Book Description

Excerpt from The British Journal of Children's Diseases, Vol. 11 Let us examine the age-distribution of the outbreak of 1837-40, which was one of the greatest in the whole history of Great Britain and was chiefly fatal to infants and children, and take, as an example, Glasgow, 1835-39. After this great epidemic legislation was carried out in 1840, on the initiative of Lord Lansdowne, to enable the people to get their children vaccinated, if desired, at the cost of the ratepayers, and to prohibit the old practice of inoculation. In 1853 vaccination was made compulsory, whilst in 1867 the machinery for the due carrying out of the law was strengthened. A few years later an altered incidence of smallpox on children and adults began to be apparent, because infants were better vaccinated. The next great epidemic in England in 1870-71 emphasized this change of incidence most remarkably. We find, therefore, in countries where vaccination is well carried out that adults are more frequently affected. The reason that so many unvaccinated children died under five years of age of this disease is explained by the fact that in the interval after a great epidemic, material in the shape of large numbers of susceptible children will gradually accumulate, especially in districts were vaccination is not strictly enforced, and thus the numbers of unvaccinated children in some districts may gradually reach as much as 20-30 per cent. of the births. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.