Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1893 edition. Excerpt: ... LEPROSY AND VACCINATION. 131 CHAPTER IV. VACCINATION WITH REFERENCE TO LEPROSY. Hav1ng shown, on the authority of some of the most eminent dermatologists and superintendents of leper asylums, and from the testimony of those who have devoted special attention to the study of leprosy, that the disease is inoculable and spread by inoculation, we proceed to inquire whether there is evidence that this inoculation may be due in whole or in part to vaccination. When dealing with this question, I am aware that I am treading on delicate ground, inasmuch as vaccination has been lauded as an operation benign in its nature, free from peril, "the greatest discovery in the history of medicine,"1 and, out of half-a-million prescriptions or so, the only one possessing such transcendent merits as to justify its universal compulsory enforcement. It is, moreover, . considered by many ardent advocates to be impolitic to do or say anything calculated to discredit vaccination. It is hardly necessary to remind our readers that there has never been a scarcity of medical inventions which have held out similar promises. Smallpox inoculation, which, according to Dr. Moore, cost the 1 Sir John Simon, late Chief Medical Officer to the Local Government Board, speaking of Jenner and vaccination, says: --" His services to mankind, in respect of the saving of life, have been such that no other man in the history of the world has ever been within measurable distance of him.'--Temple Bar Magazine, No. 376, March, 1892, p. 373, Article, "The Growth of Sanitary Science." 132 VACCINATOR-GENERAL, TRINIDAD, nation millions of lives, was universally accepted by the profession for the best part of a century as a discovery "highly beneficial to mankind;" and it would not have been...
