannot have a medical man in every room of every house at every moment examining what is under the s.h.i.+rt and s.h.i.+ft, with microscope in hand, to see the disease come of _itself_,... Dr. Henry goes on to say, 'and it APPEARS to have spread solely by infection or contagion.' It _appears!_ This is so modest, that the reader fancies he may grant it. But the next words are: 'TWO CONCLUSIONS FOLLOW from this,' etc. etc. In short, he has forgotten that it is only 'it appears,' and fancies that it was c indisputably certain and manifest.' ... After all; if unhealthy conditions are among the prerequisites of small-pox, we have only to remove the unhealthy conditions, and shall not need vaccination (if it were ever so safe): and if you do not remove unhealthy conditions, you are sure of other diseases quite as bad however you may modify the name.”
_Letters from_ 1872 to 1882 (_to Dr Nicholson_).
The first letter of this series is dated 26th December, 1872, from Weston- super-Mare, and is concerned chiefly with his wife's terrible fall, and also with the movement of the peasants under the initiative of Joseph Arch.
The name of Joseph Arch is too well known to need more than a few words in explanation of the reason why he came to help forward this movement as he did. He was born in Warwicks.h.i.+re in the year 1826, and was essentially one of those who, having determined to rise from the ranks--_rose_. He educated himself during the time while he was working as farm-labourer.
Those who have read Father Benson's _Sentimentalists_, and also Robert Louis Stevenson's book on the same subject, will not fail to understand how complete and full is the education which comes to a man through both doors--that of physical labour, and that of mental as well. Joseph Arch started in 1872 the National Agricultural Labourers' Union. Soon he had freed the peasantry from many of their former disabilities. Later he went to Canada to find out as much as he could about emigration and labour questions. In 1885-6 he stood for the N.W. Division of Norfolk.
”_26th Dec_., 1872.
”My dear Nicholson,
”Did I, or did I not, tell you of my wife's mishap from a terrible fall downstairs? Her right hand will be for a long while stiff from having been tied for nine weeks with a splint on the inside, no finger being allowed to move. This, I am a.s.sured, is hospital practice; but it is vehemently condemned by others, and in her case, at least, I believe it was wrong.
Whether she will ever recover her _thumb_, I am not sure; for I fear it is still dislocated at the base. She necessarily gives us a great deal to do; I have to act as her amanuensis, besides oiling, shampooing, etc.
”Knowing as I do how you sympathize with rustics and disapprove our existing Land Laws, I make sure that with me you are delighted by the movement of the peasants under the initiative of Joseph Arch to claim access to freehold land by purchase or equivalent payments. I never dared to hope such an initiative from the peasants themselves, but I always foresaw that a destruction of slavery in the U.S. would give to the States such a desire to people their territories and the South, with English immigrants, that our peasants, as soon as they became more wideawake, would have the game in their own hands, and neither farmers nor landlords could resist.... I now should not wonder to live to see ... household suffrage extended to the peasantry-and as results, coming some earlier, all soon, overthrow of the existing Drink Traffic, of Contagious Diseases Act, Army Reform on a vast scale, Female Equality with Men in the Eye of the Law, overthrow of Landlords' predominance.... I wonder whether abolition of Foreign Emba.s.sies must precede a serious grapple with the National Debt. I doubt whether any nominally free State ever had such an Augean Stable left to it by forty years' eminently active legislation. ”In corruptissima Republica plurimae leges,” sounds like it. Without carving England and Ireland into States, I do not think the work can be got through: if indeed we are to avoid new wars with Ireland and India, which may G.o.d avert!...
”Your constant friend,
”F. W. Newman.”
I quote next from a note written three years later, which ascribes his health to the Triple alliance of his three ”Anti's”--anti-alcohol, anti- tobacco, and anti-flesh food.
”How many a pleasant year has run its course since I first visited you at Penrith! It was the summer of 1842, I think, that we ascended High Street together, a company of seventeen.
”It is my fancy that I could walk as well now: yet I believe it would make me lazy for a week after. Moderate exertions are surely best when one is past seventy, yet my spirits are inexhaustible, and my sense of health perfect. Seriously I attribute this to the TRIPLE ABSTINENCE [from alcohol, from narcotic (tobacco), and from flesh meat]....
”Your affectionate friend,
”F. W. Newman.”