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.

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    to be no doubt that the German army was, on the whole, a well-vaccinated class at the time of the campaign of 1870-71.1 We do not think there can be any real doubt that the French army was, during the same period, in a condition in that respect less satisfactory. According to the official returns, the number of smallpox deaths in the German forces during the years in question was only 316.2 It was stated by Monsieur de Freycinet, when Minister of War, that 23,400 French soldiers died of smallpox during the years 1870-71. We have not been able clearly to ascertain how these last figures were procured. They were nob derived directly from any official return. It would seem that the average derived from a limited number of returns relating to particular por- tions of the army was applied to the army as a whole. It is quite possible, therefore, that the figures given may not be accurate, and that the number stated is in excess of the real number of deaths j but we do not think it is possible to doubt that the ravages of smallpox in the French army were very great, and that the mortality was enormously m excess of that suffered by the force which was opposed to them. Various facts which have been deposed to, as, for example, the smallpox deaths in the ranks of the French soldiers imprisoned in Germany, confirm this view, which receives further confirmation from a comparison of the smallpox deaths in the French and Prussian armies in the time of peace which immediately preceded the war. In 1869 there were 63 deaths from smallpox in the various French garri- sons In the four years from 1866 to 1869 there were 380 deaths from smallpox, 323 of them being in the active army On the other hand, the total number of deaths from small- pox in the Prussian army from 1835 to 1869 was but 77. -H8 Information of great importance is derived from an observation of the apparent effect of the law which was passed in Prussia in the year 1874 making re-vaccmation compulsory. Since that period smallpox mortality in that country has been reduced to proportions quite insignificant 1 6, App. 727 ; Q. 1545-7- 2 Q. 1543; 6> APP- 728 ; 6, App. 727- 3 6, App. 725 ; Q- 1543-4 ; 2, App. 241.