Vaccination and its relation to animal experimentation / Jay Frank Schamberg.

  • Schamberg, Jay Frank, 1870-
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Vaccination and its relation to animal experimentation / Jay Frank Schamberg. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    to, 612 persons were attacked, leaving but 302 individ- uals in the entire town who had never had smallpox. Eighty-five per cent, of the population, therefore, were smallpox survivors. With these official figures in mind, we may be better able to appreciate the general estimate of the extent of smallpox given by writers of the day. In 1802 Admiral Berkeley, in a speech before the House of Commons, said: It is proved that in this United Kingdom alone 45,000 per- sons die annually of the smallpox; but throughout the world what is it? Kot a second is struck by the hand of Time but a victim is sacrificed upon the altar of that most horrible of all disorders, the smallpox. King Frederick William III, of Prussia, in a dis- patch, dated Oct. 31, 1803, stated that 40,000 people succumbed annually to smallpox in his kingdom. The French physician, De la Condamine,1 stated that “every tenth death was due to smallpox, and that one- fourth of mankind was either killed by it or crippled or disfigured for life.” Juncker, professor of medicine in Halle in 1796-98, gathered statistics indicating that 65,220 persons died of smallpox in the German-speaking countries in 1796.2 Sarcone3 estimated the number of persons in Italy who suffered from smallpox as nine-tenths of the popula- tion. He states that in Home in 1754 smallpox de- stroyed more than 6,000 lives. Smallpox was introduced into the western hemisphere by the Spaniards about fifteen years after the discovery of America; in Mexico within a short period 3,500.000 persons are said to have died of the disease.4 It is alleged that in Mexico smallpox has exterminated whole tribes of Indians, sparing no one to tell the story of the annihilation. Bobertson refers to smallpox among the South Ameri- can Indians as follows :5 In consequence of this [various calamities], together with the introduction of the smallpox, a malady unknown in Amer- 1. De la Condamine: Memoire sur l'inoculation de la petite verole, 1754. 2. Kiibler : Geschichte der Tocken uud der Impfung, 1901, p. 99. 3. Sarcone: Ckildpox, etc., translated from the Italian into German by Lentin, Goettingen. 1782. 4. Chapman : Eruptive Fevers, etc., 1844, quoting Robertson’s History of the Discovery of America. 5. Robertson, William : History of the Discovery and Settlement of America, 1829, p. -348.