Vaccination considered in relation to the public health : with inquiries and suggestions thereon. A letter addressed to the Right Honourable the Lord Viscount Morpeth, first commissioner of Her Majesty's woods & forests / by John Marshall.

Date:: 1847

Credit: Vaccination considered in relation to the public health : with inquiries and suggestions thereon. A letter addressed to the Right Honourable the Lord Viscount Morpeth, first commissioner of Her Majesty's woods & forests / by John Marshall. 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.

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$passport of vaccination sliall be demanded of them ; and since this condition would be required at the outset of their educa- tional course,—which, among the poor especially, begins at a very early age, with attendance at an Infant-school,—it follows that the means so taken to ensure the fact of vaccination, would operate, not only on the school-population, but on the infant- population of the kingdom. So much the greater benefit would accrue to themselves and to the community. At its commencement, the inspection would, of course, embrace a class of children much older than it would subse- quently supervise. The unavoidable necessity for vaccination, as a condition of a child's being hereafter admitted into a school, would have a retrospective effect in removing the prejudices and quickening the assent of the parent to the early performance of that operation. By those direct inspections which T have ventm'ed to advo- cate, the relatively protected or unprotected state of the school- population in each locality would at once be revealed, with all its individual details. The very persons who were still unpro- tected by vaccination or by small-pox would be singled out and rendered accessible : none could escape ;—the finger of preservation could be laid upon them :—the evil would be exposed at its root; and society would thus be enabled to attain and perpetuate a state of secuiity, which, under existing aiTangements, it is utterly impossible to reach. It is gratifying to be able to quote, in illusti-ation of tlie efficacy and utility of the inspections here ad\ised, the result of the comparatively partial inquiries originated or conducted by myself. As many as 383 entirely unprotected childi-en were detected in an examination of 4191, in 43 different schools. Nearly all will 15e forthwith vaccinated in consequence of those inquiries. Without them, it may perhaps be asserted that before another seven years had gone by, at least 100 would have had small-pox, of whom 30 would have died from that disease! But, independent of this direct good, the collateral benefits of inspection would be great. Tlic periodical visits of the ofiiccrs ot health being heard of everywhere, and s]iokcn of by$