Small-Pox.

Manawatu Herald, 1 February 1902, Page 3

Small-Pox.

the origin of a great DISCOVERY.

The origin of Dr Jenner’s discovery is one of these things that everybody professes to know all about, and yet feW really remember. Just nowit is worth hilh to tell the story especially as it can bo told Iti a few words. Small-pox when Jenner made his first experiments was a terrible and universal scourge; in London alone tor every thousand deaths one hundred Were small-pox eases, and men and Woitien Horribly pitted with the disease were numerous in all classes of society. It came to Dr Jenner’s knowledge that In certain districts of .Gloucestershire persons engaged in tending cows were liable to infeetion from a disease of the udder, which they called cow-pox, and that persons so suffering never caught small-pox. Investigating what some would have regarded as "au old wife’e tale," he found that it was so, and it occurred to him to inoculate persons with cowpox aa a preventative of the dire and dreaded plague of small pox. One of hie chief ventures was to take the matter from the hands of a woman who had caught cow-pox. He inserted it Into the arm* of a healthy boy of eight who suffered from the disease m the ordinary more or less harmless way of cow-pox. Six weeks aftorwstrds be inoculated this boy with the smallpox poieoo in several places, but no disease followed the eperation. Upon this Jenner began to talk and work and make known bis theory and practise of vaccination as a preventive, amall-pox began to decline from seo deaths in a thousand to 88, and so on, becoming less in every decade until with free vaccination to the poor in 1857 it tell to n In the 1,000, At the present time, in spite of the recent outbreak, (owing largely no doubt to the neglect of vaccination among sceptics) It is but a fractional percentage of the deathrato. Better food, improved sanitation , greater cleanliness and a better knowledge of hygiene have no doubt helped to stamp out the , but of the blessings of Dr Jenner’s discovery the whole world hears witness.—English Exchange.