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21
district.
vaccination in preventing and modifying Small Pox, and
even the two dissentients admit a degree of usefulness in
the practice. There were a number of recommendations
made as to altering the present system, so much so as
practically to lead to the abolition of compulsion. The
Commissioners, however, consider that the steps they
recommend would lead to the more extensive vaccination
of the population by removing friction. It is
recommended, besides the omission of a second prosecution
for the same non-vaccinated child, that any
parent who has an honest and bona fide objection to
the practice should, by making a statutory declaration,
be free from any consequence for not having his child
vaccinated. Unless the process of making a statutory
declaration were contrived to be at least as troublesome
as procuring the vaccination of the child, it would
be the course selected by the great mass of people,
who have no strong views on the matter and only want
to do what is the easiest to themselves. Some of the
other recommendations seem to us more likely to do what
the Commissioners desired, that is to increase the amount
of vaccination. They are principally the provision of
calf lymph, and the adoption of a modification of the
system in force in Scotland, where the public vaccinator
attends at the house of the child to be vaccinated, and
not at a public station, and the extension of the age when
a child must be vaccinated to six months. There is also
a recommendation, which apparently would result in the
abolition of the public vaccinator, by payment out of
the public funds of private practitioners for vaccination
and rendering their work liable to inspection. This
appears to us to be not likely to do good, though
the suggested alteration of the form of certificate
so that it should show how many insertions had "taken"
would be an improvement. It is to be regretted that
the report does not make any recommendation as to the