Volume 7

The Health Exhibition literature : Health in relation to civic life. Vol. VIII.

  • International Health Exhibition (1884 : London, England)
Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Health Exhibition literature : Health in relation to civic life. Vol. VIII. 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.

    147/940 (page 137)
    lation of cattle just in the same way as the passage of viru- lent small-pox poison through the cow so alters its character that it can with safety be used for the inoculation, i.e., the vaccination, of man. This then is the method which has already since Jenner’s time been the means of saving many millions of lives from small-pox, and which might save many more were the value of the operation and the proper mode of its performance, better understood. At the present moment, while continued efforts are being made to mislead the public as to the value of vaccination, it will not be out of place if we consider very briefly how much vaccination has done for us, and how much it might do if its value were more generally recognized. First, let us point out that small-pox is not one of those diseases which are known to be spread through the excreta, or through milk ; we cannot therefore hope by improved methods of drainage, or by care for the protection of our milk supply, to lessen this disease among us. Just as we are liable to contract measles and whooping-cough whenever we may become exposed to its infection, so we are naticrally equally liable to suffer from smalhpox. There are probably not very many people who attain adult life without having passed through measles, so before vaccination was intro- duced there were not many people who in early life escaped small-pox. Wherever we turn the records of past times tell the same story. In the tenth century, Rhazes, a Persian physician, begins a book by inquiring “ Why do we seldom find one or two people out of twenty who have not suffered from small-pox ? ” In the last century, Siiszmilch, who was working at statistics concerning population, stated that a twelfth of the total deaths were due to small-pox. And again. Dr. Storch, who died at Eisenach in 1751, says that “ from love or small-pox few people were exempt.” The behaviour of small-pox in the last century in our own country is especially instructive. Dr. J. C. McVail, of Kil- marnock, has recently shown what small-pox did in that town. In the beginning of the year 1728 the schoolmaster