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mortality amongst the unvaccinated was 35.5 per cent.; amongst the vaccinated 7.6;
and in further proof of the great difference, it must be stated that in the class
"vaccinated" were included a large number in whom the protection was lessened by
want of quantity, so to speak, as evidenced by the number and character of the cicatrices.
The recommendation of the Privy Council is, "Partly because of the existence of the
large number of imperfectly vaccinated persons, and partly because also even the best
infantine vaccination sometimes in process of time losses more or less of its effect, it is
advisable that all persons who have been vaccinated in infancy should, as they approach
adult life, be revaccinated. This operation, once properly and successfully performed,
does not appear to require repetition."
I have felt it necessary to consider some of the principal points connected with
humanised vaccination before touching upon that from the animal. Dr. A. Duchini, a
great foreign authority, in his suggestions to the Milan Commission, divides the operation
into three classes:—1, primary animal vaccination, with lymph taken directly from the
calf; 2, secondary animal vaccination, with animal lymph that has passed through one
human organism; 3, humanised vaccination. He considers that the first should be performed
on the right arm, the third on the left, and the second on both; and he believes
the result of the last to be the most perfect. Animal vaccination has been practised on
the Continent since the beginning of this century, and has been carried on at Naples, in
France, Belgium, &c. At Brussels the. State has formally sanctioned it, and for several
years L'Institut Vaccinal de l'Etat (the vaccinal office) has been successfully carried on,
under the direct superintendence of Warlomont, whose opinion of its value is expressed
in the statement that in Belgium, in the severe epidemic of 1870-71, not one of the
10,000 children so vaccinated in the previous five years was attacked with Small Pox.
Dr. Seaton, our greatest English authority on the subject of vaccination, specially visited
Paris, Brussels, Rotterdam, and Amsterdam, in the autumn of 1869, with the view of
investigating the practice of animal vaccination in these cities, and of comparing the
results of this kind of vaccination with the results attending the practice of vaccination
as ordinarily performed at the public vaccination stations in England. His conclusions
were as follows:—1. That apparently able and painstaking operators may find it impossible
to transmit successive vaccination from calf to calf without very frequent recurrence
of failure and interruption. 2. That the transference of infection from the calf to the
human subject, even under the most favourable circumstances (i.e.,by experienced operators,
and With the lancet direct from calf to arm), has in it such risk of failure that, for
instance, at Rotterdam, the proportions of UnsuCcess was nearly twenty times as great as
in the ordinary arm-to-arm vaccinations. 3. That the Calf lymph, as compared with
ordinary lymph, is peculiarly apt to spoil with keeping; and In the form of tube-preserved
lymph can be so little relied on that the Rotterdam establishment, distributing supplies
of lymph, now uses only lymph from the human subject.
On the other hand, the report of the Medical Examiner Commissioner, published this
year, points to a far greater measure of success, and certainly must lead an unprejudiced