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From these figures it may be inferred that, as regards those
children whose births were registered during each of the years
1872-1883, the proportion primarily vaccinated remained practically
the same. The effect of the opposition to the practice of
vaccination, which in some parts of the country has grown of
recent years (though to some extent at all events it has existed in
England during the whole period now dealt with), is shown by
the gradual diminution of the proportion primarily vaccinated in
the case of children whose births were registered in England or
Wales during each of the ten years 1884-1893. The diminution
of this proportion did not, of course, necessarily result at once in
a diminished proportion of the population who had, at some time
in their lives, been vaccinated.
The materials before us do not allow us to make any
numerical statement of the proportion, as time went on, during
the period 1838-1894, of the population of England and Wales
who had at some time been vaccinated. So far as we can judge
of the effect of the efforts made during that period to extend the
practice of vaccination, the proportion of the population who had
at some time been vaccinated has steadily grown, though with no
even rate of increase, during the years from 1840 onwards, down
to a recent date at all events. The rate of increase was greater
in 1853, and the few years immediately following it, than in
previous years, and again expanded, still more considerably, in
the years from 1868 to 1872, and perhaps in some few succeeding
years.
Speaking generally of the period since 1838, there has been,
as the table given on p. 000 clearly shows, a marked though
irregular decline in the death-rate from small-pox.
It may be well, too, to note at once a striking feature of
this decline. During the period 1838-1894 the decline in the
death-rate at all ages from Small-Pox has not been shared alike
by the population at every age. While the decline in the deathrate
of the population under ten years of age has been even more