The Vaccination Question in the Light of Modern Experience: An Appeal for Reconsideration

Abstract

DR. MILLARD'S book is carefully and well written, and with authority; and the general plan of it is very good. He believes, absolutely and profoundly, in the power of vaccination to safeguard each of us against smallpox; and he is outspoken, as he ought to be, over the folly of all who deny this fact. But he feels, very strongly, that the “Leicester experiment”—the rigorous constant notification, isolation, surveillance of contacts, sanitation, emergency vaccination, and so forth—has been a success, not a failure. He points out, very truly, that the danger is less from severe cases than from slight, “masked,” unrecognised cases; and these cases often occur in persons lightly and inadequately vaccinated to satisfy the law. He tells the dreadful story of Dewshury and of Gloucester, where the people had Leicester's anti-vaccination spirit without Leicester's sanitation. The main purpose of his book is to underline the difference between vaccination as a personal safeguard and vaccination as a civic safeguard.

The Vaccination Question in the Light of Modern Experience: An Appeal for Reconsideration.

By Dr. C. K. Millard. Pp. xviii + 243. (London: H. K. Lewis, 1914.) Price 6s. net.