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appeared to be in the aggregate an increasing mortality. Some
found in this circumstance, evidence of the malign influence of
vaccination. Such a conclusion is manifestly untenable. There
was no more reason for attributing to vaccination the increase of
mortality in the case of those diseases where the mortality had
grown, than there was for asserting that to its beneficent influence
was due the decrease of mortality in those cases in which the
mortality had become less. The hypothesis that it caused the
mortality in some instances to grow, and in other instances to
decrease, and that it was responsible for the balance of increase
shown on an aggregation of the two, does not merit serious attention.
It is not as if all the diseases in the class showing an increasing
mortality were such as could be deemed capable of being affected
by vaccination, whilst those included in the class with a decreasing
mortality, were in a different category. Two of the diseases
included in this latter class, viz., Convulsions and Pneumonia,
have been regarded in particular cases, even on recent occasions,
as having had their origin in vaccination.
Dr. Ogle, in statistics drawn from the Reports of the
Registrar-General for England and Wales, points out that the
line of reasoning which had been considered by some sufficient
to show that vaccination has produced in those who have been
subject to it, serious diseases, would equally serve to show that
it has rendered them largely exempt from other diseases no less
serious. He gives, as an example, the mortality from Phthisis,
Pneumonia, Convulsions, and from causes not ascertained or
stated too vaguely for classification, and shows that, in each case,
there has been a large decrease of mortality during the period
from 1874 to 1891. He does not, of course, suggest that vaccination
has been the cause of this decrease, but he asks, and we think
the question a pertinent one, why it should be credited with the
increase of diseases which have increased, and not equally be
credited with the decrease where the mortality has diminished.
We will refer now specifically to the principal diseases, an