The Ashburton Guardian. Magna Est Veritas et Prevalebit. SATURDAY, JANUARY 21, 1882. The Small-Pox Scare.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume III, Issue 540, 21 January 1882, Page 2

The Ashburton Guardian. Magna Est Veritas et Prevalebit. SATURDAY, JANUARY 21, 1882. The Small-Pox Scare.

TOWN EDITION.

[lssued at 430 p.m. j

The outbreak of small-pox in Sydney, and the recent cases occurring on board the mail steamers arriving at the ports of Sydney and Adelaide, have naturally excited some alarm in this colony lest the terrible complaint should spread to our own shoijes, and this alarm was not jon the arrival of the Zeriandia the ot|er day at Auckland with two small-pox stricken passengers on board. Strenuous efforts have been made by the authorities at Sydney to keep the small-pox patients isolated, and in fact every available means has been employed to stamp out the dread disease, but it still exists, and its eradication, it is to be feared, will not be so easily effected as watt at first imagined. The quarantine regulations at the Port of Sydney are good enough, but the precautions observed respecting persons travelling by rail from Sydney to Melbourne are of the poorest, and thus while the authorities close one door to the spread of'the disease, another is left wide open. Unfortunately this terrible malady is very slow in developing itself; the patient frequently sickens for a considerable period before the complaint declares itself, and it is therefore easy to see how readily its seeds may be disseminated despite the utmost vigilance exercised by the quarantine authorities. In view of a possible (let us hope not a probable) outbreak of small-pox in this colony, it would be well for all who have not been vaccinated to undergo that operation at once, while those who have allowed years to elapse since they submitted to it, cannot do better than have it repeated. Statistics go to prove in the most conclusive manner that vaccination is in nine cases out of ten, or probably it would be no exaggeration to say in ninety-nine out of a hundred, an almost certain preventative of smallpox. i