Copy of the report to the Secretary of State for the Home Department, from the National Vaccine Establishment ; dated 8th April 1819. To the Right Honourable Lord Viscount Sidmouth, Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department.

  • National Vaccine Establishment (Great Britain)
Date:
1819
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Copy of the report to the Secretary of State for the Home Department, from the National Vaccine Establishment ; dated 8th April 1819. To the Right Honourable Lord Viscount Sidmouth, Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    COPY OF TIIE REPORT To the Secretary of State for the Home Department, from the National Vaccine Establishment; dated 8th April 181D- TO THE It IC IIT HONOURABLE LORD VISCOUNT SIDMOUTII, PRINCIPAL SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT, &c. Sec. Sec. NATIONAL VACCINE ESTABLISHMENT, Percy-street, 8tli April 1819. My Loud, TIIE Board have the honour of reporting to Your Lordship, that during the year 1818, the number of persons vaccinated at the Stations in London and the vicinity, have amounted to 6,289 ; ar)6 their correspondents throughout the kingdom have reported that they have vaccinated 57,897. These numbers how- ever are not to be considered as the whole; for many Surgeons who are supplied w ith Vaccine Lymph from this Establishment, do not report the entire numbers of those whom they vaccinate. From the first establishment of the Board in 1808, an annual increase has taken place in the demand for Vaccine Lymph, of which 50,116 charges have been dis- tributed to the public during the preceding year. The Board have much satisfaction in laying before your Lordship unequivocal evidence of the increasing advantages of the Jennerian discovery : for it appears from the Bills of Mortality of London, that instead of two thousand deaths by Small Pox, which w ere the annual average previous to the practice of Vaccination, there died last year only four hundred and twenty-one. In addition to this gratifying decrease of the ravages of Small Pox in the Me- tropolis, the Board are also enabled to state, from authentic information, that its diminution has likewise been considerable in many other places. In the towns of Shrewsbury, Worksop and Faversham, and in the city ot Armagh, no case of Small P ox has for some time occurred; and the Board are informed by the Secretary of Addinbroke’s Hospital in Cambridge, a district where great impediments have been heretofore throw n in the w ay of Vaccination, that eight thousand persons were vaccinated during the last year. As an additional proof of the vast progress of Vaccination in the British possessions in India, the Board have much pleasure in noticing a communication from the Abb6 Dubois, catholic missionary in the Mysore, in w'hich he' states, that he has himself had the happiness to secure nearly a Lac (above 98,000) of individuals from the Small Pox, without one authenticated case of failure. By a return from Ceylon also, it appears that 23,464 persons were vaccinated in that government alone, during the year 1817. It is a very singular fact that the Small Pox was extinguished sixteen years ago in the parish of Mickleham in Surrey, and has never appeared in it since: this has been accomplished by Mr. Curtis, surgeon at Dorking, who vaccinated periodically all the poor of the neighbourhood by the direction, and at the expense of the late William Lock, esquire, ofNorbury Park, w hose beneficent scheme, after his decease, was laudably continued by his w idow. Such praisew orthy examples, highly deserv- ing general imitation, unequivocally evince what may be effected by a judicious application of the power of the Vaccine. It will be gratifying to your Lordship to know, that independently of the con- tinued distribution of Vaccine Lymph from this Board, to all parts of the British dominions, the reputation of its purity is such, that applications for a supply are often made from Foreign Countries. 267. His