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instanced, the refusal of the House of Commons by a majority
of 286 to 16 to approve a resolution condemnatory of the
Compulsory clauses of the Vaccination Acts.
The evidence which has been accumulated in the small pox.
hospitals, in the public services, and in the death registers,
has placed the value of vaccination beyond a doubt in every
reasonable mind.
It may, however, be well to note the evidence on this
subject which was forthcoming in 1882, derived from the
statistics of the previous year, and we cannot do better than
extract from the report of Dr. Buchanan, the Medical Officer
to the Local Government Board the following paragraph:—
"The population of London under 10 was 916,784 on
census night, 1881. It divides, to speak in round numbers,
into about 55,000 unvaccinated and 861,000 vaccinated. In
1881, the small pox deaths of London among children under
ten, turn out to have been: (a) 782 deaths among the
55,000 who had not been vaccinated; (b) 125 deaths among
the 861,000 who had been vaccinated. Upon equal numbers
of the two classes, therefore, the mortality from small pox
among the unvaccinated was about a hundredfold the
mortality from small pox among the vacoinated. This degree
of protection was given to children under 10 by the average
current vaccination of London. If the London children
under 10 who were unvaccinated had had the protection
which the current vaccination gives, not 782 of them, but at
the outside nine, would have died of small pox during the
year. If the 861,000 vaccinated children had died at the
rate the 55,000 unvaccinated, we should not now be
considering 125 small pox deaths, and how they can be
reduced, but we should be confronted with an additional
12,000 and more deaths from small pox, occurring during the
year in the London population under ten years of age."
The accompanying tables for which I am indebted to tbe
Vaccination Officers, Messrs. Richards and Webb show the
results obtained by proceedings under the Vaccination Acts
in St. Pancras. They show that 7961 children were born during
the twelve months, June, 1881 to June, 1882, that 6795 was
successfully vaccinated, 10 were reported as insusceptible to
vaccination, 3 had small pox, 592 died unvaccinated, in
102 cases the vaccination was postponed by medical certificate,
88 children were removed to districts known to the Vaccination
Officer, 424 were removed to places unknown, and
there were 2 outstanding.