A fly blister is not a successful vaccination. Such a statement may not seem necessary, until you hear this story. A man showed a sore on his arm, asserting that it was a successful vaccination. He was told that it was nothing but the result of a blister, and not vaccination, and that the work had been done by putting a small bit of blistering plaster on his arm. He admitted this to be the fact, and said that the "doctor" who did it told him that it was a new way of vaccinating. The doctors who say that vaccination will not prevent smallpox belong to the class who use fly blisters and call them vaccinations. When the patient gets smallpox, those who are opposed to vaccinations say that here is an illustration of their claim that vaccination will not prevent smallpox.
Fig. 63. How vaccinated arms are sometimes infected.
Some people who honestly think they were vaccinated have smallpox. There are sometimes instances in which a person recently vaccinated with apparent success nevertheless contracts smallpox; there are still other cases in which the disease develops after a vaccination that would not take. Here is an example:
A doctor vaccinates a child in the usual manner. At the end of four or five days, the dressing is taken from the arm, and the only thing to be seen is a little black scab. The child scratches this off. In a few days the spot becomes red and a small abscess forms, resembling a smallpox sore. Naturally, this is taken for a completely successful vaccination, but it is not really so. When the child scratched off the scab, the vaccination wound was nearly healed, and the little abscess was caused by some very mild pus germs, which were under the finger nails with which he scratched the wound. The abscess was in no wise connected with the vaccination, but was simply such an infection as a child might get at any time that he scratched his arm. No one has ever claimed that such an abscess will prevent smallpox any more than that a boil will prevent it.
A successful vaccination will prevent smallpox. The length of time for which it will prevent the disease varies in different individuals. Some it will protect only for a year or two, while in others it will last through life.
Dr. H. W. Bond, Health Commissioner of St. Louis, Missouri, states:
"The experience of this department, based on the observation of thousands of cases, is that a well-pitted mark gives at least ten years' immunity. We have never seen a case of smallpox in a person with a well-pitted scar less than ten years old—that is, the scar less than ten years old."
A sore arm not always due to successful vaccination
One of the strongest objections made against vaccination is that the arm sometimes becomes very sore from it. This is true, but the sore arm is not a common occurrence and is never caused by vaccination properly performed. There is always some cause for the bad arm besides the vaccination.