Life and Health

Printed in "News Notes" Canadian Recruits Must Be Vaccinated.— The order has been issued that all recruits must be revaccinated if it is thought necessary by the medical examiners. Those who refuse vaccination are to be rejected. Printed in "News Notes" Vaccination Bill Signed.— The governor of New York has signed the bill making vaccination compulsory in cities of the first and second class in both public and parochial schools. In cities of the third class and in rural communities the school authorities are required to bar all unvaccinated pupils when there is an outbreak of smallpox. [...]

Printed in "News Notes" Antityphoid Vaccination.— The French secretary of the navy has issued a circular stating that since the authorization of antitoxic vaccine by the French navy, 3,652 men have been vaccinated, that no bad results have followed in a single case, and that not one of the vaccinated persons has had typhoid fever. It would have been more convincing had he told us what percentage of unvaccinated persons under the same circumstances had fever. For aught we know, there may have been no fever in the navy. Printed in "News Notes" Typical Vaccination Scars Rare [...]

Article titled "PREVENTIVE VACCINATION AGAINST TUBERCULOSIS" by H. J. Achard, M. D. [For some weeks the country has been seething with the sensational accounts appearing in the daily papers regarding the wonderful work Friedmann is going to accomplish with his antituberculosis serum. There are some, however, who think the whole thing looks like a grand publicity scheme on the part of the German doctor. At any rate, his secrecy, his determination to patent his process, his haste to accept fees for his experimental work, all tend to make the medical profession at large look upon his work with more [...]

Printed in "As We See It" Smallpox Epidemics IN view of the fact that there have been recent outbreaks of smallpox in severe form in California, Texas, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, it is well to give attention to an editorial article in the Cleveland Medical Journal of January, protesting against the fact that there are now 20,000 unvaccinated children in the public schools of that city. This journal says: — "The memory of man is truly brief. It is only ten years since the close of an epidemic costing the city over $3oo,000, and incidentally resulting in some 250 [...]

Printed in "As We See It" The International Hygiene Congress THE congress consisted of nine sections and two subsections. The first section discussed the relationship of germs and parasites to disease, and considered such diseases as infantile paralysis and hook-worm disease, and other topics less familiar, though no less important, to the layman. The second section, Dietetic Hygiene and Hygienic Physiology, was devoted quite largely to physiology, and so far as a hygiene congress is concerned, most of the papers considered in the section were of only academic interest. Another and important section was that devoted to the Hygiene [...]

Printed in "Current Comment" Vaccination A PICTURE printed the other day on the Weekly's comic page about the ferocities of the vaccinating doctors brought us in a remarkable grist of letters from readers who welcomed us, on the strength of that picture, to the ranks of antivaccination. The warmth of the welcome has been somewhat embarrassing, especially as it is necessary to disclose to these good friends that the picture which they had approved appealed to us only on its comic side, and was not intended as an expression of editorial opinion. The argument against vaccination is a glorious [...]

Printed in "As We See It" Antityphoid Vaccination A COMMISSION appointed by the Paris Academy of Medicine has reported:— "There are grounds for recommending the voluntary employment of antityphoid vaccination as a rational and practical method of diminishing, by a sensible proportion, the frequency and gravity of typhoid fever in France and in the French colonies. This recommendation is addressed to all whose profession, whose usual or accidental methods of alimentation, whose daily or frequent association with the sick or with bacillus carriers, expose them to direct or indirect contagion by the bacillus of typhoid fever." Public Health Reports, [...]

Printed in "Editorial" Vaccination or Smallpox? IN Public Health Reports, March Io, 1911, Passed Asst. Surg. Victor G. Heiser, chief quarantine officer and director of health for the Philippine Islands, gives an official report on "Smallpox and Vaccination in the Philippine Islands," which should be food for thought for all persons who prefer fact to fancy and reason to opinion. Much has been said to the effect that vaccination does not protect against smallpox, and that it is followed by frightful results. As to whether vaccination protects against smallpox, this report certainly gives very convincing testimony: — "Since completing, [...]

Printed in "As We See It" Denies Bad Effect of Vaccination BECAUSE of a continual cry in certain quarters against vaccination, the Washington Times had an investigation conducted by Dr. M. S. Iseman, who visited twenty-four public schools and personally examined one thousand children who had been vaccinated, the larger part during 1909 and 191o. The average age of those vaccinated was five years. Dr. Iseman characterizes the cry against vaccination as a "survival of the great-great-grandfather days brought over from England, and, in spite of the progress of the age, cropping every now and then in their descendants." [...]

Printed in "Current Comment" Is Vaccination Beneficial? A SINGLE statement is sufficient to prove to the unprejudiced mind the value of vaccination as a preventive of smallpox. Germany, which, since 1874, has had not only compulsory vaccination at the end of the first year of life, but also compulsory vaccination at the age of twelve, since that year has suffered not a single epidemic of smallpox. From 1893 to 1897 there were in the whole German empire only 287 deaths from smallpox. During the same period there died from this disease in the Russian empire 275,502 persons; in Spain, [...]