A Statement of Facts Tending to Establish an Estimate of the True Value and Present State of VaccinationBlane, Gilbert, Sir
History
A Statement of Facts Tending to Establish an Estimate of the True Value and Present State of Vaccination
Blane, Gilbert, Sir
Smallpox; Vaccination
not to be forward in publishing single cases of failures, real or
supposed; for, when the weak minded and uninformed hear of these
failures, without hearing at the same time that there are hundreds of
cases of permanent security for every single case of failure, they are
guided by the _exception_, which becomes to them the _rule_; their
judgments being thereby most fatally perverted.
As it is of the utmost consequence to establish the strong and important
distinction between Small Pox, properly so called, and that which takes
place after Vaccination, which may be called the mitigated, or five day
Small Pox, a few of the most impressive testimonies respecting the safe
nature of the latter may be here recited. Mr. Brown[4], of Musselburgh,
gives the detail of forty-eight cases, in none of which did the
secondary fever nor death occur. Here was a saving of at least eight
lives, at the lowest computation; for this is the number which, by the
average mortality of natural Small Pox, would have died if the
constitutions of these forty-eight persons had not been modified by
previous Vaccination. Dr. Dewar, of Edinburgh, hearing that many
vaccinated subjects had been affected with Small Pox at Cupar in Fife,
where the natural Small Pox at the same time prevailed, he most laudably
repaired to the spot to investigate the subject. He found that
fifty-four vaccinated subjects had caught the Small Pox. All these,
except one, had the mitigated or five day eruptive fever, and livid. The
fatal case was that of a child, who had a complication of other
disorders, and having died on the fifth day, the Small Pox, according to
its ordinary course of fatality, could not of itself be the cause of
death. All the rest were safe; while of sixteen cases of the natural
Small Pox at the same time and place, six died; so that, if these
fifty-three cases had not undergone the mitigating process of
Vaccination, nineteen or twenty would have perished. Between thirty and
forty cases of the same kind have occurred at Carlisle, on the testimony
of Dr. Barnes, a respectable practitioner of that city[5]. Many proofs
might be adduced from the oral testimony of private practitioners, which
would overswell this article. The only other to be mentioned is from the
Report of the Central Committee of Vaccination at Paris, made in
December last, in which the description of the disease occurring after
Vaccination corresponds exactly with the mitigated five day cases which
have occurred in Britain. They refuse the name of Small Pox to it; but
as I know from my own observation, as well as from the testimony of
others, that the matter from it does by Inoculation give the Small Pox,
we can hardly, perhaps, with propriety deny it that name; but it should
be distinguished by some strong discriminating epithet, such as is
suggested above.
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