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16
In many parts of the Continent the Legislature
has insisted upon the re-vaccination of
children entering school at the age of seven
years, and again at the age of fourteen, the
result being a diminution in the death rate
from Small-pox which should convince the
most obdurate sceptic; thus it is recorded
that in Germany alone, where the State
requirements are most stringent, only twentyseven
deaths took place from Small-pox out of
a population of over fifty millions of people,
during the year 1895.
The long drawn-out proceedings of the Royal
Commission will probably eventuate in some
compromise by which the blessings conferred
upon humanity by the discovery of Jenner,
at the end of the last century, may content its
opponents, and the present generation will live
to see Small-pox as extinct as the Dodo.