Vaccination New and important instructions in regard to public vaccination
have been issued by the Ministry of Health. It is strange that these instructions should have been delayed so long, as they are based on Sir Humphry Rolleston's Report, which was published a year ago. Doctors are instructed to make only one insertion instead of four as previously, to use a minimum of trauma, and to avoid a multiple scarification. The Minister, apparently disturbed by certain cases of post-vaccinal nervous disease, adds that it is not expedient to press for the vaccination of children of school age or of adolescents who have not been vaccinated in infancy. The fact that there is any risk (though a very small one) of bad effects from being vaccinated for the first time after infancy makes it appear all the more important that the vaccination of babies should become as nearly as possible universal. Mast people, though unshaken in their belief that vaccination is a great and proved safe- guard against a terrible disease, will be glad that the excessive scratchings of most vaccinators are now depre- cated. As compared with ordinary inoculation the act of vaccination has seemed to the layman to be a very messy job indeed.
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