Warren sheaf. [volume] (Warren, Marshall County, Minn.) 1880-current, 1899-08-03
SMALLPOX.

The disease to which I ask your at
tention is one which owes it's abolition
wholly to the physician. In these
days, century after Edward Jen-
ner's memorable incubation of James
Phipps on May ID, 1896, we can
hardly appreciate what smallpox was.
A few facts, however, will show it's
dreadful ravages. Dinsdale, who
went to St. Petersburg to inoculate
the empress Catharine, says that
100000 people died in a single year
in the Russian Empire from small
pox. In 1907, in Iceland, out of a
population of $4,000, $4,000 died.
36 per cent! In Mexico in the 10th
century, $500, 900 people died, leav-
ing, in some places, scarcely enough
alive to bury the dead. At the end
of the 18th century, Gilbert Blame
estimated that ''an adult person who
had not had smallpox was scarcely
met with or heard of in the United
Kingdom" When servants were ad-
vertised for, it was common to specify
that they: must have had smallpox
in the natural way" In 1858, in an
advertisement for counterfeiter, it
was noted as means of his identi6-
cation that he was "without pock-
holes." At the Institution for the
INDECENT Blind, two-thirds of the ap.
plicants were made blind by the
smallpox.
It attacked the high as we'll as the
humble. In the family of William
III, of England his Queen, Mary,
his father, his mother, his uncle and
two cousins, children of James I, all
died of the smallpox and the king
himself barely escaped with his life.
During the 18th century, one Empe-
ror and two Expresses of Austria, six
archdukes and archduchesses, an
elector of Saxony, an elector of Bohe-
mia, a Dauphin and King of France,
a King of Sweden, and a Gar of
Russia were all numbered among it's
victims. So fearful were its ravages,
that Bernouilli estimated that 60, ,OOO,-
/ 900 persons died from smallpox in the
century the close Of which saw The
foundation of this very Faculty. Well
might Macaulay say: ''The havoc
of the plague had been far more rap
id, but the plague visited our shores
only once or twice within living men,
ory. But the smallpox was always
present, filing the churchyard with
corpses, leaving on those whose lives
it spares the hideous traces of it's
power, turning the babe into chang
ling at which the mother shuddered,
and making the eyes and cheeks of
the betrothed maiden objects of hor-
ror to her lover" It was "the most
terrible of all the ministers of death. :"
A few statistics will show the bene-
fits vaccination has conferred. In
Sweden, before vaccination, the
deaths per million we're 2045. Since
compulsory vaccination was intro
duced they have fallen to 1855. In
England during the eighteenth CEN
tury, the average deaths per million
were about 1900. Since the epidem-
ic of 1912 and the enforcement of
the law for vaccination, the deaths
have fallen to So per million, and in
Scotland they have fallen to 8. In
Prussia, before compulsory vaccina-
ton there were 800 deaths per mil
lion in the last 10 years only Z. In
Austria, without compulsory vaccina-
ton, in the last ten years the average
has been 458 deaths per million, and
in Belgium without compulsory vac
cination from 1875 to 1884, there were
AL deaths per million. In the Shef-
field epidemic of 1878 of the unvac-
cinated population, in 20 died ; OF
those who were vaccinated, 1 in 1900.
Another illustration of what havoc
single mild case may work was seen
by the epidemic in Montreal fourteen
years ago. Among the French Cana
dams, there was the greatest preju-
dice against vaccination, so much SO
that there were even vaccination riots.
AS consequence of this prejudice a
large unprotected population grew up
and the materials we're ready for an
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