Questions. 1. Why was smallpox formerly more widespread and more often fatal than it is now? 2. Tell of the discovery of vaccination. 3. Give instances to show the influence of vaccination on smallpox epidemics. 4. Why must there be repeated vaccinations? 5. Show how vaccinating for smallpox is like taking antitoxin to prevent diphtheria.
Remember. 1. Before the introduction of vaccination, smallpox was one of the most dangerous diseases known. 2. All evidence of history tends to show that vaccination has caused smallpox to become a very mild disease and a comparatively rare one. 3. Successful vaccination repeated at proper intervals will prevent smallpox. 4. Vaccination must be repeated because we do not know just how long the material developed in the body from a single vaccination will last.
[CHAPTER XXX]
WHY VACCINATION SOMETIMES SEEMS A FAILURE
What constitutes a successful vaccination
How does it happen that those who have been recently vaccinated sometimes have smallpox? It is successful vaccination that prevents smallpox, not recent vaccination; there is a vast difference between the two. A successful vaccination is one that results in a sore identical with the sores of smallpox. Such a sore is secured only as a result of the action of the germs that cause smallpox.
If the arm is red from the shoulder to the wrist and so swollen that you cannot use it for weeks, it does not necessarily mean that you have had a successful vaccination.
Such arms are not the result of vaccination itself, any more than a railroad wreck is the result of the fact that there is steam in the engine. The railroad wreck is caused by carelessness on the part of some operator, and the badly inflamed and swollen arm is due to lack of care or knowledge on the part of the vaccinator or the person vaccinated.
Some pretended vaccinations