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70
SMALL POX.
For the third consecutive year no cases of Small Pox were notified
in the district. From the appended table of Vaccination returns, it
will be seen, however, that this is in no way due to any lack of
susceptible material in the population. An increasingly large percentage
of surviving infants each year escape vaccination, so that we
are accumulating a very large susceptible population unprotected by
vaccination or previous attack of Small Pox. Experience has shown
that where this happens it is followed sooner or later by disastrous
epidemics which sweep away in vast numbers those who have had the
misfortune to escape vaccination, and in consequence have failed to
acquire the immunity to Small Pox which vaccination confers.
I regret to say that I see in this unprotected state of Willesden's
population a most serious menace to the public health. At such a
time as the present when Small Pox is virtually non-existent in Great
Britain, the danger appears remote and the sense of security which
this breeds only increases the danger by fostering laxity in the
observance of vaccination.
But just as surely as the statutory and administrative insistance
on vaccination has been relaxed and been followed by an increasing
neglect of vaccination, so certainly will this neglect be paid for when
the cycle of epidemic prevalence recurs and there are repeated the
tragic consequences with which Small Pox has made us familiar.