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case in some other locality. This fact, the result of extensive experience,
goes far to demonstrate that contagia can only he produced hy self-multiplication,
and not by any chance of coincidence. If this be so, they are
endowed with one of the properties of living beings, and they may be
conveyed either by the air, or by river water polluted by sewage which is
drunk by the inhabitants of those towns which are supplied from such source."
These speculations are feasible and deserve attentive consideration and
further investigation.
Ee-vaccination and isolation are the best means which science has
pointed out to prevent the spreading of small-pox, and these provisions
should, by all practicable means, be insisted on by the authorities. It is
true that great difficulties in the way of obtaining the necessary isolation of
patients in all cases occasionally present themselves. Such cases are, however,
rare, and when they do occur, the Medical Officer of Health must act to the
best of his judgment.
Ee-vaccination after the age of puberty might with advantage be made
compulsory, inasmuch as the operation is attended with little inconvenience
to the patient, and, if successful, will render him almost impregnable to an
attack of small-pox. This would prove highly beneficial to the community
at large. It is, however, in my opinion, unnecessary to repeat the operation
of re-vaccination more than once.
It is a well ascertained fact that small-pox rarely attacks a person a
second time; cases, however, do occasionally occur, but the disease is then
very seldom fatal.
In a Table prepared by Mr. J. F. Marson, it appears that out of 14
patients suffering from a second attack of small-pox who were admitted into
the Small-pox and Vaccination Hospital in London, not one died, although
3 of the cases were of the confluent kind. It is, however, a well known
fact, that small-pox attacking a person a second time has occasionally proved
fatal.
A law respecting epidemics prevails that when a person has once had an
epidemic disease be is not attacked by it a second time. If, therefore, the
public could be generally impressed with the idea that cow-pox is the smallpox
of the cow (variolœ vaccina J, and was so called by Edward Jenner, the
discoverer of cow-pox; and that small-pox and cow-pox are mere modifications
of the same disease, the one attended with no danger and the other
proving fatal in a large degree, the prejudices which now prevail among the
unthinking part of the people would soon be dissipated, and all parents
would gladly seek to have their children vaccinated. The probability is,
that if all children were properly vaccinated in infancy, and the operation
repeated at the ago of puberty, we should not have a recurrence of an
epidemic of small-pox. Some medical men of great experience do not
consider it necessary to perform re-vaccination; and if what I have said above
as regards the law of epidemic diseases be correct, it is perhaps unnecessary.