Report on vaccination and its results, based on the evidence taken by the Commission during the years 1889-1897.

  • Great Britain. Royal Commission on Vaccination.
Date:
1898
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on vaccination and its results, based on the evidence taken by the Commission during the years 1889-1897. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    461/512 (page 453)
    VACCINATION AND TUBEKOTJLOSIS. vaccination, it is necessary to bear in mind the prevalent belief that these diseases are due to a specific organism, and the fact that it has been found that tubercular disease can be readily conveyed from infected animals to healthy animals or persons by the medium of infected animal pro- ducts such as milk. It seems that in a few cases a local development of tubercle in the form of lupus has taken .place at the site of vaccination (see Case 26, also evidence of Mr. Dakers, VI Keport, 21,219-83). In a few other cases the question has arisen whether constitutional infec- tion of tubercle has not been evoked by vaccination. In a larger number of cases strumous symptoms, following upon the disturbance of health occasioned by vaccination, have raised the question of the relationship of the one to the other {see Cases No. 128, 52 [?], 89, and 131). Thus Professor Felix von Niemeyer has expressed the view that— The injurious influence which diseases have on the con- stitution, and thereby on the tendency to consumption, manifests itself most frequently and in the most lasting manner in earliest infancy. It is fortunate if children escape disease, particularly in the first years of their life, during which by far the most rapid development of the body takes place, and when by favourable or unfavourable external circumstances the foundation is laid, in a great measure, for a strong and robust, or a weak and delicate, health. Even vaccination may, by the febrile disturbance preceding the eruption, as well as by that accompanying the suppuration, both of which are never absent, and, according to my numerous thermometrical observations, sometimes reach a very high degree, considerably weaken, more especially those children who are not very strong, and may leave behind it the germs of a disposition to consump- tion. 1 The experiments of M. Toussaint indicate the possibility of inoculating tubercle upon animals by vaccination.2 A paper by M. Dumontpallier on a series of casualties from vaccination in Paris in the f Rapport sur les vaccinations 1 22,648-50. 2 22,714. 29