VACCINATION AND SMALLPOX.

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume XXII, Issue 3466, 23 October 1896, Page 6

VACCINATION AND SMALLPOX.

3 c The Gloucester Outbreak. & A correspondent of the London Times gives a detailed account of the recent smallpox epidemic at Gloucester. No otiier English ; town, he says, has witnessed such a visitation within the memory of living. man. Between 18S6 and 1894 the number of public vac- " cinations had fallen from 1095 to 34, and in ten yoars tho total was only 2.378, though in that period v 15,682 children had been born in Gloucester and only 3,170 had died. The epidemic began with a a case of smallpox in an unvac- - cinated child which was concealed o and treated as measles. The end of tho epidemic was certainly not -' duff to; effective isolation nor to a tho exhaustion of the virulence of . the infection. When tho city bey gan to be boycotted tho citizens ? appealed to the city council ; the t council appealed to the doctors ; •• and the doctors replied that isolai tion, vaccination, and re-vaccina-r tion were the necessity of the time. Finally, the board of guardians instructed v the vaccina-tion-officers to. carry out; the law. More than 36,000 vaccinations were effected. The epidemic was brought under control in May, > and by the end of July it had been 5 stamped out. The epidemic had » attacked 2,03(5 persons (the population being about 40,000), of whom 443 died. The guardians are now prosecuting vaccination ' defaulters with energy as great as their previous indifference.