NATURAL SCIENCE 



A Monthly Review of Scientific Progress 



No. 79— Vol. XIII— SEPTEMBER 1898 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



Vaccination 



It is the plain duty of every scientific journal at the present crisis 

 in the history of vaccination, to put before its readers a clear state- 

 ment of the facts at issue. But it must not be forgotten that two 

 very distinct questions are involved : the efficacy of vaccination is 

 one thing, the expediency of compulsory vaccination is another. 



The efficacy of vaccination in preventing small-pox is a scientific 

 fact, established by evidence as clear as any in the range of our 

 knowledge. We do not, nowadays, pause to argue with a man who 

 says the earth is flat. No level-headed person with any capacity 

 for weighing evidence doubts that vaccination, efficiently performed, 

 affords an almost absolute protection against small-pox for a term 

 of five to ten years, according to the natural susceptibility of the 

 individual — that after this period the protection gradually fades, 

 though, in most cases, persisting in some degree throughout life — and 

 that it may be renewed by re-vaccination. Vaccination has been 

 the main agent, in this and other countries, in reducing small-pox 

 mortality to its present low level, and it has done so by abolishing 

 the excessive infant mortality from the disease which prevailed in 

 pre-vaccination times. Statistics show clearly enough that small- 

 pox mortality in any country diminishes strictly in proportion to 

 the extent to which vaccination is carried out. In proportion as 

 re-vaccination is universal, small-pox is reduced to the vanishing 

 point. What mortal man could do in discrediting vaccination was 

 done in the minority report of the recent vaccination commission, 

 an ingenious and plausible piece of special pleading, which was 

 absolutely torn to pieces by Dr M'Vail in his paper read before the 

 Epidemiological Society shortly after. 



We take the propositions we have mentioned above as axioms, 

 and we are not concerned to defend them in this place. Their 

 scientific basis rests on the principle that the virus of an infectious 

 disease may be so diminished in effect, by passage through a 

 relatively insusceptible animal, as to produce a mitigated form of 

 the affection, capable, nevertheless, of conferring protection against 



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