A letter to the inhabitants of Ceylon on the advantages of vaccination / by J. Kinnis.

  • Kinnis, John, 1794?-1853.
Date:
1837
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A letter to the inhabitants of Ceylon on the advantages of vaccination / by J. Kinnis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    no care whatever is afterwards taken to cherish or protect it. Hence, in so many cases, the absence of those characters in the scar, which enable us afterwards to tell the person bearing them that he runs very little risk of being infected with small-pox, even in its mildest form, and almost none of suffering severely or losing his life from it. Hence, too, the rarity of small-pox among the British troops in Ceylon, from European mothers and nurses esteeming it a very important part of their duty, most carefully to watch the vesicle, and on no account whatever, to permit the child's hands, or any thing capable of rubbing, or breaking the skin, to touch it. The distinction necessary to the just appreciation of the benefits conferred by vaccination is, that, though in almost every case the effect of that operation is to afford undoubted security against the malignant and fatal forms of small-pox, there are yet some cases, bearing indeed a small proportion to the whole number successfully vaccinated, in which a disease resembling it, but generally quite free from danger, occurs. This has been called modified small-pox, and assumes a considerable variety of forms, almost all, however, of a mild nature, and some of them, in certain stages, so nearly resembling chicken-pox, that it is difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish with certainty betwixt them. These explana- tions premised, I trust my friend the querist, and all of you who concur in his scepticism regarding the advantages of cow-pox, Avill soon see reason to be convinced, that in a vast majority of cases, when successfully passed through, it prevents small-pox altogether; and that, in the small propor- tions of cases in which that disease occurs after vaccination, it assumes in general so mild a form as to excite little more apprehension than chicken-pox, and to be almost equally free from danger. The facts and illustrations, bearing upon this important question, may be arranged under the following divisions, to each and all of which I earnestly solicit your best attention. I. The misery and mortality annually inflicted on Ceylon by small-pox before vaccination was introduced. II. The comparative infrequeucy, the limited ravages, and the gradual expulsion of that disease from every part of the island, during the first eight years afterwards, or from 1802 to 1810. III. The constantly increasing neglect of vaccination during the second eight years, or from 1810 to 1818, and the terrible visitation of small-pox, for which this neglect paved the way in 1819. IV. The progress of vaccination and the less formidable visitations of small-pox from 1819 up to the present year.