Exposition of a method of preserving vaccine lymph fluid and active : with hints for the more efficient performance of public vaccination / by William Husband.

  • Husband, William, 1822-1901.
Date:
1860
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Exposition of a method of preserving vaccine lymph fluid and active : with hints for the more efficient performance of public vaccination / by William Husband. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    scarce substance. It is produced in this and other coun¬ tries in great abundance, wherever vaccination is carried on; and if we could only economise it, and save it from going to waste, it would be plentiful everywhere, in pro¬ portion to the demand for it; as plentiful in the remotest and most thinly peopled districts as in the most crowded cities. But unfortunately none of the methods commonly employed hitherto to preserve it has been found sufficient for that purpose. With every precaution, and notwithstanding every effort, medical men are continually running short, and reduced to the necessity of borrowing from their neighbours, or of sending hundreds of miles to vaccine institutions for fresh supplies. Some idea may be formed of the magnitude of the evil from the fact that the English National Vaccine Establish¬ ment distributed, during the ten years ending with 1857 —chiefly, of course, to medical men resident in the United Kingdom and its colonies and dependencies—not fewer than 2,000,000 charges of lymph. For several years past it has distributed upwards of 200,000 charges annually; and the demand is rising every year, and threatening to exhaust its means of supply. Thus we find it stated, in the Report presented last year to Parliament* by the Vaccine Board, that 213,207 charges were supplied in the year 1857, in answer to 11,622 ap¬ plications—of which, it may be assumed, that not fewer eertainly than 10,000 were from practitioners resident in (Treat Britain and Ireland. The Report concludes with * Accounts and Papers, Session 1857-58.