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On account of the great increase of disinfections required, fresh men were employed who had
not been re-vaccinated, and 6ix 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 Smallpox 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 un-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 at least 16,000 persons have been vaccinated or
re-vaccinated during the present outbreak, and allowing the usual twelve days for protective incubation,
not one of them has contracted Small-pox.
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 case of Small-pox 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 reported 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 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 large towns 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.