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good results. But there are everywhere some
exceptions, and throughout the country there are
unfortunately to be found certain Doctors—a small
but real minority—who pander to the prejudices
and fears of their patients. They will vaccinate
in one or two places, often in only one instead of
four, and assure the parents of the child that it is
quite sufficient. This all-complacent Doctor
knows well how vaccination to be effective ought
to be done, and he either believes in vaccination
or he does not. I would say, (and it is necessary
to say it) "Let him act as an honest man,
"and as one having the courage of his convic"tions,
when other people's lives are at stake."
If he believes in vaccination let him do it as he
knows it should be done, or let him say he does
not believe in it and declines to have a hand in it.
But to vaccinate in one spot, and to sign a certificate
that a child is thereby successfully (and by
implication efficiently) vaccinated, may be an easy
matter to reconcile with his conscience and his
duty to his patient since the parent is presumably
a consenting party; but it is another matter if he
conceives he has done his duty by his countrymen
and women. He thereby assists very materially
in bringing discredit on vaccination in the eyes of
the ignorant and unthinking as a protective
against smallpox. Such a child is not efficiently
protected, but goes out into the world as if it were,
and later on possibly contracts the disease and
appears in the returns, amongst numbers of similar
cases, as "having contracted smallpox though
"successfully vaccinated."
Through this Council, as your adviser
in matters of public health, I would say to all
those whose health and well-being is committed
to your care:—"Let it be known that the highest
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