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44
required protection at the hands of the public vaccinator,
and that 94 certificates of successful vaccination had also
been received by the Registrar from private practitioners.
Of the 61 infants remaining to be accounted for, 19 are
known tohave died before vaccination could be accomplished;
some few may be supposed to have been found too sickly or
otherwise unfitted to undergo the operation at the proper
period, whilst others may have left the neighbourhood.
Eventually, it is hoped, all the children born and still
residing in the parish will be brought under the influence
of this valuable prophylactic. To accomplish this, the new
Act must not be suffered to become, like the old one, a dead
letter. The authorities in all places, however, rather than the
public vaccinators, or private practitioners, both of whom
might be suspected of having an undue interest in promoting
vaccination, should be the parties to enforce the provisions
of the Act. It is well known that a determined resistance
on the part of the ill-informed and unreasonable has
frequently followed private attempts to force or to frighten
the public into a compliance with the measure. In any
amendment of the Act the insertion of a clause insuring the
appointment of a public prosecutor Avould be of manifest
service. Private practitioners, as a rule, desire to ensure
the protection of vaccination to the children of their own
private patients, but few such practitioners will venture to
become informers for the sake of securing the consent of
objecting parents to the performance of the operation at the
proper period. All misunderstanding and unpleasantness
in this respect might be avoided by the proceeding
suggested, and there can be conceived nothing more likely
to ensure an universal compliance with the provisions of
the Act than the appointment throughout the country of
independent public officers to perform the duty indicated.
By these means, together with an earnest effort on the
part of medical practitioners generally to overcome the
prejudices of the public, it is believed the 'stamping out,'
as it is called, of Small Pox might, with almost a certainty,
be accomplished in a very short period.