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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    of cases in which blindness is attributed to smallpox diminished from 725 in 1861 to 359 in 1881.” TABLE 2.—BLINDNESS FROM SMALLPOX IN IRELAND Year. 1851 1801 1871 1881 Cases in Which Blind- —Blind in Ireland— Ratio to Total No. Deaths From Smallpox in Preceding ness to was ascribed Smallpox. Ratio to Total Number No. Population. 10 Years. No. of the Blind. 7,587 1 in 864 38,275 6.879 1 in 843 12,727 725 1 in 9.5 6,347 1 in 852 2,852 526 1 in 12 6,111 1 in 847 7,550 359 1 in 17 In the Municipal Hospital of Philadelphia during a period of over 35 years, but two smallpox patients have left the institution totally blind. Many patients with severe smallpox lose both of their eyes, but fortunately these patients usually succumb to the disease. The loss of one eye is, however, by no means rare. In the epi- demic of 1901-1904 (which was not particularly severe), during which over 3,500 cases of smallpox were treated, 17 patients suffered the loss of an eye, despite most care- ful treatment; most of these patients were unvaccinated. DECLINE OF SMALLPOX AFTER THE INTRODUCTION OF VACCINATION In most of the countries of western Europe there was noted about the beginning of the nineteenth century a sudden and pronounced decrease in the morbidity and mortality of smallpox. Inasmuch as this was coincident with the diffusion of the practice of vaccination, there is strong reason to regard Jenner’s epoch-making discovery as the causative influence. The careful records of small- pox mortality which were kept in various countries, par- ticularly in Sweden and England, make it possible to prove by documentary evidence that a marvelous de- crease in the deaths from smallpox occurred within a short period after the introduction of vaccination. In the twenty-eight years before vaccination in Sweden there died each year from smallpox out of each 1,000,000 of population 2,050 persons; during the forty years fol- lowing vaccination, out of each 1,000,000 of population the smallpox deaths annually averaged 158. During the seven years preceding the introduction of vaccination in Prague, smallpox caused one-twelfth of the total number of deaths; during the twenty years fol- lowing the introduction of vaccination, smallpox caused but one four-hundred-and-fifty-seventh of the total num- ber of deaths.