A report on vaccination and its results : based on the evidence taken by the Royal Commission during the years 1889-1897.
- Great Britain. Royal Commission on Vaccination
- Date:
- 1898
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A report on vaccination and its results : based on the evidence taken by the Royal Commission during the years 1889-1897. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.
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![ill results, but it was asserted on high authority that a well-formed vaccine vesicle is certain proof of a pure and unmixed vaccine lymph; that a syphilitic vaccinifer must betray evidence of disease sufficient to forewarn the careful, and it has been stoutly maintained that it was the presence of blood in the lymph that occasioned the danger of transmitting syphilis, and that as all lymph sent out in tubes from Whitehall was microscopically examined so as to exclude the presence of blood-cells, the danger was infini- tesimal.1 202. We agree with our colleagues that the possibility of vaccine syphilis, formerly denied, has been fully estab- lished.2 203. In this connection we recall the words of the late Sir Thomas Watson, F.R.S., late President of the Royal College of Physicians. Alluding to the risk we are con- sidering, he said (' Nineteenth Century,'June, 1878), I can readily sympathise with, and even applaud, a father who, with the presumed dread or misgiving in his mind, is willing to submit to multiplied judicial penalties rather than expose his child to the risk of an infection so ghastly. 204. We agree with Mr. Hutchinson that it is absurd to assert that inherited syphilis is always to be detected, and it is a cruel injustice to imply that all accidents [of this kind] have been the result of carelessness.3 Sir J. Simon has published a later view in which he states that it is certain that the vaccine lymph of the syphilitic infant may possibly contain the syphilitic contagium in full vigour even at moments when the patient, who thus shows himself infective, has not on his own person any outward activity of syphili s. J)4 205. A committee consisting of Dr. Bristowe, Professor Humphry, Mr. Hutchinson, and Dr. Ballard, reporting upon a well-known case, said it is conclusively proved that it is 1 Simon's 1857 papers, p. 138 ; 21,853. - Section 420. * 'Archives,' October, 1890; 30,943-4. 4 Quain's ' Dictionary of Medicine,' p. 182 ; 30,971.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21012040_0454.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
