SMALLPOX MENACE.

Hokitika Guardian, 26 June 1923, Page 2

SMALLPOX MENACE.

AN ENGLISH EPIDEMIC. AUSTRALIAN AND N.Z. CABLE ASSOCIATION LONDON. June 24. The health authorities .arc now acting with marked, il belated, vigour in connection with the Gloucester smallpox outbreak. They have rounded up all tlie doubtful cases, and have also issued warrants, and they have arrested 21 patients who had refused to be taken to the hospital, declaring that they preferred to remain at home. Uniformed police accompanied the motor ambulances when necessary. ■pin-re are now 259 known cases in tic- city, whereof 21 were sent to the Tiosnital during the week-end. Workmen are busy, night ami day, fitting up tlm old Air Force quarters at Brock worth Aerodrome with additional isolation wards. These are fenced with barbed wire entanglements, to prevent tlie male patiens from breaking out to get. drinks. A strange feature of the outbreak m a foolish threat of the resistance on the part of many,of the working classes who even threaten to allow their sick bedrooms to he blockaded, rather than permit their patients to he taken to the hospitals. The explanation of this stilt-necked attitude is that the Gloucester folk have boon horn and bred in an atmosphere of anti-vaccination propaganda. Even at tlie present moment, those in direct contact with tlie small-pox victims often decline to he vaccinated. \ mother of seven children ret used to allow any of them to he vaccinated, even when one child was taken to the' hospital. All the other six caught the disease. The mother is now stricken villi grief. . , A man whose wife was taken sick said: "If God Almighty meant me to lie vaccinated, he would have made me with a hole in my arm !” Public anti-vaccination meetings are still being held, and literature is being distributed affirming that it is a medical delusion in sav there is small-pox i„ the citv. Leaflet', urge the people not to submit to vaccination, and declare that the outbreak is really only hicken-pox.