Exposition of a method of preserving vaccine lymph fluid and active : with hints for the more efficient performance of public vaccination / by William Husband.

  • Husband, William, 1822-1901.
Date:
1860
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Exposition of a method of preserving vaccine lymph fluid and active : with hints for the more efficient performance of public vaccination / by William Husband. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    25/50 (page 23)
    Here, then, 841 tubes, each containing one charge of lymph, were employed to vaccinate 341 infants. They had been sealed up for various lengths of time, from one day to two years and a half, and the result was, that 300 of them suc¬ ceeded and 41 failed; or, deducting the 126 cases vac¬ cinated with lymph which had not been kept longer than four weeks; of the remaining 215, in which the lymph had been kept for periods varying from one month to two years and a half, 193 were successful, and 22 failed—that is, there was only one failure in every ten vaccinations, or the successful cases were to the failures as 9 to 1. Now, the remarkable fact which the table brings out is this, that the activity of the lymph, as indicated by the pro¬ bability of producing with it perfectly normal vesicles, is not affected by the length of time it has been kept, at least within the ample limit of two years and a half. There does not appear to be any tendency at all to deterio¬ ration. The failures evidently do not increase in number as the lymph increases in age. Nay, I was surprised to find that the failures with the older lymph were fewer than with the more recent, and that the chance of success seemed, as the table indicates, to increase as the lymph got older. This diffi¬ culty at first puzzled me. I knew the record was accurate ; but it was perplexing to find myself apparently in the unfor¬ tunate predicament of having proved too much. An ex¬ planation was necessary, and it was not far to seek. On analysing the list of cases, I found that the more recent lymph—that, I mean, whose age did not exceed three months—had been derived from a greater number of sources than the older lymph, and that I had almost unconsciously, as well as unavoidably, acquired to some extent the habit of