Abstract
ACCORDING to an annotation in the June issue of the Statistical Bulletin, the organ of the Metropolitan Life Assurance Company of New York, a remarkably low record for smallpox was established for 1941 in the United States, only 1,432 cases having been reported in the whole country during that year, or scarcely more than half the number notified in 1940 (2,795). In Canada also the incidence of smallpox was very low, only 26 cases having been reported, all but one of which occurred in the single province of Saskatchewan. As in previous years, the type of the disease in the United States was mild, and it is probable that not more than ten deaths occurred. There is good reason to believe that the present decline is real, and that the disease will be eradicated in the next decade. During the past twenty-one years, nearly half a million cases of smallpox have been reported in the United States, one State alone, Indiana, being represented by 37,902 cases. The chief centre of smallpox infection in the United States recently has been in the north-west corner of the country which comprises the States of Montana, Washington, Idaho and Oregon, while the lowest incidence is in the New England and Middle Atlantic States, followed by the States in the south-east corner of the country. The high incidence in Indiana is to be attributed to the fact that at a recent survey less than 13 per cent of the Indiana pre-school children and not more than 53 per cent of school children less than ten years of age were found to be vaccinated. It is therefore highly desirable that the following warnings should be widely spread: (1) no one is naturally immune to smallpox ; (2) protection against it must be acquired artificially by vaccination ; (3) the immunity conferred by vaccination is not life long, but must be renewed by revaccination at intervals of seven years or when an outbreak of smallpox occurs.
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Smallpox in the United States. Nature 150, 288 (1942). https://doi.org/10.1038/150288b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/150288b0