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17
I find many anti-vaccinists are converted by being told in simple
language what vaccination really means. I tell them how in prevaccination
days cows suffered from a disease called Cow Pox, which
showed itself by vesicles or blisters on the udder or teat of the cow, how
Dr. Jenner came along and took some of the fluid from the vesicle and
injected it into the arms of a few people, and how these people after a
few days also got vesicles on their arms. Then Dr. Jenner tried to
inoculate these same people with Small Pox, and he found they would
not take Small Pox, so he found that Cow Pox was a preventative against
Small Pox.
Small Pox in its natural state is one of the most loathsome,
disfiguring, and fatal diseases in the world. Not only so, but it is very
infectious, and may be caught in a multitude of ways of which most
people take no account. The only trustworthy protection is a com
paratively recent vaccination, which not only modifies very greatly
the severity of an attack, robbing the disease of half its terrors, but, in
the vast majority of cases, wards off an attack altogether.
Under ordinary circumstances re-vaccination should be done
between the ages of 10 and 15 years; but there being now immediate
danger of Small Pox, it would be well that all persons over 7 years of
age who have not already been re-vaccinated should have this operation
performed without delay.
"Of 2,198 persons employed at the Small Pox Hospitals between
1884 and 1900 inclusive, only 17 persons contracted Small Pox, of whom
13 were not re-vaccinated until after they had joined the ship, and four
were workmen who escaped medical observation." And again:—"Not
one of the staff of the Hospital Ships has ever died of Small Pox, not
one has ever suffered from the disease for the past eight years." It is
only necessary to add that these facts are only novel in the sense that
they relate to the new epidemic. Exactly similar facts have characterised
every previous epidemic.