§ MR. HOPWOOD (Lancashire, S.E., Middleton)I beg to ask the Secretary to the Local Government Board whether he is aware that the medical officer at Worcester, Dr. Read, was during the past year very ill and incapacitated for months by blood poisoning, setting in within six days after re-vaccination by himself with calf lymph, also that the 1049 doctor accounts for the blood poisoning by some microbe from the external air entering at the place of vaccination; has inquiry been made whence the virus with which the calf was inoculated came and what it was: and is it possible to guarantee the vaccinated against similar microbes?
SIR W. FOSTERI learn from Dr. Read that about a year ago he suffered for three months from inflammation of the left arm, shoulder, and side, and that the inflammation commenced on the seventh day subsequent to re-vaccination of his arm with calf lymph obtained in the ordinary way from one of the vendors of this article. Dr. Read attributes his illness to the entrance of some extraneous microbic infection to his system at the place of revaccination, at a late stage of the vaccination process. Dr. Read has not thought it necessary to make inquiry about the calf lymph in question, as he does not regard his illness as in any way directly related to the lymph, and, moreover, other persons vaccinated by him with the same lymph suffered no illness whatever. It is obviously impossible to guarantee persons against the entrance to any wound of microbes which may happen to be diffused in the atmosphere.