[204 Mothers’ remedies]

Why Vaccinate.—­Because vaccination is a preventive of all forms of smallpox, and because by traveling, or by travelers, by articles received in the mail or from the stores or shops, or other various ways anyone at any time, may, without knowing it, be exposed to smallpox, it becomes important so far as possible without injury to health to render every person incapable of taking the disease.  This may be done so perfectly by vaccination and re-vaccination with genuine bovine vaccine virus that no question of ordinary expense or trouble should be allowed for a day to prevent the careful vaccination of every man, woman and child in Michigan, and the re-vaccination of every one who has not been vaccinated within five years.  It is well established that those who have been properly vaccinated are far less likely to take smallpox if exposed to it, and that the very few who have been properly vaccinated and have smallpox have it in a much milder form and are much less disfigured by it than those who have not been thus vaccinated.  The value of vaccination is illustrated by the following facts:  On March the 13th, 1859, Dr. E. M. Snow, of Providence, R. 1., found in a cluster of seven houses twenty-five families, and in these families ten cases of smallpox, all apparently at about the same stage of the disease.  In the same families there were twenty-one children, who had never been vaccinated.  The ten cases and the remaining members of the families, including the twenty-one children, were quarantined at home, and the children were all vaccinated and compelled to remain with the sick.  Several other cases of smallpox occurred in the persons previously exposed, but not one of the twenty-one children referred to had the slightest touch of the disease.

In Sweden, the average number of deaths in each year from smallpox per million inhabitants was: 

Before the introduction of vaccination          (1774-1801),  1,973;
During the period of optional vaccination       (1802-1816),    479;
And during the period of obligatory vaccination (1817-1877),    189.

Vaccination was introduced in England near the beginning of the nineteenth century, and since 1853 compulsory vaccination has been attempted.  In England the number of deaths in each year from smallpox per one million inhabitants was: 

At the close of the eighteenth century, 3,000. 
             From 1841 to 1853 (average), 304. 
             From 1854 to 1863 (average), 171.

Smallpox entirely prevented by re-vaccination.—­In the Bavarian army re-vaccination has been compulsory since 1843.  From that date till 1857, not even a single case of unmodified smallpox occurred, nor a single death from smallpox.  During the year of duty, Dr. Marson, physician of the London Smallpox Hospital, has never observed a single case of smallpox in the officers and employees of the hospital, who are re-vaccinated when they enter the service, and who are constantly exposed to the infection.