Gloucester epidemic of small-pox, 1895-6 : report of the committee appointed by the Board of Guardians to organise and carry out the general vaccination of the city and district.

  • Gloucester (England). Board of Guardians.
Date:
[1896]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Gloucester epidemic of small-pox, 1895-6 : report of the committee appointed by the Board of Guardians to organise and carry out the general vaccination of the city and district. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    within the week March 13-18. Of these 80 men and boys, 10 were subse- quently compelled to assist in nursing friends or relatives who had con- tracted small-pox, and who were treated at their own homes partly or entirely. Of the 10 so directly in contact with the disease, not one fell ill or was in any way affected by the disease, and they all resumed work on medical certificates after the usual quarantine period. Of the entire number of our employes, one only fell ill with small-pox, and the circum- stances in his case were somewhat peculiar. He was obstinately opposed to being vaccinated, but ultimately agreed to the operation, and was, he says, vaccinated by Dr. . He did not go again to show his arm, and we think it doubtful whether he was successfully vaccinated. He, how- ever, contracted small-pox, but not until his wife had undertaken the duty of nursing small-pox patients. In this capacity she was admittedly passing from severe cases of small-pox to her own house in which the man we refer to was then residing. Apart from this singular case, we consider that the experience of our workmen and our staff during the epidemic has proved conclusively the great protection against small-pox which vaccina- tion affords.’' [Note.—The above case was visited and examined by me at an early stage of the illness, and all that was visible on the arm was the healed wounds left by the lancet, but no evidence whatever of any characteristic scar, except from three in infancy.—F.T.B.] The Rev. William Bazeley, Matson Rectory, Gloucester, writes: “ This parish, containing some 350 inhabitants, is about two miles from the centre of Gloucester. Most of the men are employed in the City, the women shop there, and many of the elder boys attend the City Schools. Early in the year the children were nearly all unprotected by vaccination, and we were expecting a bad outbreak of small-pox. Fortunately, we were enabled to induce the parents to have their children vaccinated without a single exception. The result was that not one child caught small-pox. We had four cases amongst adults, none of whom had been re-vaccinated; but by isolating ithem we prevented the disease spreading, and it never became epidemic. The cases were none of them of a very severe type, and the patients soon recovered ; all had been vaccinated in childhood. I would gratefully acknowledge on behalf of my parishioners the kind way in which the Public Vaccinator for this district, Mr. W. Washbourn, made his visit to Matson at a time convenient to the working-men and others.” From All Saints' (Gloucester) Parish Magazine, June, 1896.—One has known all along how worse than useless it is to waste time and breath in argument, or even talk, with anti-vaccinators. They are so un- reasonable and blind, that one can only put it down to some mental defect; but in spite of all talk, argument, disbelief, or ridicule, the fact remains, supreme and evident, that the small-pox is leaving our City and Parish simply because the great majority are re-vaccinated ; and if anti- vaccinators were as honest as they claim to be they would frankly acknowledge that such is the case. Ah well ! there always will be those who think their own opinion the only possible one ; they are very trying to those who come in contact with them, and doubtless their own life is not a bed of roses, and the mischief they do is infinite ; but it would not do to have everything too smooth in this life, and so one pities them, and hopes, with a certain amount of doubt, that they may come to a better mind ; but one cannot shut one’s eyes to the fact that the result of their blindness has been disastrous, and poor Gloucester is, alas! only too terrible an example, as one may see by visiting the new part of the Cemetery, which is covered with the graves of the nearly four hundred* victims, not one of whom (in all human probability) would be there were it not for the obstinacy of the anti-vaccinators.” ♦Before the end of the epidemic this number had increased to 443.