A report on vaccination and its results : based on the evidence taken by the Royal Commission during the years 1889-1897. Vol. 1, The text of the commission report.

  • Great Britain. Royal Commission on Vaccination.
Date:
1898
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A report on vaccination and its results : based on the evidence taken by the Royal Commission during the years 1889-1897. Vol. 1, The text of the commission report. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    26. From Euglaiid the doctrine and the practice of vaccination rapidly spread to the continent of Europe. In Denmark a number of the most respectable physicians of Copenhagen formed themselves, in 1804, into a society to collect and investigate all grounds and arguments for and against the anti-variolous agent proposed by Jenner. A Koyal Commission composed of medical men was at the same time appointed to investigate the subject.^ It is stated that after the lapse of a few years the private committee as well as the Eoyal Commission, although many of the members had at the commencement entertained a doubt as to the doctrine of Jenner, arrived unanimously at the conviction that vaccine virus was a preservative from smallpox. In several European countries the utility of vaccination was early recognised by State action of one kind or another. Nor was this confined to Europe. In 1809-10 the State of Massachusetts passed statutes providing* for inoculation with the cow-pox and giving power to raise money to pay for the operation. Thus the doctrine that cow-pox protects against smallpox found an acceptance in most countries of Europe, and in the New World as great as it did in its birth-place, England. And without insisting* too much on authority we mav at least say, especially when it is remembered how slow men are to adopt new methods and how much prejudice is apt to exist against a novel treatment which is foreig*n in its origin, that such a widespread and rapid acceptance of the doctrine, in spite of hostile criticism, which was not wanting, shows that the evidence for it must at the time have appeared very strong. 27. It is impossible to trace with absolute certainty the source of the lymph used on the Continent and in other foreign countries. Pearson claims to have been the chief agent of the first distribution ; and probably much, though, as has already been urged, not all, Pearson’s lymph came from the Smallpox Hospital. Woodville started vaccination ^ I, App. 110, 108. ' 6, App. 772-3.