View report page

19
with stale lymph and impure lymph; it has been done with irritant
drugs, and also with one so harmless as glycerine alone; it has been
done, particularly re-vaccination, by unqualified persons, with drugs as
stated, and with dirty lancets.
In my opinion these are some of the main reasons why vaccination
has gained such a bad repute.
I do not propose to give figures, but I think it is well known and
accepted that very many of the cases attended by serious results
occurred in the practices of public vaccinators where the children
were massed together and arm-to-arm vaccination was performed
(originally adopted, apparently, for convenience and economy). These
methods are now abolished. The infants are not collected in one
room, and the lymph to be used is to be prepared with glycerine;
and I anticipate that an end will be put to these deplorable cases.
It would not be very wise to discuss why vaccination has been in
such bad odour; carelessness, inefficiency, even fraud, on the one
hand, danger on the other.
It is fair, though, to offer an explanation of the reason why vaccination
may possibly have lost some of its protective influence, especially
when humanised lymph is used : but if we admit this and the
argument used in support of it, we must also admit that from the
same cause small-pox has largely lost its infectiveness and malignancy.
It is well known that on several occasions when an infectious disease
has been first introduced to a population, it has killed off that population
with a vigour never again experienced unless after an absence for
some generations. Measles, even, has been known to be eventually
fatai when introduced to savages. In our own time we have had
the reintroduction of two infectious diseases, neither of which completely
by one attack exhausts the soil and renders the patient safe
from a second; I allude, of course, to diphtheria and influenza, both
absent for two or three generations, then attacking us with greater
violence, but now it would appear as if these attacks were much