What to do during and after Vaccination
Categories:
Infectious Diseases
Do nothing to irritate the
eruption, do not pull the scab off, when it drops off throw it in the
fire. When the eruption is at its height show it to the doctor who
performed the vaccination. If it is satisfactory, ask him for a
certificate stating when and by whom you were vaccinated, whether with
bovine or humanized lymph, in how many places and with what result at each
place. When the arm is healed, if the vaccination did n
t work well, be
vaccinated again as soon as possible, and in the best manner possible.
This will be a test to the protection secured by the former vaccination,
and will itself afford increased protection. Do not be satisfied with less
than four genuine vaccine scars, or with four if it is possible to secure
more than four. This vaccination a second or third time in close
succession is believed to be hardly less important than vaccination the
first time, and hardly less valuable as a protection against smallpox.
Without doubt many persons are living in a false sense of security from
smallpox because at some time in their lives they have had a little sore
on their arm caused by a supposed or real vaccination, or because an
imperfect vaccination failed to work, or because they were successfully
vaccinated, or had the varioloid, or the unmodified smallpox many years
ago. Until smallpox is stamped out throughout the world so that exposure
of the disease shall be practically impossible, the only personal safety
is in such perfect vaccination that one need not fear an exposure to
smallpox through the recklessness of the foolish.