Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Vaccine and vaccination / by George Dock. 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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![[113] certain characteristics that I have found among a few rather conspicuous firms. It might be supposed that makers of vaccine virus would not sell inferior preparations. Experience shows that this is not so. Dr. Eosenau, of the U. S. Public Health and Marine Hos- pital Service, who has examined virus for a long period, has shown that practically all the vaccine virus sold in this coun- try has an unnecessarily large bacterial contamination, and although his observations show that improvements have taken place since he began his work, the results are still far from satisfactory. Eosenau charitably attributes the poor quality of the vaccine in part to over-confidence in the germicidal power of glycerine on the part of the makers. This, however, while charitable, is not altogether just. The makers had access to the literature, from which the actual capacity of gly- cerine to purify vaccine could have been obtained. Besides, the makers, particularly those I have in mind, made the most positive statements of purity, not only in advertisements, where such words as aseptic might have had a Pickwickian sense, but also in private correspondence, at the very time the virus, according to Eosenau's examinations, was very bad. It must be remembered that high bacterial contamination does not necessarily indicate dangerous infective possibility, but on the other hand it is believed by many that such an excess has a relation with the frequent secondary infections that occur from such virus. Then, too, the remarkable development of tetanus following vaccination, of two years ago, has been ascribed by MacFarland, long connected with the production of vaccine, partly at least to contaminated virus. Another explanation for the impurity of the virus is that sudden calls for large quantities compel the makers to put on the market unripe vaccine. In the present unregulated state of vac- cination such demands are unavoidable. Systematic vaccina- tion would do away with it. As it is now it would seem that policy, if not honesty, would lead the makers to declare the imperfection of the virus, just as some honest boards of health, unable to furnish pure water to cities, notify citizens when the contamination reaches a dangerous degree. Or, to](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21027031_0014.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
