Morning journal and courier., 1882-12-08
Friday. Dec. S, 1882.
THE SMALLPOX IN HAITI.

THE SMALLPOX IN HAYTI
 The smallpox has been making terrible ravages in Hayti. It appeared there in the latter part of 1881, and spread rapidly over the entire island. It is supposed that the number of deaths has reached 50, 900 and the disease is still doing it's deadly work. No active means were taken to check it's spread until the early part of this year, and even when the necessary measures had been planned it was found impossible to carry them out satisfactorily. The great trouble experienced was to make the people under stand that the spread of the disease was chiefly owing to the free intercourse of we'll persons with their sick friends Whole fa12idll{ies would sleep in the same room with sick children and even in the same bed.
 Those opposed to vaccination can gain some useful knowledge from the record of the smallpox in Hayti. Dr. J. B. Terres of Port au-Prince, says that vaccination has proved to be an almost absolute protection from the disease. He says: ''I vaccinated in this city (Port au-Prince) about 5000, and of this number I did not succeed with more than one-fourth, and in the majority of cases where l was successful I had to vaccinate several times I used the bovine virus in tubes, quills, and on ivory points. was most successful with the tubes, owing to the fact that the virus was better protected from the air, and was therefore less susceptible to atmospheric changes. The other forms, not being so we'll protected, lost their virtue soon after being imported to this warm climate" Dr. Terres vaccinated himself and family, consisting of six persons and seven servants, and although during the height of the cpl demic he was called every day to visit from 200 to 300 smallpox patients, many of them suffering from the worst form of the dis ease. still, having entire confidence in the preventive power of vaccination, he took no further precautions against the introduction of the infection to his family, and not case occurred among them. He says that he can enumerate at least forty families, numbering about three hundred persons where he was successful in vaccinating, among whom only six cases of smallpox occurred and they all recovered. All these people were exposed to the contag- ion, more or less, daily as they would persist in visiting their stricken friends and in at tending the funerals of the victims. The doctor also vaccinated the scholars and teachers in three public schools, consisting of about 800 persons, and only one case occur red, that of servant attached to one of the schools. II can say," says Dr. Terres, that did not find one death occurring in cases that had been properly vaccinated, and from all the information that I have been able to gather from other physicians they uphold my statements Since this smallpox epidem- ic we have had visitation of the yellow fever, which has proved very fatal among the foreigners residing here. -.a satives are almost entirely exempt from ,vneould to God that we had Jenner to give us the means equal to vaccination in smallpox to arrest the spread and ravages of this dread ful malady!''
 Such testimony as this to the efficacy of vaccination is valuable and ought to shake the confidence of the anti vaccnationists in their dangerous theory. But probably noth- ing would do that.