VALUE OF RE-VACCINATION.

Evening Star, Issue 2934, 15 July 1872, Page 2

VALUE OF RE-VACCINATION.

At the present mouent, ihe following extract from the Pall Mall Gazelle will be read with interest:—

Ift a letter read at a meeting of the Board of Guardians at the North Dublin Union last week, Dr A. Speedy cited a number of facts which establish in a very striking manner the - value of re-vaccination as a preventive of small-pox. “ 1 have re-vacci-nated,” said Doctor Speedy, 1,400 persons during the past eight mopths, a very proportion of whom had good marks of primary vaccination, yet in those individuals excellent vesicles u»ere formed.

Among tho above no cases of small-pox; have occurred.” After some further remarks, the doctor goes on to state : —“ In an hospital where there is a class of sixty-livcpupi s attending, all except live were re-vaocinatcd, and these five contracted small-pox ; all the others escaped. In Cork street Hospital there have been five hundred cases of smallpox. One of the physicians informs me that on careful examination, he found that not one of these persons had been re vaccinated. In the Hardwick Hospital there have been six hundred cases of small-pox, and I find that in this institution there wore a few ea-es of small-pox occurring in those who have been re-vaccinated. Although ro-vaccination in these cases did not actually prevent the persons being attached with small-pox, yet it had the effect of modifying the disease, and those particular cases were of a very mild character.’' Hr Speedy concludes his communication by saying:—“ There arc always a large number of the milita y stationed in the lloyal Barracks, which is in my district. Theie have been only four or five deaths from small-pox among them, and any cases arc generally very mild. \on arc doubtless aware that all recruits are revacciiiated, and this, I contend, is the reason they escaped so well.”