Papers relating to the history and practice of vaccination.

  • Great Britain. General Board of Health.
Date:
1857
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Papers relating to the history and practice of vaccination. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    TO THE RT. HON. THE PRESIDENT OF THE GENERAL BOARD OF HEALTH. Sm, You have desired me to lay before you, to the best of my judgment, such medical facts and considerations as will assist you in estimating the hygienic value of vaccination, and the strength of any objections which have been alleged against its general adoption. Accordingly, I have now the honour of bringing to your notice, as an Appendix to this Letter, a mass of material which will, I believe, justify conclusions on the very important subject to which they relate. That appended material is as follows :—■ A. The evidence which, in 1802, was given by Dr. .Tenner before a Committee of the House of Commons appointed to consider his claims to a public reward; B. The Report subsequently made by the said Committee ; C. A Report which, in reference to certain assertions made in disparagement of vaccination, was issued, in 1800, by the medical council of a “Royal Jennerian Society,” then existing; D. A Report on Vaccination which, in 1807, at His Majesty’s command, was made by the Royal College of Physicians of London ; E. A paper extracted from the Transactions for 1852 of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society of London, and entitled “ On the Protection against Small-pox afforded by Vaccination, illustrated by the Returns of the Army, Navy, and Royal Military Asylum,” by T. Graham Balfour, M.D., Surgeon to the Royal Military Asylum, Chelsea; F. A paper extracted from the Transactions for 1853 of the same Society, and entitled “ An Analytical Examination of all the Cases admitted, during Sixteen Years, at the Small-pox and Vaccination Hospital, London, with a view to illustrate the Pathology of Small-pox, and the protective influence of Vaccination, in degrees varying according as the Vaccination has been perfectly or imperfectly performed,” by J. F. Marson, Esq., Resident Surgeon to the Hospital; G. The Petition of Mr. Marson to the House of Commons, in 1856; H. A communication from Dr. Greenhow, Lecturer on Public Health at St. Thomas’s Hospital, in reference to the present death-rates of London, at different ages and from different diseases, as compared with the corresponding death-rates at the end of the 17th and in the middle of the 18th century; J. A long succession of Answers to certain Questions which, with a view to my present object, have been circulated among distinguished members of the medical profession, extensively in the United Kingdom, and partially in France and Germany; K. Information communicated by the several Governments of France, Austria, Prussia, Sweden and Norway, Denmark, Portugal, Bavaria, Baden, and Wirtem- berg, and by certain of our own Public Departments ; stating, in reply to similar Questions, what has been the public experience of vaccination in each country addressed. Enumeration of appended docu* ments.