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149
letter to coroners throughout England and Wales, requesting that
in all cases where they received information that the death of any
person, on whose body they proposed to hold an inquest, had been
alleged to have been caused by, or to have had any connection
with, vaccination they would communicate immediately with the
Commission.
From all sources 421 cases in which death or non-fatal injury
has been alleged or suggested to have been connected with
vaccination, have been brought to our notice, from 1st June, 1889,
to 1st July, 1896. These 421 cases, however, include 19 groups of
connected cases, each of which has only been counted as one in
arriving at that number. The individual cases included in these
groups amount to about 150. Some of these 421 cases were
investigated and made the subject of reports by medical inspectors
of the Local Government Board. We received reports with
reference to a large number of them from medical men appointed
by ourselves. In a few cases the nature of the allegation or
suggestion rendered it unnecessary, in our opinion, to make any
inquiry into the case. In a considerable number we sought for
further information, and after we had considered the further facts
thus acquired there appeared to be no necessity for an investigation
by the medical men who assisted us by personally inquiring into
cases of alleged injury from vaccination.
We have not any means of ascertaining in what number of
cases some other disease has supervened on vaccination as a consequence
of it, without producing a fatal result. We are able,
however, to form some judgment upon this point by observing the
number of non-fatal cases to which our attention has been called.
We do not mean to suggest that we have been informed of all
cases of this nature which have occurred during the last six years.
There have very likely been many cases which have not come to
our knowledge, where the Inflammation set up has been more than
usual, and some where a slight attack of Erysipelas has resulted.
But when we consider that the fact that we were engaged upon