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Annual Report of the Medical Officer of Health—1872—3. 7
ended they were 231, thus there was a decrease to the extent of 222. This is the class that
is most amenable to sanitary measures.
The destruction of houses which were utterly unfit for habitation, and the abolition of
many courts, and alleys, and nooks where the people had made their homes, have been
carried on to a considerable extent in our District. In this respect there remains much yet
to be done: there is great need for a new Building Act, or, a more rigorous watchfulness
over the old Act.
Small-pox instead of destroying 120 as in the year 1871—2, destroyed but 18. These
18 deaths were voluntarily brought about either by the neglect, the ignorance, the prejudice
of the sufferer, or others. The first Report issued by the Managers of the Metropolitan
Asylum Districts, 1870-1-2, concerning this disease is one of great importance and interestOne
thing is plain from reading it, that Vaccination in spite of legislation and all the means
that have been put into operation, has been fearfully neglected, and what is as bad or almost
worse, as it has led to a false security, is, that it has been most imperfectly perfnrmed
The value of Vaccination, and the consequent safety of the patient, depends upon the manner
in which it has been done. The percentage of deaths among the unvaccinated cases
was 47½, whilst the percentage of those who had been carefully and thoroughly vaccinated
was but 11. Nothing can more clearly show the benefit which accrues from this operation.
In a total of 420 well vaccinated cases under 15 years of age, the death rate was 0.47, less
than half a person in the 100.
But let us consider what expense this dreadful disease caused, for that may tell with
some, more than suffering and death. The Report tells us that there were 14,400 cases
treated in the Hospital, and that of these 2,700 died, whilst 11,700 remained under treatment.
The duration of the stay of these in the Hospital had they been efficiently vaccinated,
would have been about 245,400 days, but the actual number of days they did spend there,
was 378,700, or 133,300 days more than the efficiently vaccinated would have done. The
average cost for each patient was 1s. 4¾. per day, consequently no less a sum than £9,300
was spent for their maintenance alone; as the salaries and the maintenance of the officers,
nurses, and others were not included. Out of 2,528 cases treated at the Homerton Small
Pox Hospital 1,006 had no vaccination marks, and 37 died in the 100. In another Hospital
(provincial) out of 972 cases, 623 had been vaccinated more or less perfectly; whilst
266 had never been vaccinated at all; of the former 8 died in the 100, of the latter 31. Of
those who had three or more good marks, none died. " They who can remember," says
Dr. J. A. Symonds, " as I can, the time when the nation was just realising the benefit of
Jenner's transcendent discovery in the new sense of security to life, and, I may add without
any hyperbole, in the renaissance of the beauty of men and women; those who can remember
that time, and the infinite labour expended in reasoning and preaching, and pleading,
and persuading a doltish and prejudiced people to profit by the beneficent light which
through a genius all but divine, had been flashed upon them; those who can remember the
hard emergence of human life and human beauty from that period of desolation and disfigurement,
are shocked by the pernicious levity with which doubts are now thrown upon
the value of vaccination, the most precious boon that any one man ever conferred on his