View report page

13
embraced a series of recommendations, the majority of which they adopted. Handbills,
urging the people to seek protective vaccination, were circulated throughout the
Districts and streets where the the disease mostly prevailed, and left by the distributors
at each house, and often with each family in a house; the Medical Officers
under the control of the Trustees were directed to urge, in all cases, the removal of
small-pox patients to the hospital, and to vaccinate all that they found unprotected
in infected houses. These gentlemen also undertook the examination of the arms of the
children attending the charitable schools in their several Districts, a task which I was
on this occasion unable to undertake myself. As in the former epidemic, the Trustees
further appointed Mr. Thompson to act as Vaccine Inspector, his duty being to assist
in the examination of the schools, to visit and report to me as to the condition of
localities where small pox broke out, to vaccinate where he could do so without
interfering with the permanent vaccinators, and to ascertain the vaccination of about
4,000 children born during the previous year, and whose vaccination had not been
returned, as it ought to have been, to the District Registrars. All this agitation gave
a marked impetus to vaccination among all classes of the population, and re-vaccination
was sought to an extent quite unparalleled in the experience of our medical practitioners.
Indeed, towards the close of April, most of the private practitioners were in this
difficulty, that their primary vaccinations, from which alone they could take lymph
for the vaccination of others, bore no sufficient proportion to the re vaccinations which
they were called upon to perform. The stock of dry lymph at the National Vaccine
Establishment was exhausted, and it daily happened that one practitioner or another
had to seek for a supply from his friends at great loss of time and trouble. I felt
that I was then called upon to step into the breach, and I immediately established at
my own residence a depot for dry lymph which I obtained from the District Vaccinators,
who most kindly assisted my efforts, and from such private practitioners as
had performed primary vaccinations and could obtain lymph from the arms of healthy
children. During the whole time of the greatest pressure I was thus enabled to
supply all that were in need and refused no one, giving to each applicant the full
quantity he required. During the month of May alone, when the epidemic was at
its height, I supplied 517 charges of lymph. As the epidemic spread, the question
arose as to the best mode of providing for the isolation of the cases, and this was
determined, I believe wisely and economically, by an agreement with the Small Pox
Hospital, under which no patient sent from our Parish should under any oircumstances
be refused. Altogether 267 cases were sent to the Hospital between November, 1862,
and December, 1863, at an expense to the Parish of £677. This was money well
spent, for no one can tell the damage which these cases might have effected by
spreading the disease, while the expense of providing special hospital accommodation
with the requisite staff would have exceeded double this sum. The ambulances
established some years ago did good service; at one time the daily cases to be sent were
so numerous, that all three ambulances were simultaneously in use. As respects
myself I may state that I kept up, during the severity of the epidemic, personal
visits to those localities where the epidemic was most severe, and frequently in the
evenings called upon the Parochial Officers to ascertain that all the cases which had
occurred during the day were transmitted to the hospital. In addition, I met those
gentlemen for conference one day in the week at the Vestry Hall, and I should be
deficient in common lionesti did I not express my sense of the courteous and cordial