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.