( 30 )
careful manipulation of Assistant Surgeon Anunta Chandroba himself. With re-
ference to Mr. A. Chandroba's experiments, one important proof of the superiority of
good humanized lymph over the ordinary, or even superior quality of animal lymph is
wanting.
In all Mr. Chandroba's experiments, no mention is made of the employment of
humanized lymph when the animal lymph had failed; had he done this he might have
met with the results witnessed in Rotterdam in 1869, when the following was noticed:—
Cases of vaccination with animal lymph, ...
Cases of vaccination with humanized lymph,
Successful.
550
666
Unsuccessful.
87
5
Total,
...
Total.
637
671
1,308
With reference to the above, Dr. Seaton writes as follows, at page 187 of the
Twelfth Report of the Medical Officer to the Privy Council; and, as it is both full and,
I think, conclusive, I offer no apology for the long extract I am about to make. The
authority of Dr. Seaton on all matters connected with vaccination is universally al-
lowed in England and the Continent to be of the highest order, and animal vaccina-
tion must be much improved before it can ever lay claims to supersede the system of
vaccination in force in England, and with some modifications adopted in this country :—
" The 1,308 cases of vaccination recorded in this table [the one I have given] were
"performed on 1,230 individuals; the unsuccessful cases being vaccinated a second, and
" such as required it a third time, so that all the children were ultimately successfully
"vaccinated.
The second vaccinations were done either with animal lymph or with
" humanized lymph as the case might be ; but for those cases in which animal lymph
" failed twice, only humanized lymph was trusted to for the third operation, and none of
" them then failed. So far, then, as evidence at present goes, it appears quite clear—
" (1) that the present degree of success attending the practice of animal vaccination
" is, in comparison with the success attendant on vaccination from arm to arm, very
" low, and such as to constitute a most serious drawback to its use, supposing that
" other reasons were deemed sufficiently strong to render its introduction as an alter¬
" native proceeding desirable; (2) that much training and experience are indispensable
" to the attainment of even that degree of success which at present attends it. If
" practised and most scrupulously careful vaccinators, anxiously endeavouring to make
" their experiment successful, and neglecting no known precaution for that purpose,
" find, after two years' experience, that in vaccinating direct from the heifer to the arm
" they are obliged in one-eighth of their cases to vaccinate a second time before they
" can produce any effect, and that in the end very nearly one-fourth of the children
" who are infected in this way are sent out with that imperfect degree of protection
" against small-pox which is afforded by only one or two vaccine vesicles, it must, I
" think, be obvious, that by the adoption of such a practice we should be greatly
" weakening our defences against small-pox. The chance to each individual of a
" full protection would be very largely diminished, and the danger to the community
" of spreading small-pox greatly increased, by the number of half-protected persons
" thrown upon it. We should be going back in fact towards the state of things,
" which, from other causes, existed a few years ago, and from which of late years so
"much has been done to rescue us."
As regards the second question—viz., the practicability of the scheme in this coun-
try—I will take for example my own divisions. Any one who is acquainted with the duties
of a Superintendent of Vaccine in the North-Western Provinces will at once see how
disastrous the results would be to the Superintendent's tour of inspection, by which he
keeps a check on the veracity of the returns, &c., if that officer were to halt at a large
city, and commence animal vaccination. To continue the illustration from my own
case, he would have to keep 89 vaccinators, scattered over a distance of. upwards of
500 miles, or from the borders of the Cawnpore District to the snowy range between
the Ganges and Jumna, supplied with sufficient lymph for an average of ten cases per