BILL OF HEALTH
No outgoing ship may "clear the port" without a Bill of Health, signed by the Collector of Customs and the naval officer of the Port.
This discovery of Jenner's was most fortunate; for vaccination remains until this day absolutely the only remedy of any value whatever that we possess against smallpox.
Quarantine, inoculation, improvement of living and sanitary conditions, the use of drugs and medicines of all sorts other than vaccination, have no effect whatever upon either the spread or the fatality of the disease. The author, when State Health Officer of Oregon, saw the disease break out in a highly-civilized, well-fed, well-housed community, and kill eleven out of thirty-three people attacked, just as it would have done in the "Dark Ages." Not one of the cases that died had been vaccinated; and, with but one exception (and in this the proof of vaccination was imperfect), every vaccinated case recovered. Vaccination will usually protect for from five to ten years; then it is advisable to be re-vaccinated, and in six to eight years more, another vaccination should be attempted. This third vaccination will usually not "take," for the reason that two successful vaccinations will usually protect for life.
Unexpected as it may seem, vaccination is not only a preventive of smallpox, but a cure for it. The reason being that vaccinia, the disease resulting from successful vaccination, being far milder than smallpox, runs its course more quickly,—taking only two days to develop,—while smallpox requires anywhere from seven to twenty days to develop after the patient has been infected, or exposed. So, if anyone who has been exposed to smallpox is vaccinated any time within a week after exposure, the vaccine will take hold first, and the patient will have either simple vaccinia, with its trifling headache and fever, or else a very mild form of smallpox.
Some persons object to having children deliberately infected with even the mildest sort of disease; but this is infinitely better than to allow, as was the case before vaccination, from one-fourth to one-fifth of them to be killed, twenty-five per cent of them to be pock-marked, and ten per cent of them to be blinded by this terrible disease. So far as any after-effects of vaccination are concerned, careful investigation of hundreds of thousands of cases has clearly shown that it is not so dangerous as a common cold in the head.
Infantile Paralysis. Another disease that has been unpleasantly famous of late is also caused and spread by a germ. This is a form of laming or crippling of certain muscles in childhood known as infantile paralysis. It is not a common disease, though during the last two years there has been an epidemic of it in the United States, especially in New York and Massachusetts. The only things of importance for you to know about it are that it begins, like the other infections, with headache, fever, and usually with "snuffles" or slight sore throat, or an attack of indigestion; and that its germ is probably spread by being sneezed or coughed into the air from the noses and throats of the children who have it, and breathed in by well children. The best known preventive of serious results from this disease is the same as in the rest of infectious diseases, namely, rest in bed, away from all other children, which at the same time stops the spread of it. It furnishes one more reason why all children having the "snuffles" and sore throat with fever and headache should be kept away from school and promptly put to bed and kept there until they are better.