The vaccination question, being the second issue of a letter addressed by permission in the autumn of 1894 to ... H.H. Asquith : togetther with a letter addressed by permission in the autumn of 1895 ... to Arthur James Balfour. With notes and corrections to the letter to Mr. Asquith and an index.

  • Hutton, Arthur Wollaston, 1848-1912.
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The vaccination question, being the second issue of a letter addressed by permission in the autumn of 1894 to ... H.H. Asquith : togetther with a letter addressed by permission in the autumn of 1895 ... to Arthur James Balfour. With notes and corrections to the letter to Mr. Asquith and an index. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    suffer severely. The children of nervous and highly-strung parents are undoubtedly liable to such risk ; and it is just because doctors cannot legally in their case get free of the operation altogether, that they are driven to such shifts as have above been noted, which may mean the certification as successful vaccination of an operation which has been a mere formality. Surely too it is rash and unscientific to inflict a disease, even if it be a mild one, on infants of but a few weeks old, whose life is in any case a precarious one. In this country at the present time about fifteen per cent, of the children born die within the first twelve months. I am not con- tending now that this high rate is partly due to vaccination, for I propose to deal later with the risks of the operation, as admitted even in the official statistics. But in relation to medical science, which is supposed to have for its aim the preservation of human life, is it reasonable to lay this additional burden at an age when the risk from various familiar causes is already so great, while the risk of small- pox infection, a lew exceptional cases apart, is practically nil? It is ot course useless to argue about the slightness of this risk with people who are so ignorant as to suppose that an unvaccinated child can start small-pox on its own account. But it is worth while to remind those who know that the infection must come from outside, how infinitesimal is the chance of coming into contact with it, except of course at the actual place or places where an epidemic at the moment may prevail. Of catching measles, scarlet- fever, or whooping-cough—diseases of which thousands of children die every year—there is no doubt some risk. But small-pox, in spite of all the fuss that the medical papers make about it, is pretty nearly as extinct as the plague. The average annual number of deaths from it in England and Wales during the six years, 1887-92, the Sheffield