VACCINATION.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 15, Issue 769, 14 March 1870, Page 3

VACCINATION.

On the above subject the Evening Post writes:— It is quite true that evils have resulted from arm to arm vaccination, but those moderate and thoughtful physiologists who never allow themselves to run mad on any specialty, have fairly established the fact that vaccine is a virus sui generis, and that when vaccine lymph is communicated from arm to arm on the seventh or eighth day of the growth of the vesicle, then, with the observance of these conditions, the operation is a safe one. But if the smallest atom of either blood or matter is incorporated wilh the vaccine, two perfectly distinct elements are introduced into the body, and each works either according to its original powers or according to some new susceptibility created by their simultaneous action. There appears to be no reason to doubt that arm to arm vaccination, conducted with sufficient care, is a legitimate operation, and daily practised "by the public vaccinators in England. Reformers commenced by demanding the occasional use of vaccine from the cow's udder. Here in this Colony we are inclined to be before the age ; and Dr Stratford and the Auckland Herald will have nothing but vaccination from the cow —and further, each citizen, according to the doctor, must be allowed to see tbe cow. We simply content ourselves with asking how are cows to be procured for the purpose? How many dairymen have seen the vaccine vesicle on the cow? and is the operation to be arrested till all these difficulties are overcome? If so, we fear 'more children than ever will be left unprotected, and excessive precaution will lead us into greater remissness than e w er. We are decidedly of opinion that vaccine ought to be renewed from time to time at its source, and that an operation of such importance ought to be performed by none but competent persons; but science does not acknowledge that arm to arm vaccination is dangerous, or even risky, it merely establishes the mode of and time for the operation, and when these rules are set aside by the ignorant or neglected by the careless, injurious effects may follow, though in fact they do so with comparative rarity.