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means of preventing small-pox. For upwards of
thirty years all the nurses and servants of the smallpox
Hospital, who had not previously had small-pox,
have been re-vaccinated within two or three days
of entering on their respective duties, and in no one
instance has it failed to preserve them from Smallpox.
We believe therefore, that re-vaccination extensively
practised, and with the same precautions to ensure
efficiency, as ought to be observed in primary vaccination,
will prove to be the most certain mode that could
be adopted of checking the present epidemic of
small-pox." This accords with the experience all
observers of this disease, and there are many remarkable
facts in proof of it. At Christ's Hospital for
example, where there is an average of about 800
boys it is the practice to vaccinate them directly
they enter the institution, and this has been found so
thoroughly protective that, according to Dr. Stone,
there has been but one death from small-pox, for
fifty years. So also with regard to secondary
vaccination in adult life, wherever it is compulsory
its prophylactic power is equally manifest. In the
recent epidimic of 1871, when small-pox was severely
fatal at Verona, killing as many as 21 per cent. of
those who were attacked with it, the mortality from
the disease among the re-vaccinated soldiers of the
garrison was only 0.4 per cent. At Vienna also,
where the re-vaccination of soldiers and all