Volume 1

Health lectures for the people.

Date:
1883-1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Health lectures for the people. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    426/896 (page 174)
    Adieu ! ye parks—in some obscure recess, Where gentle streams will weep at my distress, Where no false friend will in my grief take part, And mourn my ruin with a joyful heart; There let me live in some deserted place, There hide in shades this lost inglorious face. Plays, operas, circles, I no more must view! My toilette, patches, all the world adieu \'» The last benefit conferred by vaccination is that it gives us the means of getting rid of small-pox altogether. Small-pox, as I have already said, differs from most diseases in this, that it is only propagated by contagion ; it never, so far as we know, arises anew. Various fevers and other diseases are produced by over- crowding, bad drainage, and other general causes, but small-pox never seems to be produced in this way. All we know of its history shows that it has always been imported. It came to us from the East, and we can trace its importation into America in 1527, about thirty-five years after its discovery. It was unknown in Australia and New Zealand for many years after their dis- covery, and is said to have been imported into the former country by the steamship the Great Britain. Now if every one were protected by efficient vaccination small-pox could no longer spread, as no one would be susceptible of the poison, and thus the disease might in course of time be literally stamped out. In spite of the incalculable benefits which have been conferred by vaccination, there is still a certain number of persons who oppose it on various grounds, and Anti-Vaccination Societies have been established with a view to influencing the legislature to cease to render vaccination compulsory. As this lecture is not intended to be of a controversial character, I shall refer to the objections in the briefest possible manner. The grounds on which vaccination is opposed are various. In the first place, it ?s said to be unnatural, and even irreligious, to introduce a disease into the system with the object of protect- ing it from a malady to which it may never be exposed. The answer is simple: befoVe the introduction of vaccination small-