The means of promoting and preserving health / [Thomas Hodgkin].

  • Thomas Hodgkin
Date:
1841
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The means of promoting and preserving health / [Thomas Hodgkin]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    500/504 page 480
    If vaccination were generally resorted to, straggling cases of small-pox would stand so good a chance of being surrounded by individuals in a state of insus- ceptibility, that*its diffusion, even in its milder form, would be very improbable. ‘The experience of some foreign countries, in which vaccination has been made imperative, confirms the truth of this remark. For several years, small-pox was, I believe, wholly un- known; and though in some of these countries, at least, the disease has since made its appearance, it has been the modified, and generally mild form, which prevailed. I am informed, that there are districts in which the disease has been alarming; but I suspect that fears have been exaggerated by the disappointment which the cases of failure have excited in the minds of those who had been confiding in perfect indemnity. The rarity of greatly disfigured faces attests the bene- ficial influence which has been exerted in our own country; and I believe that the advantage has been at least as striking in all the countries in which vaccination has been fairly introduced. The preceding considerations induce me anxiously to wish that our Profession, which so nobly and disin- terestedly advocated the cause of vaccination when it was first systematically proposed, may not now, either through tergiversation or supimeness, relax in their efforts to make vaccination general; and still less throw obstacles in its way; and lend a hand to death and misery, by propagating a poison, which has been one of the greatest scourges to mankind*. TOR * It is very desirable that Medical Men, Colonists, and the Captains of vessels going to parts of the globe inhabited by uncivilized men, should be provided with vaccine virus, and exert themselves to procure its universal employment, in order to check one of the greatest of the many evils by which we are the means of destroying these poor people. London: Richard Watts, Crown Court, Temple Bar.
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3