Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Notes on vaccination : essay LV / by William Sharp. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
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![deaths has not exceeded the proportion of one in 600.” Then in July he adds :—“ The disease [vaccination] in its progress from patient to patient, has actually become much milder. For out of 310 cases of cow-pox, which have been since under my care, only 39 had pustules that suppurated; viz. out of the first 100, 19 had pustules, out of the second 13, and out of the last 110, only 7 had pustules. This leads to a conclusion widely different from that published in the Reports.” It seems to me to have been worth while thus to refresh our memories with this picture of early Vaccina- tion. I will now very respectfully offer a few brief notes on each of the five points submitted to the Com- mission. “ 1. The effect of vaccination in reducing the preva- lence of, and mortality from, small-pox.” That Vaccination did greatly reduce the prevalence of, and consequently the mortality from, small-pox, in the early years of its introduction into practice, cannot be doubted. It was a vast improvement upon Inocula- tion, which prevailed before it. My elder brothers and sisters, born in the last century, were inoculated. I was vaccinated early in this century, soon after Jenner’s dis- covery became known. During sixty years of active professional life, I was frequently in close contact with cases of small-pox—some of them fatal cases. I was never re-vaccinated, and never caught the small-pox. And I have no doubt that many who were thus vaccinated, when the vaccine was fresh, were preserved as effectually as myself. It is my belief that this power of protection has gradu- ally become much less effective. As a consequence of this the practice of re-vaccination, at intervals of a few years, has been had recourse to; yet, after nearly a century of vaccination, the small-pox has not been exterminated. On the contrary, epidemics of it are not rare, and deaths still occur from it. So recently as 1871 a severe epidemic prevailed both in London and in the Provinces. So that the increasing mildness of vac- cine noticed, and rejoiced in, by Dr. Woodville, and which was, not only up to that time but for many years afterwards, a true benefit, has now reached a degree](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21944234_0009.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
