354 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERT. 



VARIOLA AND VACCINATION. 



A COMMITTEE appointed by the Medical Society of the State of 

 Pennsylvania, has lately made a report, through Dr. Emerson, respect- 

 ing the effects of vaccination. The committee was appointed to ex- 

 amine into the statements which had been put forth by Dr. Gregory, 

 of London, and Dr. Caznave, of Paris, who had written and published 

 statements respecting the growing insufficiency of vaccination as a 

 preventative for dangerous small pox. The opinions set forth by 

 these eminent foreign physicians were calculated to unsettle the views 

 of physicians, and shake their confidence in the protective powers of 

 vaccination. The principal points to be considered were, first, 

 whether persons vaccinated lose, through lapse of time, any protective 

 power once afforded against small pox ; second, whether the prophyla- 

 tic powers of vaccination, performed during infancy, are restricted to 

 the first fifteen years of life, and of no avail afterwards ; third, 

 whether the accumulated evidence of the present day is calculated to 

 sustain Dr. Gregory in his belief that the efficacy of cow pox as a 

 protection against small pox, has diminished, and a large increase of 

 small pox resulted from the extension of vaccination ; fourth, whether, 

 as asserted by Drs. Gregory and Caznave, inoculation, after the 

 fifteenth year of age, of persons previously vaccinated, produces a 

 specific papular eruptive disease, of a non-contagious character, unat- 

 tended with danger, and giving protection in after life against 

 small pox ; fifth, whether circumstances exist which render it most 

 advantageous to substitute inoculation for vaccination, after the 

 fifteenth year of age, as proposed by Dr. Gregory. 



It was stated that the agent for producing small pox had for a long 

 tune been kept in check, and its total extermination nearly completed, 

 but that within a few years a new form of disease " varioloid," had 

 arisen, and Dr. Gregory promulgated statements to show that vaccina- 

 tion was diminished in potency by a lapse of time, and that this small 

 pox of late years had greatly increased. 



In England, the Epidemiological Society were startled by Dr. 

 Gregory's views, and it also appointed a committee to examine into 

 the subject ; that society has received 430 replies from practicing 

 physicians in different parts of England, and only one expressed a 

 doubt about the efficacy of the cow pox ; they were adverse to Dr. 

 Gregory's views. He took his cases from hospitals, where other 

 causes were, no doubt, in operation to produce the sad results he sets 

 forth. Previous to the introduction of vaccination in England, the 

 annual mortality from small pox was 40,000, or one tenth of all the 

 deaths from every other source. In 1850 the number of deaths in 

 London by small pox was only 498, while the population was four 

 times more than it was in 1 750, when the deaths by small pox num- 

 bered 2,036. 



This confutes Dr. Gregory's views entirely. In Prussia the number 

 of deaths by small pox, in 1803, were 40,000, in a population of 

 10,000,000 ; at that time inoculation was the only protection relied on. 



