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69
If lymph is to be preserved in glycerine, due care would be
requisite to ensure its purity and the absence of contamination in
its introduction. We think that, whether mixed with glycerine
or not, each tube should contain only sufficient lymph for the
vaccination of one person.
We have no difficulty in answering the question, what means
other than vaccination can be used for diminishing the prevalence
of Small-Pox? We think that a complete system of notification
of the disease, accompanied by an immediate hospital isolation of
the persons attacked, together with a careful supervision, or, if
possible, isolation for sixteen days of those who had been in
immediate contact with them, could not but be of very high value
in diminishing the prevalence of Small-Pox. It would be necessary,
however, to bear constantly in mind as two conditions of
success, first, that no considerable number of Small-Pox patients
should ever be kept together in a hospital situate in a populous
neighbourhood, and secondly, that the ambulance arrangement
should be organised with scrupulous care. If these conditions
were not fulfilled, the effect might be to neutralise or even do more
than counteract the benefits otherwise flowing from a scheme of
isolation.
The question we are now discussing must, of course, be
argued on the hypothesis that vaccination affords protection
against Small-Pox. Who can possibly say that if the disease
once entered a town, the population of which was entirely or
almost entirely unprotected, it would not spread with a rapidity
of which we have in recent times had no experience, or who can
foretell what call might then be made on hospital accommodation
if all those attacked by the disease were to be isolated? A priori
reasoning on such a question is of little or no value.
We can see nothing, then, to warrant the conclusion that in
this country vaccination might safely be abandoned, and replaced
by a system of isolation. If such a change were made in our