Report on vaccination and its results, based on the evidence taken by the Commission during the years 1889-1897.

  • Great Britain. Royal Commission on Vaccination.
Date:
1898
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on vaccination and its results, based on the evidence taken by the Commission during the years 1889-1897. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    203/512 (page 191)
    regulation enforcing the vaccination of foreigners/' natives engaged abroad and discharged before their ship returns from her station; but in 1873 an order was issued for their vaccination on enlistment. Since the year 1873 the force should, under the regulations, consist only of persons who had been vaccinated since enlistment.1 339. During the period i860—1864 the death-rate from smallpox in the navy gave no evidence of decline. Speak- ing generally of the period 1864—1894, the growth of the proportion of the force who had been vaccinated since enlistment was accompanied by a decline in the death-rate from smallpox, and the lessened death-rate has on the whole continued during those later years of the period in which that proportion has presumably been maintained at its highest. In the year 1879 the death-rate was, indeed, higher than it had been in any year since 1864 ;3 but ten out of the foui'teen deaths from smallpox which occurred during that year (representing 2'2 of the death-rate of 3*1 shown in the table in § 337) were those of certain foreigners, shipped on one particular vessel, whom the medical officer of the ship had, contrary to the Admiralty regulations, neglected to vaccinate. The vessel referred to is the Boadicea. When at Sierra Leone, 37 Kroomen were shipped on board her. Sixteen of them showed evidence of having had smallpox in their youth, and two had vaccine marks on their arms. Twelve Kroomen were attacked in all, of whom 10 died. None of them had suffered from small- pox previously, and only one, who had the discrete form and recovered, showed vaccine marks. Twenty-four white men were attacked, of whom one only died. Of the remainder, four suffered from the confluent form, eight from the discrete, six from the varicelloid variety, and five from fever without any eruption. With one exception, faintly marked, all the white men had good cicatrices, some of them being due to re-vaccination. 340. We have further evidence also with regard to the 1 Q. 2670; 3172-3; 3226-34. 2 6, App. 688.