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power to limit the spread of the infection. This is
illustrated by the sequence of events at Gloucester
during the past year. In the earlier stages of the
epidemic, endeavours were made to check the disease
by the ordinary methods of sanitation, but without
effect, but as soon as strenuous efforts wore made to
secure the vaccination of the people, the plague was
stayed. It was simply a repetition of what has been
recorded on many previous occasions, references to
which abound in the Evidence before the Commission.
In any given series of towns the mortality in epidemics
has varied inversely with the extent to which the
inhabitants are protected by vaccination, the greater
the protection, the less the mortality.
In the case of individuals of the same household,
that is of persons under the same sanitary conditions,
experience has shown, time after time, that the
unvaccinated are attacked much more frequently, and
more severely, than are the vaccinated. The military,
the police, and the postal officials, all of whom are
vaccinated on entering the various services, have
escaped attack when living in the midst of infection.
The experience of the smallpox hospitals, where the
nurses are vaccinated, or re-vaccinated, before under-
be high. There might be an extensive epidemic of mild smallpox with but few
deaths, giving a low mortality, or there might be but few cases with a large
proportion of deaths, giving a high mortality. It is claimed for vaccination that
it has reduced both the fatality of the disease by mitigating attacks, and the
mortality from it by diminishing the number of attacks, as well as mitigating
the fatality.