Debates in Parliament respecting the Jennerian discovery : including the late debate on the further grant of twenty thousand pounds to Dr. Jenner : together with the report of the Royal College of Physicians of London, on the vaccine inoculation / with introductory remarks, by Charles Murray.

  • United Kingdom. Parliament.
Date:
1808
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Debates in Parliament respecting the Jennerian discovery : including the late debate on the further grant of twenty thousand pounds to Dr. Jenner : together with the report of the Royal College of Physicians of London, on the vaccine inoculation / with introductory remarks, by Charles Murray. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    18/188 (page 16)
    destroys so large a proportion of the younger members of the community.* The same observations, with equal force apply to those persons who, not content with administering the Small-pox, and infecting the neighbourhood •within a limited sphere, actually advertize to all the world, by painted boards and otherwise, the gratui- tous offering of this bane of society. Ought this to be tolerated in a country which by its laws, holds out protection to the meanest of its subjects from oppression and injury by others ? In former times, an unregulated and indiscrimi- nate Inoculation of the Small-pox was of very dan? gerous tendency, and has been strangely overlooked among those laws which relate to the public health ; * It is a well-authenticated fact, that of those persons who take the Smali-[iox in the natural way, by infection, one in six dies; and in London perhaps a still larger proportion : and as at lead; 8000 out-patients have been inoculated at this hospital since 1S03, xshen they acknoidedged the Vaccine to be a Preventive^ supposing upon the most moderate calculation, that only three others have been infected in consequence of each of these Inoculations, this will amount to 24,000, one-sixth of which is 4000 members of society who have been probably de- stroyed by these means within the last four years! 1 Will the above observations then be thought unjust, or the alarm here given, unfounded?