Smallpox at Gloucester : a reply to Dr. Coupland's Report : (reprinted from "The reformer", December 1897, and January and February, 1898) / by W.R. Hadwen.

  • Hadwen, Walter R. (Walter Robert), 1854-1932.
Date:
[1898?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Smallpox at Gloucester : a reply to Dr. Coupland's Report : (reprinted from "The reformer", December 1897, and January and February, 1898) / by W.R. Hadwen. 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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    WILL VACCINATION MITIGATE SMALLPOX? Ever since the cunning Jennerian shuffle originated by the apostle of vaccination at the bedside of Lord Robert Grosvenor, who narrowly escaped with his life from a confluent attack of smallpox after being vaccinated by Jenner but a few months previously, we have been taught that even if cowpox will not protect from smallpox, it will certainly mitigate the disease and ward off all fear of mortality. Now, how do Dr. Coupland's own figures meet this plausible assertion? He tells us that of the sufferers that have been vaccinated, 29 had malignant smallpox, and every one died; 223 had confluent smallpox, of whom no less than 70 died. Here is a total of 252 successfully vaccinated persons attacked with the worst types of smallpox, scoring a fatality of 39.3 per cent.! Besides these, there were the cases of Alleged Vaccination; that is, cases where the patients themselves declared they had been vaccinated, but owing for the most part to the vaccine scars being covered by the eruption, and therefore said not to be recognisable by the medical man in attendance, Dr. Coupland cautiously places them in a separate list. There were 40 of such cases, with 16 deaths, a fatality of 40 per cent. They included 7 malignant cases, all of whom died; 21 confluent cases with 9 deaths. That is, 28 cases of the worst types of smallpox is alleged vaccinated persons and 16 deaths—the enormous fatality of 57.1 per cent! They might well be placed in a separate list under the heading of Alleged Vaccination. Why did not Dr. Coupland search the vaccination registers and make sure about their vaccinal condition ? What about the Unvaccinated ' death-rate after this? In the pre-vaccination days of last century, the death- rate in the old London Smallpox Hospital, to which only the worst cases were admitted, was only 30 per cent.! Of the 89 persons vaccinated within a fortnight of taking smallpox, no less than 27 died. A fatality of 30.3 per cent.! Where, I ask, does the doctrine of mitigation ' come in ? Is this the sort of thing that conscientious men and women are being persecuted and imprisoned for? Is this what we are paying hundreds of thousands of pounds annually out of the public rates to maintain? THE INCUBATION PERIOD. This question as to when vaccination becomes protective is argued upon the generally r ceived statement that smallpox takes twelve days to incubate. Now, nothing is more difficult than to arrive at a definite conclusion upon such a point, and all time limits in this and allied diseases must be more or less arbitrary. If the incubation period were proved to be shorter than the generally accepted period of twelve days, it would make all the difference to the orthodox theorisings of Dr. Coupland and Co., and the number of vaccinated cases which he relegates to the unvaccinated list would have to be taken out and added to the already extensive number of 1,211 admitted vaccination failures.