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44
Under Twenty Years of Age.—There were 57 vaccinated cases of
whom one died, a frail invalid child of eleven years old, one of a
family of whom ten children had died in infancy of constitutional
disease. The mortality rate per cent. was therefore 1.7. There
were almost the same number of unvaccinated cases, namely 66.
Out of this number 22 died, yielding a mortality percentage of 33.3.
Over Twenty Years of Age.—The vaccinated cases numbered 137,
and there were nine deaths or 6.5 per centage. The unvaccinated
cases numbered only eleven, but there were four deaths or 36 3
per centage. The larger number of vaccinated cases, from 20 to 70
years of age, is of course due to the fact that by far the larger part
of the population at that age-period have, at some time or the other
in their lives, been vaccinated. Not one of these 137 vaccinated
cases had been vaccinated within 10 years.
It will be seen that the total mortality percentage of vaccinated
cases was 5.1 and that of unvaccinated cases 33.7.
There are many things to be learned from a study of this Table
by itself, and also in conjunction with the Table on sex and age
incidence. There are three broad facts which stand out with
clearness:—
(1) That small-pox among the vaccinated is now-a-days mainly a
disease of adults, because children are protected by primary vaccination
and adults are not protected by re-vaccination. (88 per cent.
of the vaccinated cases were over 15 years of age).
(2) That among the unvaccinated, small-pox is still, in great
measure, a disease of the young as it was in prevaccination days.
(73 per cent. of the unvaccinated cases were under 15 years of age).
(3) That the mortality rate among the vaccinated is at all ages
much less than among the unvaccinated and that this difference is
very striking and complete in children because of their recent
vaccination.
Those who advocate vaccination and re-vaccination as protective
in a greater or lesser degree against small-pox do so upon three