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protection, not only against the loss of life from this most
loathsome affection, but from any liability whatever to
the disease. The real danger arises from the inefficient
manner in which vaccination is often performed. Four
vesicles on one arm, or three upon each, is the smallest
number which can be depended upon for absolute security,
and this amount of vesiculation is always afforded by the
public vaccinators, besides permanent markings or scars,
together equal to the area of a sixpence at the least, but
preferably to that of a shilling (which latter is the standard
of first class vaccination), is insisted upon by the Government
Inspectors. If this standard were universally
adopted, it is not too much to say that this form of disease
would become as extinct as the plague is in this country
at the present period.
The mortality from Whooping Cough was reduced
from 53 cases to 26. There has been an equally satisfactory
diminution in the mortality from Scarlatina, 18
deaths only having been returned against 34 in the preceding
year. There were 17 cases in which the cause of
death was given as from Fever; but 6 such cases having
been returned in the previous year. This, however,
appears to have arisen from the fact that a practitioner
in this parish frequent added "Typhoid" as a secondary
cause of death, when the real cause was from some nonzymotic
disease, by which he meant to imply that death
eventually took place from a low febrile condition, the
result of exhaustion, and not from enteric or typhoid
fever. His attention having been called to this fact,
deaths from this cause have wholly ceased to appear in
the mortality returns.
The other diseases of the zymotic class do not call for
any special notice. The zymotic death-rate for the year
was 4.3 per 1000.
Other Diseases.—The tubercular class of diseases, the
chief of which is ordinary Consumption, caused 193 deaths
during the year. These numbers do not vary considerably