View report page

23
On account of the great increase of disinfections required, fresh men were employed who had
not been re-vaccinated, and six of these men contracted small-pox, one of whom was re-vaccinated
too late, five days after he had begun this work, and after he had contracted small-pox. No case
occurred amongst any of the Disinfecting Staff after having been re-vaccinated twelve days, nor
has any other employee of the Council contracted small-pox.
The Town Clerk was also re-vaccinated, and the majority of the staff of his and of the other
departments.
the great importance and value of successful vaccination and
re-vaccination.
The present outbreak of Small-pox has again demonstrated the very great importance and.
value of successful vaccination and re-vaccination.
The Registrar-General has published statistics of the 1,015 deaths from Small-pox of
London residents which have been registered from the beginning of the outbreak to the 5th of
April, 1902. Of these there has been no death of a person who had been re-vaccinated within
the previous ten years, and but one death of a vaccinated child under ten years of age, and this
child was certified to have been but imperfectly vaccinated. On the other hand, there were 264
deaths of im-vaccinated children under ten years of age, including 38 deaths of children under ten
who were not vaccinated until after they had contracted Small -pox.
In the Holborn Borough, I estimate that about 20,000 persons were vaccinated or revaccinated
during the present outbreak, and allowing the usual twelve days for protective
incubation, not one of them has contracted Small-pox. I have also mentioned that there was no
death of a person under 15 years of age who was vaccinated at the time of infection.
The special report dated the 10th January, 1902, of the Metropolitan Asylums Board,
stated that during the past year a very large number of new staff have joined the Ships and the Gore
Farm Hospital, but not one cane of Small-po.e has occurred. Not one of the staff of the Hospital
Ships has ever died of Small-pox.
Similar evidence was afforded by the severe epidemic of small-pox in 1870-1872. The
Special Committee appointed by the Managers to collate statistics of this epidemic resorted as
follows:—
"The necessity of re-vaccination, when the protective power of the primary vaccination
has to a great extent passed away, cannot be too strongly urged. No greater argument to prove
the efficacy of this precaution can be adduced than the fact that out of upwards of 14,800 cases
received at the hospitals only four well-authenticated cases were treated in which re-vaccination
had been properly performed, and these were light attacks. Further conclusive evidence is
afforded by the facts that all the nurses and servants of the hospitals, to the number at one time of'
upwards of over 300, who are hourly brought into intimate contact with the disease, who constantly
breathe its atmosphere, and than whom none can be more exposed to its contagion, have with but
few exceptions, enjoyed complete immunity from its attacks. These exceptions were cases of
nurses or servants, whose re-vaccination in the pressure of the epidemic was overlooked, and who
speedily took the disease, and one case was that of a nurse who, having had small-pox previously,
was not re-vaccinated, and took the disease a second time."
From the Report and voluminous Appendices of the Report of the Royal Commission on
Vaccination I prepared the following table, giving statistics of the incidence, number of deaths
and death-rates amongst the vaccinated and unvaccinated under ten years of age in the largetowns
in which detailed enquiry was made. The figures for London are obtained from the Annual
Reports of the Metropolitan Asylums Board for the ten years 1891 to 1900.