Why Vaccinate

Categories: Infectious Diseases

Because vaccination is a preventive of all forms of
smallpox, and because by traveling, or by travelers, by articles received

in the mail or from the stores or shops, or other various ways anyone at

any time, may, without knowing it, be exposed to smallpox, it becomes

important so far as possible without injury to health to render every

person incapable of taking the disease. This may be done so perfectly by

vaccination and r -vaccination with genuine bovine vaccine virus that no

question of ordinary expense or trouble should be allowed for a day to

prevent the careful vaccination of every man, woman and child in Michigan,

and the re-vaccination of every one who has not been vaccinated within

five years. It is well established that those who have been properly

vaccinated are far less likely to take smallpox if exposed to it, and that

the very few who have been properly vaccinated and have smallpox have it

in a much milder form and are much less disfigured by it than those who

have not been thus vaccinated. The value of vaccination is illustrated by

the following facts: On March the 13th, 1859, Dr. E. M. Snow, of

Providence, R. 1., found in a cluster of seven houses twenty-five

families, and in these families ten cases of smallpox, all apparently at

about the same stage of the disease. In the same families there were

twenty-one children, who had never been vaccinated. The ten cases and the

remaining members of the families, including the twenty-one children, were

quarantined at home, and the children were all vaccinated and compelled to

remain with the sick. Several other cases of smallpox occurred in the

persons previously exposed, but not one of the twenty-one children

referred to had the slightest touch of the disease.



In Sweden, the average number of deaths in each year from smallpox per

million inhabitants was:



Before the introduction of vaccination (1774-1801), 1,973;

During the period of optional vaccination (1802-1816), 479;

And during the period of obligatory vaccination (1817-1877), 189.



Vaccination was introduced in England near the beginning of the nineteenth

century, and since 1853 compulsory vaccination has been attempted. In

England the number of deaths in each year from smallpox per one million

inhabitants was:



At the close of the eighteenth century, 3,000.

From 1841 to 1853 (average), 304.

From 1854 to 1863 (average), 171.