MR. (MARKS) MARSON.
I do not know that the condemnation of single punctures at that time, seventy years ago, had much effect. Two punctures became common, chiefly to guard against the possible failure of one. It is of late years that the resort to many punctures has become fashionable. Mr. Robert Lowe, now Lord Sherbrooke, in the House of Commons in 1861 spoke of “the beautiful discovery which had been made, that the security of vaccination may be almost indefinitely increased by multiplying the number of punctures”! The chief author of this remarkable discovery was Mr. Marson, for many years surgeon of the Smallpox Hospital at Highgate. He estimated the efficacy of vaccination by marks, and made so much of marks that I usually think of him as Marks Marson. He said—“A good vaccination is when persons have been vaccinated in four or more places leaving good cicatrices. I define a good cicatrix in this way: a good vaccine cicatrix may be described as distinct, foveated, dotted, or indented, in some instances radiated, and having a well, or tolerably well, defined edge. An indifferent cicatrix is indistinct, smooth, without indentation, and with an irregular or ill-defined edge. When I find that a person has been vaccinated in at least four places, leaving good marks of the kind which I have described, that person invariably, or almost invariably, has smallpox in a very mild form.”
Reading a statement like this, we revert to the rationale of vaccination, and ask what can marks have to do with its efficacy? Remember, Marson offered no explanation of his statement. He was satisfied to say thus and thus have I observed, and you may take my word for it. But in science we take no man’s word. We must see, or, like Trelawney’s Cornishmen, we must know the reason why. Marson appeared before the House of Commons’ Vaccination Committee in 1871, and set forth his marks doctrine with all the qualifications and inconsistencies which characterise the victim of a fad in contact with facts which his fad fails to include or account for.