The London epidemic of small-pox.

  • Edward Jenner Society.
Date:
[1902]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The London epidemic of small-pox. 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.

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    Facts to be Noted. — i. General correspondence of the three epidemics in all respects except one, namely, the large proportion of attacks and deaths of unvaccinated children at Gloucester. * 2. In each epidemic (a) Great difference in fatality, at all ages, between vaccinated and unvaccinated—most marked in childhood; (b) Fatality in “vaccinated” insignificant in early life; slight from io to 20 years, but increasing then and afterwards with age; attacks in childhood also few, but increasing with age; (c) No such difference in attacks or fatality amongst unvaccinated, the former very high in childhood in the town in which infant vaccination had been neglected (Gloucester), and both also excessive even where there were few un- vaccinated children to be attacked (Middlesbrough); (<d) The great majority of the vaccinated, having been protected only in infancy, are over 20 years of age* Lessons.—i. Good vaccination in infancy protects up to about io years of age, with a high degree of probability, against attack of Small-pox, and almost with certainty against death. 2. Even up to middle life it continues to give some protection against attack, and still more so against death, though in a more rapidly decreasing degree as age advances. 3. Re-vaccination, at about 10 years of age, is necessary in order to maintain protection against attack from Small-pox, and should certainly be repeated after an interval of 10 years at the outside in the case of imminent danger from the actual neighbourhood of the disease. 4. The protection given by efficient vaccination is comparable for a time with that given by an attack of Small-pox, but is not so lasting. * It has been sought to explain away the lesson of the large number of unvaccinated children attacked in the Gloucester epidemic by the statement that there were so many more unvaccinated than vaccinated children there, that it might be expected that a much larger number of the former than of the latter would be attacked. But, although this is true of the commencement of the epidemic, it does not apply to the greater part of it. For, out of about 10,000 children who were unvaccinated at the outset of the epidemic, more than 8000 had been vaccinated before it reached its climax. So that, during the greater part of the epidemic, there were more vaccinated than unvaccinated children in Gloucester. If it had been otherwise the slaughter of the children, bad enough as it was, would have been as terrible as it used to be in the times before Jenner. Published by the Jenner Society, Gloucester. Price id., post free ijd. ; or 2/6 per 100; or 12/6 per 1000.