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upon the performance of vaccination upon every unprotected
person about to enter their respective establishments. In
short, every householder might, in this respect, become a
sanitary inspector with excellent effect, and but comparatively
few of the population, it is believed, would then
escape vaccination.
The practice of re-vaccination is one that also deserves
more serious attention than it appears to receive. But few
of the medical profession of any experience will be found at
the present day to dispute the fact, that the longer persons
have been vaccinated, the more liable they are to take
Small-pox in after life; and it is surely a wise precaution
to submit to a slight temporary inconvenience, even a
dozen times, than once risk the contraction of so loathsome
and destructive a disease by a neglect of the only possible
test of the efficacy of vaccination performed in infancy.
The most perfect isolation of persons suffering from
Small-pox is another, and a no less important consideration
in any attempts we may make to prevent the spread of the
disease ; and more essential is it that this isolation should
be promptly accomplished when the sufferers belong to the
class of the very poor. The comfortless abodes of the
majority of this class will not admit of such desirable
arrangements being made as to effect the proper separation
of the sick from the healthy, either by night or by day;
and when the feelings of the patients happen (as they too
frequently are) to be against removal to the special hospitals
or infirmaries, the results are deplorable in the extreme, and
certainly necessitates the greatest caution being used by all
who take upon themselves the office of advisers of the poor,
especially on the subject of the domestic management of the
sick, in relation to which the labouring classes of this country,
as a rule, display the most lamentable ignorance and apathy.