THE HORRORS OF SMALLPOX.

Kumara Times, Issue 1546, 10 September 1881, Page 2

THE HORRORS OF SMALLPOX.

No less than 44,000 persons died in England of small-pox during the three y ears 18 7 0-7 2. A w riter to the Modei n Review recently quoted these figures as a proof that vaccination was an inefficient preventative, but he was replied to by a reviewer in the Spectator "as follows :—“ He (of the Modern Review) is clearly ignorant of the fact that a hundred yea re ago the small-pox mortality of Loudon alone (with its then population of under a million) was often greater in a six months' epidemic than that of the 20,000,000 of England and Wales is now in any whole year; that the average number of deaths bv small-pox was estimated at eight per cent, of the total mortality of the coun-

rry; that of the then enormous mortality of children under 10 years of »ig4 the mortality by small-pox constituted one-half; that whilst it is noW the exception to hear of a case of small-poi in the persons or faniilibs of one’s friends, or even wider acquaintances, it was then exceptional for any one, in whatever rank of life, to attain middle age without having been the'subject of its attack ; that ‘ seaming’ and ‘ pitting’ of the face were then so- common that it was estimated that oils out of every three persons met in the street showed traces of it; that for a ‘professional beauty’ to have her face disfigured hf small-pox was an incident often introduced into the novels and tales of ‘ the period;’ and that loss of,sight by that disease was then so frequent that at least one-third of the inmates of blind asylums, within my own time, owed their privation to it,” There are verjr few of the great improvements made in the lot of mankind which are able to quote so vast and deaf a body* of evidence in their favour as stands to the credit of vaccination. Thr Lancet prints a letter from i medical gentleman who vaccinates with lymph from the calf, stating that ih eighty-one cases (of adults) thus vaccinated—,the patients not having undergone the operation since infancy the revaccination was successful, showing that they were utterly unprotected against small-pox. Everybody (thd Lancet urges) should be successfully revaccinated after the age o*f fifteen, if we are to be really protected. ,