View report page

2
a cutaneous eruption, or some other symptom of disease, appeared after the
operation, which left them weak and ailing. The prevalence of these and other
similar notions, is familiar to every one who has frequent intercourse with the
poor, whether in urban or rural districts; it is to be explained by the fact that
the external manifestations of constitutional unhealthiness naturally begin to
appear shortly after that period of life at which vaccination is often performed.
Whatever may be its origin, a prejudice which is so generally diffused, can
scarcely be met by coercion; for to compel a parent to allow that to be done to
his child which he sincerely believes will communicate a life-long disease, or permanently
injure his health, is at best an obligation from which one would rather
escape : it may to a certain extent be combated by the diffusion of information
of such a nature as to show that the belief is a delusion, but much more effectually
by the adoption of precautions to prevent the possibility of those
mischances which occasionally occur in vaccination, and afford to the popular
mind a pretext for distrust. In the accomplishment of these objects the public
has as much concern as the medical profession. No less than 458,000 persons are
annually vaccinated at the public expense; it is therefore a matter of national
interest that this boon—the greatest that medical science has ever conferred on
suffering humanity, should not be depreciated through the negligence or indifference
of its administrators.
The common notion that no two infections can reign together in the living
organism is generally true. The vaccine virus, if employed in that stage of its
development at which it is most active, is incapable under any circumstances of
communicating any other infection, except that of cow-pox. If on the other
hand it is mixed with other morbid products, or taken at so late a period that it
has lost its special virulence, it may possibly, while failing to produce its own
genuine effects, be the means of conveying other maladies. The other day
a hand-bill, bearing the title, "Terrible effects of Vaccination," and embodying
the popular fallacies to which I have been referring, was largely distributed in
Paddington. It related the particulars of a calamitous occurrence recently
recorded in a remote village in Italy; where a repulsive constitutional disease
was alleged to have been communicated to forty-six children out of sixty-three,
vaccinated with lymph derived from the same source. Of these children several
died. The vaccine lymph employed was contaminated, and had acquired a
virulence not that of cow-pox, but of another disease, with which the whole
organism of the child from whom it was taken, was impregnated. Such a disaster,
although liable to be taken advantage of by those who trade on popular ignorance,
does not afford the slightest ground for distrust of vaccination, as
performed in this country. Admitting as we do, that much spurious and consequently
useless vaccination exists, there is no shadow of ground for apprehending
that the terrible tragedy enacted at Rivolta, can ever be repeated in England ;
for it may be safely said that no practitioner, however careless, ever performs the
operation in the manner which was there employed. In the immense experience
of this country no instance has yet occurred in which disease, other than cowpox,
has been transmitted by vaccination. A few years ago a most searching
investigation was made under the sanction of Government, in which the question
was submitted to almost every medical practitioner of experience throughout
the kingdom, many being included in the enquiry who had vaccinated from
10,000 to 60,000 children. No single instance of transmission had been met
with. Those minor consequences already referred to, which so often excite
apprehensions in the minds of parents, ought in the opinion of all practical men,
never to occur; being the results of the improper performance of the operation,
they are perfectly avoidable. "They constitute therefore a reason for care in the
performance of vaccination, but no objection whatever to the operation itself."*
On the other hand, the story of Rivolta is of value, a» shewing that the
precautions adopted in this country are not useless, and cannot be neglected
without danger, and that those efforts which have been recently made to extend
such precautions, and introduce more improved methods, have been well directed.
Since the management of public vaccination was placed in the handa of the
* Dr. Seatom on the protective and modifying power of Vaccination.