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derived from funds raised by local or imperial taxation or for charitable
purposes. This would embrace the inmates of all homes, hospitals,
penitentiaries, prisons, reformatories, schools, unions, and such like
institutions—the class which, sooner or later, furnishes the majority of
persons attacked by this and other contagious diseases. This class,
moreover, can be dealt with without waiting for an Act of Parliament.
To the Government we may safely leave the care of the Army and Navy.
" 3. Let our ordinary seamen be required, when engaged, to produce
a certificate of re-vaccination, and let domestic servants, when applying for
a situation, produce a similar certificate. These provisions are the more
necessary, as it is well known that sailors have often carried contagion to
our sea ports, and that in the households of the upper and well-to-do
middle classes the servants are the persons most frequently affected. As
vaccination from arm to arm is the most efficient, though few private
practitioners can in this manner meet their requirements—and as the
lymph contained in tubes is sometimes mixed with blood or pus, to be
seen only by the microscope, or has deteriorated from the tubes having
been imperfectly sealed, and so a comparative failure of the operation
frequently results—let the public vaccinator of every district vaccinate
from a child at his own house on a certain day those who are willing to
pay him his fee, and do not care to go to the public vaccine station.
Few cases—probably none—of insusceptibility of vaccination will then
be reported.
" When vaccination, and in due course re-vaccination, have been
properly performed, it will be time enough to ask if, dazzled by its
brilliancy, Jenner expected too much from his discovery, and to note
whether or not with laggard step promise is followed by performance.
" I am, Sir, your obedient Servant,
"JAMES STEVENSON, M.D.,
" Medical Officer of Health for Paddington.
" Yestrt Hall, Harrow Road ;
" April 3rd, 1877."
Testimony confirmatory, if confirmation be needed,
of the correctness of Marson's statistics, and of the
power of vaccination and of re-vaccination to control
the course of the disorder and to lessen its mortality—