The Fourth of July—A Warning

Some of the costliest lessons learned by mankind are all too often either forgotten or relegated to “innocuous desuetude.” Similarly, the fruits of hard fought battles and their most decisive victories may be lost or fade into insignificance with the growth of the indifference developed by our rapidly changing times. It requires the reminiscences of a Keen, recounting, as he recently has to hundreds of thousands of readers, his personal experiences in three epidemics of that “most loathsome, nauseating, sickening disease,” smallpox, to bring a nation back to the realization of the victory that Jenner’s protective vaccination has meant for mankind. In the Philippines…there were about 40,000 deaths every year from smallpox. In the twelve months after Heiser completed his campaign of vaccination, not a single death occurred. Yet today, in various parts of the world, we are threatened with a recrudescence of the malady that once claimed its millions in death toll—because the lessons of the past are not adequately embodied in the practice of the day. There are all too many unprotected persons indifferent to the importance of being vaccinated.