View report page

6
thirty years. Latterly Small Pox has been frightfully on
the increase. Its "natural history in unprotected communities
is, that of every 100 persons attacked 35 die." But " this
is not the extent of the evil. Blindness is very frequently
the result of Small Pox. Then there is the disfigurement by
scars, the destruction—the total destruction in many cases—of
the good looks of the patient; and lastly, the general
health is frequently profoundly shattered by a bad attack of
Small Pox." To prevent such destruction there is but one
prophylaxis—the god-like discovery of Dr. Jenner ! It has
however been noticed, that in "some vaccinated persons
the insusceptibility conferred by cow pox is not of life-long
duration," but "that the renascent liability to Small Pox
may be guarded against by re-vaccination." Thus, in the
Small Pox Hospital, "during the last twenty-seven years,
not one instance has been known of a nurse or attendant
contracting Small Pox, for all have been vaccinated or revaccinated
immediately on their entering the Institution."
What mischief from Small Pox is propagated by cabs the
the following fatal case incontestably proves:—" A cabman
drove a physician to a house where a patient had been suffering
from Small Pox. On arrival the patient was dead
and the blinds were drawn down, and when the physician
returned to the cab, the driver enquired if a death had
occurred in the house, and what was the cause ? The circumstances
having been explained, the conscientious cabman
stated, that two or three weeks before he had driven a lady
to the door in question immediately after having taken a
patient to the Small Pox Hospital. The lady turned out to
be the patient now dead, and the period between her occupation
of the infected cab and the commencement of her
illness corresponded to the ordinary latent period of the
disease."