London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972

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St Pancras 1881

[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for St. Pancras, Metropolitan Borough]

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The following table, showing the condition of Vaccination of those persons suffering from small pox, who were admitted into the Vestry's hospital at Finchley, will be of interest.

Discrete.Semi-Confluent.Confluent.Haemorrhagic.Total
Unvaccinated482110
Alleged to be Vaccinated but without marks11417
Vaccination bad2816650
Vaccination good444260
Vaccination not stated224
Total7926142121

The point particularly worthy of notice is that of 50 persons
having good vaccination marks who were attacked, 44
of them had the mildest form of small pox; of those badly
vaccinated but a little more than half suffered from this mild
form, while of those who were without evidence of vaccination
less than one-third suffered from modified small pox.
With regard to the fact that out of 110 persons whose
condition of vaccination was accurately known 100 were vaccinated,
these figures might at first sight appear to favour the
belief that vaccination had rendered them specially susceptible
to small pox, and this conclusion would perhaps be justifiable
did the community consist of vaccinated and unvaccinated
persons in equal proportions, but as I pointed out in my
Report for the year 1878, as long ago as 1863 an inquiry into
the condition of vaccination in St. Pancras showed the proportion
of vaccinated children to unvaccinated to be as 25
to 1. At the present time, owing to the Compulsory Vaccination
Act, the proportion of vaccinated persons to unvaccinated
is enormously increased, but if for the sake of argument
we assume that only the same proportion still exists as in
1863, for every one unvaccinated person who is attacked, providing
vaccination did not protect against an attack, we should
have 25 vaccinated persons attacked, and for the 10 unvaccinated
people received into the hospital at Finchley there
would have been 250 who were vaccinated instead of only
100.