Facts about small-pox and vaccination : issued by the Council of the British Medical Association, January 19th, 1898.

  • British Medical Association. Council
Date:
[1898]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Facts about small-pox and vaccination : issued by the Council of the British Medical Association, January 19th, 1898. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Royal Com. Final Report, ss. 272-298. Royal Com. Final Report, s. 174. Sanitation or Vaccination. Jenner Society’] publications. Royal Com. Reports, vol. vi, p. 11. Vaccination Inquirer, Dec. 1st, 1889. different marks, and the fatality rate was 9 per cent.; 1,295 were alleged to be vaccinated, but had no marks, and the fatality rate was 27 per cent.; and 2,169 were unvaccinated, and the fatality rate was 43 per cent. Taking “good” marks only, and attending to their numbers, Dr. Gayton found that with one mark, the fatality rate was 4.1 per cent.; with two marks, 3.3 per cent.; with three marks, 2.3 per cent.; with four or more marks, 1.5 per cent. The cases on which these percentages are founded were 529, 649, 518, and 389 respectively. Taking nearly 7,000 cases observed in recent years, the Royal Commission found that the small-pox fatality rate in persons with one mark was 6,2 per cent.; with two marks, 5.8 per cent.; with three marks, 3.7 per cent.; and with four marks, 2.2 per cent. It is comparatively seldom that cases come to hospital with the small-pox eruption so far advanced and profuse as to obscure the vaccination marks, but in hospital statistics in this country a column is provided for “doubtful” cases, and if the figures for any large hospital be examined it will be seen that the inclusion of such cases either as “vaccinated” or “unvaccinated” does not alter the lesson taught by the statistics. 10. Sanitation cannot account for the facts above set forth. Whooping cough and measles deaths still belong to childhood as in the last century, while small-pox deaths have been removed from childhood to later periods of life. How could sanitation account for this differentiation ? If it be suggested that because sanitation confers a special benefit on children it may have altered the age incidence of small-pox, the answer is got by looking at facts. In Germany, as we have seen, vaccination is not compulsory till the second year, and over 40 per cent, of all the small-pox deaths occur under two years of age. In Scotland the vaccination age is six months, and children under six months make just about the same contribution (138 deaths per 1,000 deaths) to the total small-pox deaths as they did (139 deaths per 1,000) before the vaccination law was passed. But in the next half- year of life—the half-year of vaccination—the contribution has fallen from 153 to 47. Surely this is vaccination and not sanitation. In a community attacked by small-pox, how could sanitation at home protect postmen going from door to door day after day in infected districts? In Leicester, how could sanitation account for the revaceinated nurses escaping small-pox, and the nurses who had refused revaccination taking small-pox ? How could sanitation cause small-pox to pass over vaccinated children and seize on un¬ vaccinated children in houses invaded by small-pox in Dewsbury and Leicester and Gloucester? How can sanitation have caused the fatality of small-pox cases to be much less among the vaccinated than among the unvaccinated in these towns, especially if vaccination weakens the system and makes it less resistant to disease as is al’eged by anti¬ vaccinationists ? How could sanitation cause children with three or four vaccination marks to have a less fatality from small-pox than children with one or two vaccination marks ? In Glasgow, while sanitation was going from bad to worse in the early part of the century, vaccination was introduced and small-pox underwent an enormous diminution, though hospitals and isolation and disinfection were entirely out of the question. In Gloucester, vaccination had been neglected and in 1891 the secretary to the anti vaccination league declared to the Royal Commission that Gloucester was a very clean town and had always been well abreast of sanitary improvements, and that its death-rate was very low. The Board of Guardians also wrote to the Commission on the same lines. But small-pox came, and the town suffered from a terrible epidemic, and ever since then the antivacci-