SMALLPOX IN ENGLAND.

Waikato Times, Volume 97, Issue 15274, 26 June 1923, Page 5

SMALLPOX IN ENGLAND.

AUTHORITIES ACTIVE. 250 CASES IN GLOUCESTER. ISOLATION OF PATIENTS. Australian and N.Z. Cable Assn. 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 also issued warrants and arrested 21 patients, who refused to be taken to the hospital, declaring that they preferred to remain at home. Uniformed police accompanied the motor ambulances when necessary There are now 250 known cases in the city, of which 21 were sent to the hospital during the week-end. Workmen are busy night and day fitting up the old air force quarters at Brockwortli Aerodrome with additional isolation wards. These are fenced with barbed-wire entanglements to prevent male patients 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 allow sick bedrooms to be blockaded rather than permit patients to be taken to the hospital. The explanation of this stiff necked attitude is that Gloucester folk are born and bred in an atmosphere of anti-vaccination propaganda. Even at the present moment those in direct contact with the smallpox victims often decline to be vaccinated. The mother of seven children refused to allow any to be vaccinated, even when one child was taken to the hospital. All the other children caught the disease, and the mother is now stricken with grief. A man whose wife was taken sick said: “If God Almighty 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 distributed affirming that it is a medical delusion to say that there is smallpox in the city. Leaflets urge the people not to submit to vaccination, and declare that the outbreak is really' only chickenpox.