The Evening Star TUESDAY, JUNE 25, 1872.
The Colony up to this period of its history has been singularly free from contagious diseases. This may be, in the main, attributable to its geographical position and consequent healthy air. Not even the most ardent admirer of Provincial institutions would have the hardihood to insinuate that it is the result of careful arrangements or well-considered quarantine regulations. So loose have the latter been, in fact, that imported contagious diseases may be said to have been invited to take root amongst us. When scarlet fever was brought some eighteen months ago, our quarantine buildings had fallen into ruin ; and when small-pox was carried to Wellington, instead of being met by prompt measures determined on beforehand, the authorities were as much puzzled and perplexed as they would have been how to deal with an enemy’s privateer. It is, however, no use blinking the matter : we have the fact staring us in the face that in proportion to the extension of communication with other countries is the risk of contagion. It is no cause for undue alarm, but a very good reason for wise precautions. The accounts from all parts of the world point to the increase and spread of small-pox. It is prevalent over a great part of Europe. In Great Britain its ravages have been very severe for more than two years. The latest accounts represent it rather spreading than decreasing, and in some districts the per-centago of deaths to those attacked is greater than has ever been known. In North America, the disease has spread from
Canada to the Isthmus of Panama, and is carrying off great numbers of persons. It would be absurd to imagine that New Zealand can altogether escape. That we are equally liable to its ravages with the rest of the world is forced upon us by the cases that have already occurred. Only a small number of immigrants have as yet arrived in the Colony compared with those that may reasonably be expected to land within a fewmonths: but one vessel brought with its living freight a number suffering from the disease, while some had died on the passage. The news from Auckland, too, reports the death of a person left in hospital by the Nebraska, who most probably received the germ of the disorder at Honolulu, where it is prevalent. With these facts in view, to act as if we were perfectly safe from attack would be the height of folly. We do not wish to be alarmists, for we are no believers in the French maxim that “ the most certain consolation against all that can happen, is always to expect the worst.” Wh rather hold with Rochefoucault, that “ the good or bad fortune of men depends as much on their own disposition as on chance” : and, in this case, it is peculiarly applicable. Small-pox is so well understood in its treatment and prevention, that the increase in its apparent virulence must be assumed to be partly the result of obstinate refusal to take the necessary precautions against attack. Just as in religion, men mark out theories for themselves unsupported by reason or authority, so it is in medicine. Everybody has a thousand and one remedies against cold, fevers, and all the maladies that afflict mankind ; and worse than that, they claim, as a branch of the liberty of the subject, not only to adopt their own remedies, but to refuse to adopt those which the legislature, basing its mandates on medical skill and experience, requires every man to take. Notwithstanding the fact that vaccination has been proved nearly an antidote to the disease, men claim the liberty to neglect or refuse to apply it. For nearly one hundred years its efficacy has been proved, and probably the freedom from small-poX, which resulted through vaccination having been generally enforced, led to carelessness in regard to it, to which circumstance the recent revival of small-pox is partly attributable. But with the partial neglect of the precaution, the prejudices of the ignorant revived. Not a few cases occurred in which men at Home claim the right to run the risk of attack themselves and in their families, because of some fanciful evil connected with vaccination, that existed only in their own untrained minds. With such a class it is almost useless to reason. They will not or cannot comprehend that liberty extends no further than iu matters which strictly pertain to the individual; that no one has a right to do or to neglect what endangers the health, life, or property of another. Now nothing can be plainer than what experience teaches regarding small-pox: in its nature it is highly contagious, and in vaccination we have an antidote to its spread. To neglect a remedy so necessary to personal and social safety, is to incur a moral responsibility from which every one should shrink. Even if the evil could be confined to tbe one negligent victim, he would be chargeable with having tempted its attack : a folly little short of suicide. But when the numbers who might die through such reprehensible hardihood is considered, though the bad intention is absent, the result is as disastrous as if he had committed a wholesale murder. In Great Britain, many people are uudei’going revaccination as a duty. Medical men are best able to advise on this point, but of the ] necessity for early vaccination of every infant there is no question. If, after adopting such a precaution, the child took the disease and died, parents are relieved from condemnation : they did what they could. We leave others to frame a defence should their child die when vaccination was neglected. We commend the subject to the consideration of our population, in order that the possible evil may be confronted by a time wise preparation to avoid it.
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Evening Star, Issue 2917, 25 June 1872, Page 2
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975The Evening Star TUESDAY, JUNE 25, 1872. Evening Star, Issue 2917, 25 June 1872, Page 2
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