SMALL POX.

Wellington Independent, Volume XXVIII, Issue 3532, 24 June 1872, Page 3

SMALL POX.

~+ The following extract from papers on the subject of vaccination and re-vac-cination prepared by the Medical Department;^' the Privy Council will be read with interest and serve to jallay any feeling of alarm that may have been created by the recent case of small pox. It will ba seen by a careful perusal that there is really not that danger of infection that many may have supposed : — MEDICAL DEPARTMENT OP THE PRIVY COUNCIL OFFICE. By vaccination in infancy, if thoroughly well-performed and successful, most people are completely insured, for their whole lifetime, against an attack of small-pox; and in the. proportionately few cases where the protsction is less complete, small-pox, if it be caught, will, in consequence of the vaccination, generally be so mild a disease as not to threaten death or disfigurement. If, however, the vaccination in early life have been but imperfectly performed, or have from any other cause been but imperfectly successful/ the protection against small-pox is ranch less satisfactory ; neither lasting so long, nor while it . lasts being nearly so complete, as the protection which first-rate . vaccination gives.

Hitherto, un&tunatoly, there has always been a very h Y W quantity of imperfect vaccination ; anu m COnSflquence tlio population always obtains very many persons who, though noiUJnaiiV 7 ac cinated and believing themselves to be proteJ^ a * ainsl small- pox are really liable to infection, aiiu ma }' in some cases contract as severe forms of small-pox as if they had never been vaccinated. Partly because of the ex« isteuce of this largo number of imperfectly vaccinated persons, and partly because also even the best infantine vaccination sometimes in process of time loses more or less of its effect, it is advisable that " all persons who havo been vaccinated in infancy should, as they approach adult life, undergo ReVaccination." Generally spealring, the best time of life for re vaccination is about the time when growth is completing itself, say from fifteen to eighteen years of ago, and persons in that period of life ought not to delay then- re-vac-cination till times when there shall be specitil alarm of small-pox. In proportion, however, as there is prevalence of small-pox in any neighborhood, or as individuals are from personal circumstunces likely to meet chances of infec* tion, the age of fifteen needs to be waited for ; especially not by persons whose marks of previous re-vaccination are unsatisfactory. "In circumstances of special danger, every one past childhood, on whom re-vaccinaiion has not before been successfully performed, ought without delay to be re- vaccinated." Re-vaccination, once properly and sue* cessfully performed, " does not appear ever to require repetition." The nurses and other servants of the Small-Pox Hospital when they enter the service (unlesss it be certain that they have already had small-pox) are invariably submitted to vaccination, which in their case generally is re-vaccination, and is never afterwards repeated ; and so perfect is the protection, that though the nurses Jipe in the closest and most constant attendance on small-pox patients, and though also the other servants are in various ways exposed to special chances of in feclion, the Resident Surgeon of tlie Hospital, during his thirty-four years of {office there, has never known small-pox affect any of these nurses or servants.