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152
Erysipelas or blood poisoning. Erysipelas is a common disease
in infancy, and not unfrequently leads to death. The evidence of
Dr. Ogle shows that nearly two thousand per million die of
Erysipelas during the first three months of life, and that the
mortality rapidly declines as the age advances. Quite apart, then,
from vaccination there is nothing remarkable in the occurrence of
Erysipelas in the case of an infant. The disease is obviously
contracted in the majority of cases from some other source.
Where a child has been in good health prior to vaccination, and
is seized with any malady after it, it is not unnatural that the two
occurrences should be connected together, as cause and effect by
those who have not a wide experience of the liability to be
attacked by the disease independently of vaccination. It is a
common fault too readily to connect together, as cause and effect,
occurences which follow one another in point of time. There can
be no doubt that this tendency has sometimes been the reason
why, without any real connexion between the two, subsequent
illness has been believed to have its origin in vaccination. The
apparent connexion of the two may be a mere chance coincidence.
Illustrations of this have not been wanting. It has sometimes
happened that circumstances have led to the vaccination being,
on the day appointed for the operation, postponed to a later date.
A troublesome skin disease has shortly afterwards manifested
itself, which would certainly have been believed to have been
caused by the vaccination if it had taken place at the appointed
time.
In many of the cases which we have had to investigate,
where vaccination has been followed by Erysipelas, the disease
has been present in the immediate vicinity, it cannot therefore be
asserted with certainty that in such cases the child would have
escaped Erysipelas if it had not been vaccinated. Erysipelas may
be acquired without any lesion. We do not intend to represent
that the wound made in vaccination may not cause an attack of
Erysipelas, where, if there were no lesion, there would be no such