Vaccination Against Oriental Sore

In 1942 I reported the results of a systematic attempt to inoculate the inhabitants of a hyperendemic area against oriental sore.1The region comprised the settlements at the northern end of the Dead Sea, and most of the subjects were workers at the Palestine Potash Plant, situated in this area. The problem of oriental sore arose when some hundreds of workers and their families came to settle here, and since then the incidence of sores has steadily increased, so that now the region can be properly called hyperendemic. This sudden increase in morbidity in endemic districts is known; Hovnanian, of Aleppo, (1937)2and Shah, of Delhi, (1941)3have reported similar incidents. In the first 167 cases results were encouraging. It was my belief that it should be possible to sanitate an area by immunizing its inhabitants against the sore. The following factors