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tion which I have seen this year, the vaccine marks on
the arm were very indistinct. Wherever this is the
case. it is the duty of parents to have the children revaccinated.
It happens too frequently that the mother
is contented with having had the operation performed,
but not so just as she ought to be to her own child,
and to the vaccinator in giving him the opportunity of
judging for himself of the effects of the operation by
seeing the arm the day week after he has vaccinated.
Every child should be again brought to the vaccinator
the week following, as is always directed to the person
bringing the child. Were this uniformly attended to
so that vaccination could be repeated in all unsatisfactory
cases, we should have little or no smallpox.
I can speak with the utmost confidence of the value of
carbolic acid in checking the spread of smallpox in
several closely-inhabited houses, where one case only
of smallpox occurred; the free use of the disinfectant
having prevented its spread in every other instance,
although three or four families of young children were
living in the same house.
The mortuary has been found more and more
useful from year to year. There have been more
bodies of the dead, awaiting burial, placed there this
year than in any one preceding. I trust that the
prejudice against parting with the bodies of the dead,
where families have only one room, is diminishing, and
that the mortuary will from year to year be more and
more made use of.
LIONEL J. BEALE,
Medical Officer of Health.