Smallpox : the case for vaccination / by J. Wilson Hamill.

  • Hamill, J. Wilson, 1854-1917.
Date:
1902
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Smallpox : the case for vaccination / by J. Wilson Hamill. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    none of whom had had smallpox, were re-vaccinated, with the exception of the gardener, and he was the only one' who took the disease. At the Sheffield Hospital, during the epidemic, 80 nurses and attendants were re-vaccinated, none of these contracted the disease; 63 had only been vaccinated in infancy, six of these contracted it and one died. A special committee of the Epidemiological Society has since investigated this subject, and they have found, out of 655 persons who had been in attendance on smallpox patients, 645 had been re-vaccinated, not one of these contracted the disease ; the remain- ing 10, who had been only vaccinated in infancy, all took it. Dr. Grimshaw, Registrar-General of Ireland, states that at one time he was connected with the Smallpox Hospital in Dublin, and that all the nurses and servants were re-vaccinated there, and all escaped the disease. There' was a resident pupil in the hospital, who refused to be re-vaccinated; he contracted the disease and died of it. Another illustration of the protection afforded by efficient vacci- nation and systematic re>-vaccination is afforded by the cases of our own as well as foreign armies, navies, police', and postmen. Take the case of the British Army. Since 1858 it has been cus- tomary to re-vaccinate every recruit; before that date the average mortality was about 20 per 100,000, but. in the 10 years 1859-1868 it fell to 5 per 100,000. In the 10 years 1869-1878, which include the great epidemic of 1871, it fell to 4’7; in the next 10 years, 1879-1888, the mortality fell to 0*8, and from 1888 to 1894 there were no deaths at all. In the army in the colonies there have been no deaths from smallpox since 1881. In the Navy re-vaccination has been compulsory since 1864 to persons entering the' service, and since that time', as in the. Army, the death-rate from smallpox has shown a similar decline. In the German Army, where vaccination and re-vaccination are carried out with more stringency than in our own, the results are still more remarkable. During the great epidemic which followed the Franco-German war of 1870-71, a comparison of the two armies as regards this epidemic will prove instructive. In the imperfectly vaccinated French Army of about 750,000, the Government esti- mated that about 6,000 succumbed to the disease, while in the German Army, estimated at over1 a million, the deaths were only 278. Since 1885 there have been no deaths at all from it in the latter army. Ini the' Bavarian Army re-vaccination was made compulsory in 1843, and from that year until 1857 not a, single unmodified case of smallpox occurred, nor a single death. In Bavaria generally,