1885 v. 28 - Lane Medical Library Digital Document Repository

Editorial. 29
even of varioloid, has occurred in this city where the patient had
been successfully vaccinated with animal virus before the period
of incubation of small-pox ; and that when the period of incubation
had been going on for several days, the disease has been so
modified by vaccination in every case as to make it harmless.
This statement is made after an experience of more than eight
years in the use of animal virus, during which time he has personally
vaccinated thousands of cases exposed to the disease. Opposition
to vaccination can only arise, it seems to us, among those
who are ignorant of the dire results of the unmitigated scourge,
which destroyed its thousands and hundreds of thousands, and
left survivors defaced for life ; they forget that small pox attacked,
sooner or later, nearly every one, so that it is less of a rarity nowadays
to meet one who is deeply pitted, than in former days to
meet one who was unscarred.
Leprosy is next mentioned, and the importance of isolation is
considered self-evident. It is suggested that the State certainly
should give aid in supporting the lazaretto ; for, even if cases of
leprosy are carefully excluded from entering our ports, still a
certain number of cases are sure to continue developing among
the 100,000 Mongolians who are already on this coast.
Dr. Meares then compliments the Board of Supervisors and the
Superintendent of Streets on having accomplished more to abate
nuisances and to improve the sanitary condition of the city than
all their predecessors, since he has held office under the city government.
They have abated the North Beach, Bryant Avenue,
and Solano Street nuisances; the Powell Street sewer has been
extended through the sea-wall; the Fifth, Fourteenth, Fifteenth,
and Eighteenth Streets and their important sewers have been reconstructed.
These improvements have materially increased the
comfort and health of a densely populated portion of the city,
and thereby caused a very material decrease in the death rate ; so
that now San Francisco may be rightly considered one of the
healthiest of the large cities of the world.
Dr. Foye, in his report, states that there were twenty-one cases
of leprosy treated in the Chinese building of the Twenty-sixth
Street hospital.
The Quarantine Officer, Dr. McAllister, states that during the
year four steamers were quarantined on account of having yellow
fever aboard. Fifteen people were treated, and of these three
died. One steamer was detained on account of small-pox. There
•was one case only, and this developed en route for this port.