When should a person be Vaccinated
Categories:
Infectious Diseases
The sooner the better as a rule, and
especially whenever there is much liability of exposure to smallpox.
Children should be vaccinated before they are four months old; those who
have never been vaccinated, should, except teething children, be
vaccinated at once. Because the vaccination often loses its protective
power after a time, those who have been vaccinated but once or twice
should, in order to test and to increase the protective power of the
former vaccination, be vaccinated again, and as often as the vaccination
can be made to work. In general, to insure full protection from smallpox,
one should be vaccinated as often as every five years. It has been found
that of those who have smallpox the proportion of deaths is very much less
among those who have three or four good vaccination scars than among those
who have but one scar.