Report on the public health of 1903.

  • Finsbury (London, England). Metropolitan Borough.
Date:
1904
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Report on the public health of 1903. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    32/274 (page 30)
    30 giving a mortality per centage of 41.66. The larger number of cases of small-pox in vaccinated persons is, of course, due to the fact that by far the larger proportion of the population at that age-period have, at some time or other in their lives, been vaccinated. There are many things to be learned from a study of this Table by itself, and also in conjunction with the Table on sex and age incidence. There are three broad facts which stand out with clearness:— (1) That small-pox among the vaccinated is now-a-days mainly a disease of adults, because children are protected by primary vaccination and adults are not protected by re-vaccination. (92 per cent, of the vaccinated cases were over 15 years of age). (2) That among the unvaccinated, small-pox is still, in great measure, a disease of the young as it was in prevaccination daye. (73 per cent, of the unvaccinated cases were under 15 years of age). (3) That the mortality rate among the vaccinated is at all ages much less than among the unvaccinated, and that this difference is very striking and complete in children because of their recent vaccination. Those who advocate vaccination and re-vaccination as protective in a greater or lesser degree against small-pox do so upon three main grounds. In the first place, they claim that, other things being equal, persons who have been vaccinated (especially within ten years) are less liable to attack from small-pox. This is abundantly established by the figures quoted above. In the second place, they claim that persons who have been vaccinated, and yet on account of their greater number in the population, and, there fore, their consequent greater probability of infection, are attacked by small-pox, do not die so readily from the disease as those who have not been vaccinated. This claim also is more than proved in the returns quoted above. In the third place, they claim that the protection afforded by vaccination depends upon the efficiency