Vaccinia in man : a clinical study / by Theodore D. Acland.

  • Acland, Theodore D. (Theodore Dyke), 1851-1931.
Date:
1897
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Vaccinia in man : a clinical study / by Theodore D. Acland. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    be noted that amongst 30,000 patients at the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street, a place where if such cases were of common occur¬ rence they would be met with, Dr. Robert Lee has seen only one instance of supposed vaccinal syphilis; while at the East London Hospital for Children, Dr. Radcliffe Crocker has not seen or heard of one such case, although for many years he has been making special inquiries as to their occurrence. Statistical method of inquiry.—During the last twenty years the number of deaths in England and AVales “ registered ” as due to syphilis has increased :1 it has been suggested that this increase is due to syphilis inoculated at the time of vaccination.2 The limit of age at which vac¬ cination must be performed is, for this division of the United Kingdom, three months. As a matter of general experience vaccination is delayed as long as possible, so that any increase in the number of deaths from syphilis due to the operation would probably occur in children of more than three months old. Such however is not the case, the disease is most largely fatal during the first three months of life; so that what¬ ever be the cause of this increase of syphilis, there is no evidence to show that it is due to vaccination. In Scotland, where the age limit is six months, during the period 1855-1863, which immediately preceded that of compulsory vaccination, out of every 1000 deaths at all ages registered as from syphilis, 575 occurred during the first six months of life, and 109 between the ages of six and twelve months. During the period 1864-1875 the number of deaths registered as from syphilis during the first six months was 612; and in the period 1875-1887 it was 647. During the same periods the proportions of deaths registered as from syphilis between the ages of six and twelve months were 118 and 109 respectively. Thus in Scot¬ land the number of deaths from this cause occurring during the second six months of life, when the results of vaccination would be most likely to declare themselves, shows no increase after vaccination had been made compulsory; the registered deaths during the months preceding the age limit for vaccination having at the same time increased.3 In Ireland the number of deaths from infantile syphilis has largely diminished during recent years. In 1864-1865 the average number of deaths so registered was 124 ; in 1887-1888 it was only 40. In Leicester, where the practice of vaccination had fallen largely into disuse, the deaths registered as from infantile syphilis for the years 1883- 1887 showed an increase of 69‘3 per cent as compared with an increase of only 24'7 per cent for the whole of England and Wales for the same period. It need hardly be said that this increase is in no way connected with the disuse of the practice of vaccination; but it shows that the 1 Final Report R.C.V. p. 103. 2 Cf. also Cow-Pox and Vaccinal Syphilis, by Charles Creighton, p. 145, London, 1887, where the increase is attributed, not to syphilis inoculated with vaccination, but directly to vaccination itself, the results being erroneously called syphilis. 3 Final Report R.C.V. pp. 101, 102. The statistics are given on the authority of the Superintendent of Statistics in the office of the Registrar-General for Scotland.