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93
VACCINATION.
Table X. (Appendix) is a return respecting vaccination in
1885, compiled by Mr. Shattock, the Vaccination Officer, whose
energetic discharge of the duties of his appointment it is always a
pleasing duty to recognise. The return shows a loss of 4.1 per
cent. in the cases, as against 3.3, 4.0 and 3.9 in the three
previous years; in column 10, indicating loss "from removal of
children to places out of parish unknown, or which cannot be
reached, and cases not having been found." In the Metropolis
as a whole, the "loss" is somewhat greater than in Kensington.
In England and Wales, as we learn from the annual report of
Dr. George Buchanan, Medical Officer to the Local Government
Board, "the returns give evidence of about 95 per cent. of the
infantile population having received the benefits of vaccination
within the first year" after their birth; it follows that the infant
population is made up of "19 vaccinated to each unvaccinated
individual."
With regard to the protection against small-pox afforded by
vaccination—differing in degree as this does according as the
vaccination is more or less "successful "—it should be unnecessary
to say anything; but the pertinacity with which some misguided
persons still decry the most beneficent of medical discoveries
shows no sign of abatement, and as their teaching is calculated to
prejudice the general public against the wise compulsion authorized
by law, I do not hesitate to refer again, to the pregnant
proofs of the efficacy of vaccination, as a protection against
small-pox, contained in the annual report for 1881 of the Medical
Officer to the Local Government Board, lately republished. Dr.
Buchanan refers, in the first place, to the relative mortality from
small-pox in the vaccinated, and in the unvaccinated, inhabitants
of London, which formed the subject of a Memorandum which he
submitted to the Board in June, 1881, and from which I extract
the following Table:—