Papers relating to the history and practice of vaccination.

  • Great Britain. General Board of Health.
Date:
1857
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Papers relating to the history and practice of vaccination. 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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    Whether my present inquiry has brought to light any subsequent divergence of opinion, is a question on which the evidence (App. E. to K.) is before you, and to which I shall presently return. III.—Small-pox since the Use of Vaccination. Evidence on tlie protectiveness of vaccination must now be statistical. Foreign infor- mation obtained by the Epide- miological So- ciety. Its results in a tabular form. Contrast of periods before In the earlier days of Jenner’s discovery the evidence which led men to adopt vaccination depended on a somewhat minute inquiry into individual cases. In thousands of instances (as I have already mentioned) the patient, after being vaccinated, was deliberately tested by inoculation with small-pox matter; in other instances, chance supplied equivalent means of trial; and the results of these very numerous experiments were sufficiently uniform to convince the public judgment. At present it may be reasonably claimed that the evidence shall be of a more compre- hensive kind. From individual cases the appeal is to masses of national experience. Tested by half a century’s trial on the millions of civilized Europe, what has vaccination achieved ? Comparing the small-pox mortality of the last forty or fifty years with that of as many years in the last century, do we find a sensible difference ? Has progress been made towards that final result which (App. A.) Jenner anticipated,—the annihilation of the most dreadful scourge of the human species ? In respect of certain countries, these questions are admirably answered in papers already before Parliament. Four or five years ago the Epidemiological Society of London appointed a committee of its members to conduct inquiries connected with small-pox and vaccination. The committee, having obtained from foreign governments the communication of most important statistical facts as to the decline of small-pox, reported (inter alia) these results to the Society; and soon afterwards this valuable report (specially the work, I believe of Dr. Seaton, honorary secretary to the committee) was ordered to be printed for presentation to both Houses of Parliament. For reasons with which I need not trouble you, I neither quote at length the statistical tables of that Report, nor exactly follow their form ; but, extracting from the foreign communications of its Appendix such particulars only as relate to Population*and Small- Pox, and distinguishing these into two periods, I obtain all requisite means for comparing the past and present ravages of the disease. On this plan the following table has been constructed; and in observing the last columns (calculated by Mr. Haile from the materials referred to) you will notice, side by side, two series of facts :—1st, how many persons in each million of population annually died of small-pox before the use of vaccination; and 2dly, how many persons in each million of population have annually died of small-pox since the use of vaccination. And lest these facts should appear a whit stronger or less strong than they really are, I have set in the other side of the table, opposite the name of each territory, a statement of what periods of time are referred to in the particular comparison. The results are truly conclusive. Compare, for instance, in the case of Sweden, the twenty-eight years before vaccination* * The small-pox death-rate for this earlier period has been calculated from the numbers given in an important paper (App. p. 185) which we owe to the Swedish Board of Health. It is on the same paper that the annexed See Diagram Diagram is founded, which represents the annual fluctuations of small-pox mortality in Sweden for the last 82 years, appended. an(j ]ess perfectly for the 25 years previous. Before 1774, measles and small-pox were unfortunately not distinguished in the mortuary registers of the kingdom ; so that the first section of the table must be read with allowance for this combination. During the period referred to in the text small-pox deaths were separately enumerated, and of course are alone counted in the estimate there given of the small-pox death-ra,tes for 1774-1801 and 1810-50. The first.