On the progress of preventive medicine during the Victorian era : being the inaugural address delivered before the Epidemiological Society of London, session 1887-88 / by R. Thorne Thorne.

Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the progress of preventive medicine during the Victorian era : being the inaugural address delivered before the Epidemiological Society of London, session 1887-88 / by R. Thorne Thorne. 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.

    18/80 (page 8)
    all the circumstances under which the full effect of vaccination in Its conflict with small-pox could be acquired. At this stage, Dr. Buclmnan, medical officer to H.M. Local Government Board, commenced an investigation into the influence of vaccination as a protective against small-pox, the results of which are embodied in a series of reports which form some of the most important chapters in the history of this subject, and are characteristic of the labours by which progress in this department of the science of pre- ventive medicine has been advanced during recent years. At the outset of this inquiry it became evident that vacci- nation had led to a vast saving of life during infancy and childhood. Examining into the mortality from small-pox in children under ten years of age in London, Dr. Buchanan ascertained that this mortality among the unvaccinated was about a hundredfold the mortality from small-pox among the vaccinated;* and that if in the year 1881, which was then under consideration, the small-pox mortality amongst the vaccinated children had been at the same rate as amongst the unvaccinated, London would during that one year have been confronted with 12,000 more deaths from smaU-pox than actually occurred. This saving of 12,000 young lives in one twelve months was effected by the current vaccination available; but it was further shown that the power of a thorough vaccination to protect against death from small-pox is at least ten times greater than the power of much that passes for vaccination; and that as regards the children dying in London of small-pox within some ten years of alleged vac- cination, the mortality in this class obtaining private vaccination was more than twice as great as in the class seeking vaccination at the hands of public officials, who are under the requirement to perform the operation accord- * Kepoi-t of the Medical Officer of the Local Government Board for 1881. [C—3337.—I.]