RACE WITH A GERM

Evening Star, Issue 18173, 13 January 1923, Page 3

RACE WITH A GERM

SPORTING ASPECT OP VACCINATION.

pPrem the London * Observer.'']

An English physiologist who was asked the other day when last he had been Vaccinated for smallpox replied, greatly to tho questioner’s surprise, that he could not recollect tho date, but that he had .in idl been vaccinated .seventeen times! Pressed to account for this curious record, ho explained that ho had had occasion on a number of times during the last thirty yeans to visit tho smallpox hospital at Darfcford, of which the director was a 'close friend of his. One of the rules of the hospital (was UHat any outsider who (entered it should be vaccinated at the gate before coming in. This rule was absolute. Workmen, new nurses, new servants, men or women, engineers, carpenters, dispensers, clerks, and all tho miscellaneous people who constitute the staff of a hospital, .all had to bo vaccinated before they piassed the gates, whether thoir stay was to bo long or .short, whether it was to be a matter of a lew hours, days, weeks, or years. The value of this precaution was seen in tho recorded fact that never hi all tho thirty years of the existence of the 'Hartford: .Smallpox Hospital has there been a. case of smallpox among tho staff, tho workmen, or tho visitors. Tho only people who have lead smallpox in the hospital 'have been Tho patients who were brought 'there suffering from it.

One curious fact about this vaccination 'at the gate is that the vaccination races tho germ and beats it, A visiter might be actually infeotod with smallpox while in the hospital, but it he had been vaccinated at tho gate tho vaccine would race 'the smallpox germ in his body, and would pass it. .and set up an impassable barrier against it before it had time to develop and declare its symptoms. A physician at another smallpox hospital once said to a scientific visitor who had intrepidly come to see him and his work: “My dear Blank, you’ve now got smallpox. But you’ll never kow it: for .1 shall vaccinate you and hold it up.” U was .spoken only .partly in jest; the meaning was clear—that even if in the short, time when danger had been run smallpox had been communicated to the person taking the risk, yet vaccination would prevent tho smallpox germ- from ever getting home. Even with a start the vaccine would beat it .in the race.

Although no smallpox case ever developed among tho staff or visitors at the Dart-ford Hospital, there was once a, mysterious outbreak in Hartford itself, and naturally people were inclined to attribute this to an escape of germs ifrom the hospital. After Jong investigation' it was found that they had escaped—in this wise ; Adi blankets, etc., belonging to patienta were, of course, sterilised by prolonged baking. Some workmen temporarily employed mistook some blankets that had ■not been into the -steriliser for those that had been, passed in and through, stole them, smuggled them out of hospitaJ, and pawned them. The monthly interest on the pawn tickets not having -been paid, the blankets were, with other pledges, duly put up to auction six months (or a year) later. The unfortunate persons who booughit the blankets contracted smallpox.