The progress of preventive medicine and sanitary measures : being the Thruston speech on the Wendy Commemoration at Caius College, delivered on May 10, 1856 / by A.W. Barclay.

  • Andrew Whyte Barclay
Date:
1856
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The progress of preventive medicine and sanitary measures : being the Thruston speech on the Wendy Commemoration at Caius College, delivered on May 10, 1856 / by A.W. Barclay. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    27/42 page 23
    The success which attended the introduction 6f innocu- lation, and the subsequent improvement upon it by the dis- covery of vaccination, has led other observers, ardent in the cause of science, to try upon themselves dangerous and some- times even fatal experiments, in the endeavour to ascertain whether similar results might not be obtained in other dis- eases of the same class, but as yet without result: the at- tempt has either failed entirely, or has not afforded any protection against a future attack; and more than all, it has not, in any of the cases tried, proved, as in small-pox, less severe or less dangerous than the natural malady. We shall not now stop to inquire into the facts on which other diseases have been admitted into the same class with small-pox, nor to the points upon which the different mem- bers of the class differ among themselves, although some of these are most remarkable. None perhaps more so, in a preventive point of view, than the circumstance that while in some the same individual rarely suffers from a recurrence of the disease, in others no previous attack affords any security for the future. We must be content to assume the truth of the inference, and to admit, so far as it goes, the correctness of the classification, although much yet remains to be done in this department of medicine. Let us now du-ect our attention to the laws of trans- mission and reception of the poison, which are traceable, and of all vaccinated persons together, 1 in 11. We may deduce from Dr. Balfour's Tables, that in place of 60 or 60 per cent, of the population suffering from small-pox, as yre have reason to tliink veas probable during the last century, not above 6 or 6 per cent, of vaccinated persons catch the infection in the whole course of their lives, notwithstanding the constant presence of natural small-pox in England, and of sailors who are not 80 exposed to the infection of the natural disease, the seizures are not above 6 in the thousand. In spite of the persisting neglect of vaccination, the deaths from small-pox, which at the end of last century were 10 per cent, of the whole mortality, are now under 2 per cent. C2
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3