VACCINATION.

Evening Star, Issue 2917, 25 June 1872, Page 3

VACCINATION.

The Provincial Government have sent us a pamphlet on the above subject, from which we extract the following :

By vaccination in infancy, if thoroughly well-performed and successful, most people are completely insured, for their whole lifetime, against an attack of small-pox; and in the proportionately few cases where the protection is less complete, small-pox, if it be caught, will, in consequence of the vaccination, generally be so mild a disease as not to threaten death or disfigurement. If, however, the vaccination in early life have been but imperfectly performed, or have from any other cause been but imperfectly successful, the protection against small-pox is much less satisfactory; neither lasting so long, nor while it lasts being nearly so complete, as the protection which first-rate vaccination gives. Hitherto, unfortunately, there hasalwaysjbeen a very large quantity of imperfect vaccination ; aud in consequence the population always contains very many persons who, though nominally vaccinated and believing themselves to be protected against small-pox, are really liable to infection, and may in some cases contract as severe forms of small-pox as if tbey bad never been vaccinated. Partly because of the existence of this large number of imperfectly vaccinated persons, and partly because also even the best infantine vaccination sometimes in process of time loses more or less of effect, it is advisable that all persons who have been vaccinated in fancy should, as they approach adult life, undergo re-vaccination. Generally speaking, the best time of life for re-vaceina-tion is about the time when growth is completing itself, say from 13 to 18 years of age, and persons in that period of life ought not to delay their re-vaccination till times when there shall be special alarm of small-pox in any neighborhood, or as individuals are from personal circumstances likely to meet chances of infection, the age of 15 needs not he waited

for ; especially not by young persons whose marks of previous vaccination are unsatisfactory, In circumstances of special danger, every one past childhood, on whom re-vac-cination has not before been successfully performed, ought without delay to be revaccinated.

Re-vaccination, onee properly and successfully performed, does not appear ever ’to require repetition. The nurses and other servants of the Small-Pox Hospital, when they enter the service (unless it be certain that they have already had small-pox) are invariably submitted to vaccination, which in their case generally, is re-vaccination, and is never afterwards repeated ; and so perfect is the protection, that though the nurses live in the closest and most constant attendance on small-pox patients, and though also the other servants are in various Avays exposed to special chances of infection, the Resident-Surgeon of the Hospital, during his thirty four years of office there, has never known small-pox affect any one of these nurses or servants.

Legal provisions for re-vaccination are made in the Sth section of “ The Vaccination Act, 18(17,” and in section IV of the Regulations which the Lords of the Council, under authority of the Act. issued in their order of February 18th, 1868. Under these provisions, re-vaccination is now performed by all public vaccinators at their respective vaccinating stations ; and, so far as is not inconsistent with the more imperative claims for primary vaccination, any person who ought to be re-vaccinated may, on applying to the public station of the district iu which he resides, obtain re-vaccination at the public expense.