%images;]> lchtml-003406 Small-pox, and small-pox after cow-pox. To the editor of the standard. ...: a machine readable transcription. Lewis Carroll Scrapbook, Library of Congress Selected and converted. American Memory, Library of Congress.

Washington, DC, 2003.

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 2004/05/18
0001

SMALL-POX, and SMALL-POX AFTER COW-POX.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE STANDARD.

Sir,—Will you spare an odd corner for a couple of questions to the professors of medicine such as they should be best able to answer, but, in default of an answer from them, open to a reply from any one?

According to the annual report of the Small-pox Hospital at Highgate, the total admission of patients during 1870 amounted to 1285; of these 962, or 74.8 per cent, had been vaccinated, and 322, or 25.0 per cent, were unvaccinated. Of the 962 vaccinated cases 76 patients died, giving a mortality of 7.9 percent, whilst of the unvaccinated cases 124 patients, or 38.5 per cent, died; whence it appears that small-pox is to small-pox after cow-pox in the proportion of 1 to 3; that the mortality of small-pox is to the mortality of small-pox after cow-pox in the proportion of a little more than 5 to 1. In other words, three times as many are taken with the small-pox who have had the cow-pox as those who have not; more than five times as many die of the small-pox who have not had the cow-pox than those who have.

According to the detailed report of the Hampstead committee, it appears that out of the 5360 cases of small-pox dealt with in that hospital 4312 had been vaccinated, and 1048 had not, making the susceptibility of small-pox, after vaccination, four to one instead of three to one, as at Highgate.

The lesson apparently to be read from the foregoing figures is, that if vaccination mitigates, it also multiplies, small-pox—that possibly this multiplication of the disease more than counterbalances the difference in its mortality—that but for cow-pox the cases of small-pox would be reduced one-half, taking the Highgate, or three-fifths, taking the Hampstead measure of proportion—and that the excess of small-pox after cow-pox, being the effect of cow-pox, must be deducted from the whole number of vaccinated cases in any comparison of mortality between them and unvaccinated cases.

To redress any error in the construing of these figures I crave your admission into the columns of the Standard of the two subjoined questions. In what ratio does the vaccinated population, as far as has been ascertained, stand to the unvaccinated? And, to what extent, if at all, is smallpox in either instance—i.e., in small-pox after cow-pox, or in small-pox without that safeguard—more or less contagious or infectious? I only ask for an approximate but an experienced answer. With men in quest of truth, in a subject of such common concern, all prejudice and passion, and hard speech are entirely out of place.—Your obedient servant, W. R. ARROWSMITH, a St. Pancras Guardian.