HC Deb 01 May 1882 vol 268 cc1810-1
MR. W. LOWTHER

asked the President of the Local Government Board, Whether it is true that the resident surgeon, one of the nurses, and the cook, at a lately erected small-pox and fever hospital at Sheffield, were attacked by small-pox; and, whether he has any information that these officials were vaccinated before entering on their duties?

MR. DODSON

It is true that the resident surgeon and the cook at this hospital have recently been attacked with small-pox; but none of the nurses have been attacked. The medical officer had been vaccinated and re-vaccinated; the cook had been vaccinated in infancy, but, having afterwards suffered from small-pox, was not re-vaccinated on entering the hospital. Besides the medi- cal officer and cook, one of the ward servants was attacked. She had been vaccinated when a child and re-vaccinated after coming to the hospital, but with only partial success. In all these three instances the attack was in a modified form, and, in the cases of the medical officer and the ward servant, scarcely any rash appeared. The infection seems to have been derived from a very severe case of confluent hemorrhagic small-pox, where the patient had never been vaccinated, and this is the only case which has terminated fatally in the hospital.