SMALLPOX IN ENGLAND.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18898, 26 June 1923, Page 7

SMALLPOX IN ENGLAND.

GLOUCESTER OUTBREAK. AUTHORITIES’ SUDDEN ACTIVITY. ANTI-"VACCINATION CAMPAIGN. Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright LONDON, June 24. The Health authorities are acting with marked, if belated, vigour in connection with the Gloucester smallpox outbreak. They have rounded up all doubtful cases and have also issued -warrants and arrested 21 patients who refused to be taken to hospital, declaring that they preferred to remain at home. Uniformed police accompanied the motor ambulances when it was necessary. There are now 250 known cases in the city, of which number 21 were sent to hospital during the weekend. Workmen are busy night and day fitting up the old Air Force quarters at the Brockworth Aerodrome with additional isolation wards. These will be fenced with barb-wire entanglements to prevent the male patients from breaking out to get drinks. A strange feature of the outbreak is the foolish threat of resistance on the part of many of the working classes, who even threaten to blockade the sick bedrooms rather than permit the patients to be taken to hospital. The explanation of this stiffnecked attitude is the fact that Gloucester folk have been born and bred in an atmosphere of anti-vaccination propaganda. Even at the nresent moment those in direct contact with smallpox victims often decline to be vaccinated. A mother of seven children refused to allow any of them to bo vaccinated, even when one child was taken to the hospital. All the other six caught the disease, and the mother is now stricken with grief. A man whose wife was taken sick said: “If God Almighty had meant me to be vaccinated he would have made me with a hole in my arm.” Public anti-vaccination meetings are still being held and literature is being distributed affirming that it is a medical delusion -to say that there is smallpox in the city. The leaflets urge the people not to submit to vaccination, and declare tlxat the outbreak is really only chickenpox.—A. and N.Z. Cable.