VACCINATION.

Tuapeka Times, Volume V, Issue 231, 4 July 1872, Page 6

VACCINATION.

The Provincial Government have sent us a pamphlet on the above subject, from which we extract the fo'lowing :—: —

By vaccination in infancy, if thoroughly well-performed and successful, most people are completely insured, for their whole lifetime, against an attack of small-pox ; and in the proportionately few cases where the protection is less complete, small-pox, if it be caught, will, in consequence of the vaccination, generally be so mild a disease as not to threaten death or disfigurement. If, however, the vaccination in early life have been but imperfectly performed, or have f loin any other cause been but imperfectly succes-ful, tho protection against small-pox is much less satisfactory ; neither lasting so long, nor while it lasts being nearly so complete, as the protection which first-rate vaccination gives. Hitherto, unfortunately, there hasalways^been a very large quantity of imperfect vaccination ; and in consequence the population always contains very many persons who, though nominally vaccinated and believing themselves to be proti cted against small-pox, are really liable to infection, and may in some cases contract as severe .forms of small-pox as if they had never been vaccinated. Tartly because of the existence of this hrge number of imperfectly vaccinated persons, and partly because also even the best infantine vaccination sometimes in process of time loses more or less of effect, it is advisable that all persons who have been \ accinated in fancy should, as they approach ; dult life, undergo re- vaccination. Generally speakiiig, the best time of life for re-vaccina-lion is about the time when growth is completing itself, say from 15 to is years of age, and persons in that period ot life ought not to delay their re-vaccination till times when there shall be special alarm of small-pox in any neighborhood, or as individuals are from personal circumstances likely to meet chances nf infection, the age of 15 needs not be waited for ; especially not by young persons whose marks of previous vaccination are unsatisfactory. In circumstances of special danger, every one past childhood, on whom re-vac-cination has not before been successfully performed, ought without delay to be revaccinated.

Re-vaccination, once properly and successfully performed, does not appear ever to require repetition. The nurses and other servants of the Small- Pox Hospital, when they enter the service (unless it he certain that they have already had small-pox) are invariably submitted to vaccination, which in their case generally, is re- vaccination, and is never afterwards repeated ; and so perfect is the protection, that though the nurses live in the closest and most constant attendance on small-pox patients, and though also the other servants are in various ways exposed to special chances of infection, the Resident-Surgeon of the Hospital, during his thirty four years of office theie, has never known small-pox affect any one of these nurses or servants.

Legal provisions for re- vaccination are made in the Sth section of " The Vaccination Act, 1867," and in section IV of the Regulations which the Lords of the Council, under authority of the Act, issued in their order of February 18th, 1868. Under these provisions, re-vaccination is now performed by all public vaccinators at their respective vaccinating stations ; and, so far as is not inconsistent with the more imperative claims for primary vaccination, any person who ought to be re- vaccinated may, on applying to the public station of the district in which he resides, obtain re-vaccination at the public expense.