Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A familiar chat about vaccination / by a family doctor. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![A Familiar Chat about Vaccination. t 77 A FAMILIAR CHAT ABOUT VACCINATION. BY A FAMILY DOCTOR. HESITATED for a moment before I took up my pen to write on the subject which gives its title to my present paper. But duty whispered me to go on, and speak the truth in a noble cause. Well, and I mean to. In my plain old-fashioned way, I will try to point out to the reader the benefits of judi- cious vaccination, as a preventive of one of the most direful and horrible diseases that ever afflicted the great human family. What I have to say, will only confirm the views already held by the great majority of my readers. Of that fact I am pleasantly aware. But I have, moreover, the audacity to believe that this paper will win not one, but many others over to our way of thinking. At the same time, I wish to put no undue pressure upon any one, save perhaps the pressure of common sense. Long, long ago, reader—long before either you or I was thought of, or dreamt of—when our great-grand- fathers were children, or perhaps not born, a terrible and loathsome scourge was raging rampant in our land. I refer to the disorder called variola, or small- pox. In some epidemics it was almost the exception, rather than the rule, if any one escaped ; and it is not overstating, but rather understating the fact, to say that one in every four of those attacked was hurried to the grave, a corpse that no one dared look upon. No rank in life was able to boast of immunity from the terrible plague, it spared neither age nor sex, nor beauty itself; and most of those who escaped death were sadly disfigured, sometimes rendered sightless for life. The mortality was frightful to contemplate. Just hear what Marson says :—“ It [the small-pox] is a most fatal disease at all periods of life, but most so in infancy and old age. Under five years of age it is fifty per cent.; still greater, however, under two years. After the age of twenty the rate of mortality suddenly rises, and increases gradually; at thirty it exceeds the mortality of infancy, and after sixty hardly one escapes.” Terribly significant words these. Just fancy, if you can, a happy family of, say, ten in all, living in comfort, if not in affluence. This family had hardly ever known a sorrow ; the little afflictions which are inseparable from all of us in this life, had but served to tighten the ties of affection that bound them together. Happiest of all happy hours of the day was the hour when father returned from business in the evening; soft, warm, wee arms were stretched out to meet him, lips pouted for kisses ; then around the bright parlour fire, when supper was over, what a happy circle! [ What need to describe the scene? We all of us, I trust, know something of the quiet joys of the family fireside. What matters it then to them that the wind is roaring in the chimney ? it only makes the fire burn the brighter, and the knowledge that there is frost and snow without just but serves to make things more 10S snug within. The very tabby cat partakes of a share of bliss, and has just sung wee “Johnnie” sound asleep on the hearth. The kettle is singing, too; and Annie, the eldest, “sweet and twenty,” and beautiful and fresh as only an English maiden can be, is quietly preparing her father’s tea. There is a dreamy, far- away look in Annie’s blue eyes. Annie is thinking of something very pleasant, for Annie is soon to be married. Soon, did I say ? Stay, the plague is at the door. This is the last pleasant evening they will spend together upon earth. Succeed to it weeks of sad suffering and sorrow. Within a fortnight, two, then three of the youngest are laid in their little graves, and shortly after grandpapa succumbs and dies. How the gloom deepens around the devoted house ! for, over- come with grief on the death of still another child, both father and mother sicken, and father and mother die. Hardly is sufficient medical attendance pro- curable ; nursing is scarcely possible, for the servants have fled, and out of all that family but three have escaped—two brave lads that battled through it all, and poor Annie—But Annie is blind. If the reader will refer to the accounts of the ravages of the small-pox in preceding centuries, he will see that my picture is by no means overdrawn And still there are people living in England at the present day who are, in their ignorance, doing all they can, both by word and deed, to make such pictures as these once again stern realities in our fair land. I shall not venture for one moment to harrow the feelings of my readers by describing the symptoms of small-pox; many, unfortunately, know them too well from experience. I ask such, as a particular favour, to describe to their neighbours in plain language what they have suffered, and what they have seen. All honour to the name of the immortal Jenner, who sleeps in his quiet grave on the green cliffs of Folke- stone. What a glorious morning “for England, home, and beauty” was that of the 14th of May, 1796, the birthday of vaccination ! “ On that day, matter was taken from the hand of Sarah Nelmes, who had been infected while milking her master’s cows, and this matter was inserted by two superficial incisions into the arms of James Phipps, a healthy boy of about eight years of age. He went through the disease in a regular and satisfactory manner ; but the most agitating part of the trial still remained to be performed. It was needful to ascertain whether he was free from the con- tagion of small-pox. This point, so full of anxiety to Dr. Jenner, was fairly put to issue on the 1st of the following July. Small-pox matter, taken immediately and directly from a small-pox pustule, was carefully inserted by several incisions, but no disease followed.” Now by this one simple and brave experiment upon the lad James Phipps, Dr. Jenner established a law which the experience of millions upon millions of human beings, in generations since, has only served to strengthen. It is, too, wonderful to think that](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22475333_0003.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
