The truth about vaccination : an examination and refutation of the assertions of the anti-vaccinators.

  • Ernest Abraham Hart
Date:
1880
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The truth about vaccination : an examination and refutation of the assertions of the anti-vaccinators. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    cold would do, and thus be the means of sooner evolving some eruptive disorder that was lurking in the system. But such cases are exceptional; and, certainly, no professional authorities believe in the transference of glandular or cutaneous diseases from one child to another by vaccination. Parental complaints of such communication arise, as Mr. Marson very justly states, from the unwillingness of parents ' to believe that there is any- thing wrong in their offspring ; and, when other diseases follow, vaccination gets blamed for what is really and truly due to other causes.' In corroboration of this statement, and as illustrating the want of foundation of such complaints, and the prejudices under which they are preferred, Dr. Seaton has stated that having himself carefully investigated many of them, he has never yet in a single instance found that the child from whom the lymph was taken was suffering from the disease it was said to have imparted.1 24. Erysipelas after vaccination.—As to erysipelas, it is undoubtedly true that in a small proportion of cases, vaccina- tion, especially if it has taken effect in a hastened or spurious form, will in its course manifest inflammatory symptoms of considerable activity, and very sore arms will result; the vesicle leaving a cicatrix which has none of the characteristic pittings, but is simply a puckering, or a flat, smooth, shining scar. In a still smaller proportion of cases true erysipelas may occur. Often this erysipelas is found to attack one child only amongst several that have been vaccinated with the same lymph, and the cause must then be looked for either in the constitution or habit of body of the child vaccinated, or (so far as erysipelas is concerned) in what Sydenham called the ' con- stitution of the air.' Accordingly, cases of erysipelas following vaccination, when they do occur, are not unfrequently met with two or three together in one locality, and at times when erysipelas is noticed as attending wounds from other surgical operations, however trifling, even the drawing of a tooth or a scratch with a pin being sometimes sufficient to induce erysi-
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