Smallpox hospitals
Smallpox quotes
"During the epidemic of 1871, visiting the hospitals and seeing in private practice that nine-tenths of the small-pox cases were vaccinated."---Dr Allinson
There is a third comment to be made on these classifications of the Metropolitan Asylums Board. It would appear from the Reports* that as a matter of fact the whole of the small-pox patients in their hospitals had been vaccinated. This is shown in the elaborate tables given, but in the Summary every patient is put in the unvaccinated list who was not known to have been efficiently vaccinated at least fourteen days before symptoms of small-pox were observed. [1921] Vaccination and the State By Arnold Lupton MP.
London:
"Now, in the epidemic of 1871, 91.5
per cent. of the cases admitted to the Highgate Hospital were vaccinated, and at
the same place in 1881, of 491 cases only twenty-one were not vaccinated, and
this at a time when certainly not more than 90 per cent. of Londoners were
"protected;" and, indeed, in an outbreak at Bromley, comprising forty-three
cases, every one of the victims had been vaccinated and three re-vaccinated,
(Lancet, April 27,1881.) so that it would seem, as regards the relative
incidence of small-pox, vaccination has very little effect. If I wished to
improve the occasion, after Sir Lyon Playfair's example, I might quote Dr.
Browning, who gives particulars of 469 cases of post-vaccinal small-pox, of whom
ninety-nine died, or 21.108 per cent. of whom he says, "many of these sufferers
showed good vaccine marks of the kind that would be deemed worthy of an extra
grant from the Government Inspector, and yet they took small-pox."William J. Collins, M.D.,
B.S., B.Sc. 1883
"Dr. Munk stated before the Hospital Commission, that the percentage of vaccinated patients in the London small-pox hospital had increased from 40 per cent. in 1838 to 94.6 per cent. in 1879 (3rd Report of Royal Comm., Q. 9090). This evidence was given in 1882; but Mr, Wheeler stated that according to the Reports of the Highgate hospital, the vaccinated patients had long been over 90 per cent of the whole, and are now often even 94 or 95per cent."-----ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE [Book 1898] VACCINATION A DELUSION
"In the Metropolitan Hospital 1870-1-2, it is acknowledged that out of 14,808 smallpox patients 11,174 had been vaccinated."---Mr P.A. Taylor (Vacc Inq 5, p48)
"Thus far as regards the utility of vaccination to the state; we have now to consider its utility to the individual. Do the vaccinated escape in an epidemic? or, if they do not escape an attack of smallpox, do they escape death from it? In answer to the first question, apart from the familiar negative experience of everyone, we have the statistics of smallpox hospitals, which relate to the poorer class and probably do full justice to the fact of non-vaccination, inasmuch as the unvaccinated residue is mostly to be found in those slums and tenements of the poor where smallpox (now as always) is apt to linger. At the Eastern Metropolitan Hospital (Homerton) from its opening early in 1871 to the end of 1878 there were 6533 admissions for smallpox, of which 4283 had vaccination marks, 793 had no marks although vaccinated, and 1477 were unvaccinated, giving a proportion of 0.29 unvaccinated. In the epidemic hospitals of Liverpool, Glasgow, and Dublin the proportion was 0.25 during the same period."---Dr. Charles Creighton M.A., M.D. Encyclopedia Britannica, published in 1888
"The statistics of the Highgate Smallpox Hospital show that in 1871, 91.5 per cent. of
their cases had been vaccinated, and in 1881, out of a total of 491 cases, 470, or nearly
96 per cent., had been vaccinated. The Lancet for 23 February 1884, gives the facts
about an outbreak in Sunderland, where there were just 100 cases, and 96 of them had been
vaccinated. On 27 August 1881, that journal published an account of an outbreak at
Bromley, where 43 cases occurred, every one of them vaccinated.
Mr. Alexander Wheeler submitted figures to the Royal Commission on Vaccination (p. 204
of the Commission’s Third Report) which show that from 1870-86 the Metropolitan
Asylums Board treated 53,579 smallpox cases, of which 41,061 were admittedly vaccinated,
and 2,858 were put in the class they called doubtfully vaccinated."----
Lilly Loat [Book 1951] The Truth
About Vaccination and Immunization
Leeds:
"From the 29th January, 1872, to the 24th October, 1874, there have
been 715 cases passed through the Hospital, the particulars of which appear in
the ledger; out of the 715 cases there were 600 "vaccinated," and 115 "not
vaccinated." Now, from the immense pains taken to swell out the "not
vaccinated," by adding well authenticated cases of vaccination, the
unsuccessfully vaccinated, and the certified unfit, it is not to be presumed the
medical officers would add to the "vaccinated" any "not vaccinated," therefore
the 600 are all fair and bona-fide cases. On the other hand, how are the
115 "not vaccinated" reduced by deducting the "vaccinated," the "unsuccessfully
vaccinated," and the "certified unfit," &c. I do not
believe that of the whole 115 cases entered "not vaccinated," after deducting
the three classes above mentioned, there would be left 40 fair cases of "not
vaccinated."---JNO.
PICKERING, F.S.S., F.R.G.S. [1876.
THE STATISTICS OF THE MEDICAL OFFICERS TO THE LEEDS
SMALL-POX HOSPITAL EXPOSED AND REFUTED]