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Vaccination Numbers Reported in the New York Times... In 1851

By 

René F. Najera, DrPH

July 9, 2019

The reported several bits of interesting information. It first has the results of canvassing for several positions up for election: [caption id="attachment_1535" align="aligncenter" width="374"]
Click to enlarge.[/caption] Later in the page, there is a table of taxes received by the city in the previous five months: [caption id="attachment_1537" align="aligncenter" width="421"] Click to enlarge.[/caption] Next, we see how many prescriptions have been dispensed, and to whom, including vaccinations: [caption id="attachment_1538" align="aligncenter" width="452"] Click to enlarge.[/caption] Note that 122 people received a vaccination (presumably the smallpox vaccine, since that was the only vaccine available at the time), and notice that the “principal diseases treated were fevers, small pox and inflammatory disorders.” Later, we'll see what was killing people at that time. Then we have some statistics on licenses issued followed by criminal statistics (who was imprisoned and where) and some numbers on hospital admissions and discharges. Then we get to the mortality table:   [caption id="attachment_1539" align="aligncenter" width="527"] Click to enlarge.[/caption]   In one week, 350 people were reported dead. (If you look at the archived page, you'll see some reports of deaths, like a child being thrown off a horse and two ill men dying of “death by apoplexy.”) As far as infectious diseases, there were deaths from an abscess, bronchitis, cholera, consumption (tuberculosis), croup, chickenpox, diarrhea, dysentery, erysipelas (bacterial infection), different fevers (including scarlet fever and typhoid fever), hooping (whooping) cough, inflammation of different organs (notably lung inflammation), measles, small pox and varioloid (something resembling smallpox). Not everyone died in an institution, either. And many of the deaths reported were in the younger age groups. Today, you rarely see these kinds of data posted on news sites. (Not to mention that there are not many newspapers in print anymore, except for the big cities.) Some cities, like Baltimore and Philadelphia, are trying to inform their citizens through open data portals. ( and here is portals.) The main goal of those portals is to allow professional and amateur data scientists to analyze and visualize the data in a way that allows for new discoveries. Who knows? Maybe in 1851 there was some scientist who looked at this information and did something with it? It would be another three years before English physician John Snow used the published deaths from cholera in the England epidemic of 1854 to . He would then pose a theory of how cholera was being spread in London: not by “bad air” but by contaminated water. What contaminated the water was a subject of further research and discovery and the advent of . You can read whole New York Daily Times issue as a PDF here:

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