Vaccination

A book came into my possession a few months ago, and I found a bit I wanted to share.  The title of the book is “Short Talks With Young Mothers On the Management of Infants and Young Children,” by Charles Gilmore Kerley, M.D..  The book is copyright, 1922, in the USA.  Pp, 269-70

“Vaccination

(Skipping ahead to the fourth paragraph.)

Necessity of vaccination.– Vaccination will always be considered by people who enjoy the possession of an ordinary amount of knowledge and a moderate amount of common-sense as one of the greatest discoveries of medical science.  Since its discovery by Jenner, as statistics show, millions of lives have been saved by vaccination.  It would seem strange that one should feel it necessary to speak in defence of a measure which has been of such incalculable value to the human race, but there are a noisy lot of mentally incompetent anti-vaccinationists, who are not without influence among their kind and the otherwise ignorant, upon whom the following statistic by Allen (Paediatrics, February, 1900) would produce no effect:

In 1871, Germany lost one hundred and forty-three thousand lives by smallpox; in 1874, a law was enacted making vaccination obligatory during the first year of life and compelling its repetition during the tenth year.  The result was that the disease almost entirely disappeared.  At the present time the loss of life from this disease throughout the empire is scarcely one hundred a year.  At the time of the Franco-Prussian War, the entire German Army was re-vaccinated; while in the French Army, vaccination being optional, comparatively few were vaccinated.  Both armies were attacked by smallpox, the French losing twenty-three thousand men, the German, two hundred and seventy-eight.  With such statistics how can there be any plausibility in the argument of the anti-vaccinationists?” 

Seems a long battle has already been fought on the anti-vax front.