Make a record of your Vaccination.—­Do not fail to procure and preserve the certificate mentioned in the preceding paragraph, and also to make a personal record of the facts with regard to any vaccination of yourself or in your family.  From it you may sometime learn that it is ten years since you or some member of your family was vaccinated, when you thought it only five.

Lives saved from smallpox in Michigan.—­Since the State Board of Health was established, many thousands of people in Michigan have been vaccinated because of its recommendations; and the statistics of deaths, published by the Secretary of State, show that at the close of the year 1906, the death rate from smallpox in Michigan had been so much less than before the board was established as to indicate that over three thousand lives had been saved from that loathsome disease.  The average death rate per year, for the five years, 1869-1873, before the board was established, was 8.5 per 100,000 inhabitants, and since the board was established, for the thirty-three years, 1874-1907, it was only 1.5.  Since 1896 an uncommon mild type of the disease has prevailed very extensively, but the death rate has been exceedingly low, being for the eleven years, 1897-1907, slightly less than one death for each 100,000 inhabitants.  The great saving of life from smallpox in civilized countries has been mainly because of vaccination and revaccination.

[208 Mothers’ remedies]

Vaccination, Symptoms.—­At first a slight irritation at the place of vaccination.  The eruption appears on the third or fourth day as a reddish pimple surrounded by a reddened surface.  On the fifth or sixth day this pimple becomes a vesicle with a depressed center and filled with clear contents.  It reaches its greatest size on the eighth day.  By the tenth day the contents are pus-like and the surrounding skin is more inflamed and often quite painful.  These symptoms diminish, and by the end of the second week the pustule has dried to a brownish scab, which falls off between the twenty-first and twenty-fifth days, and leaves a depressed scar.  Fever and mild constitutional symptoms usually go with the eruption and may last until about the eighth day.

Reliable lymph points should always be used.  Clean the skin near the insertion of the deltoid muscle on the arm, and with a clean (sterile) knife or ivory point, a few scratches are made, deep enough to allow a slight flow of liquid, but no bleeding.  The vaccine virus moistened, if dried on a point, is rubbed into the wound and allowed to dry.  A piece of sterile gauze, or a “shield,” is used as a dressing.  This shield can be bought at any drug store.  One vaccination may give immunity for ten to twelve years, but it is better to be vaccinated every six years at least.

Dengue.  Break-bone Fever, Dandy Fever.—­This is an acute infectious disease characterized by pains in the joints and muscles, fever, an initial reddish swollen eruption and a terminal eruption of variable type.  It occurs in the tropical regions and the warmer portions of the temperate zone.  The disease appears in epidemics, rapidly attacking many persons.