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43
INFECTIOUS DISEASES.
There were notified during the year altogether 988 cases of
infectious disease. This gives a notification rate of 6.6 per 1,000
compared with 7.3 per 1,000 last year.
SMALL POX.
For the fifth year in succession the district has remained free
from small pox. Nothing could be more satisfactory in this respect if
only one could feel assured that this long period of complete immunity
were founded upon permanent conditions of security. A glance at the
vaccination returns, however, shows that the opposite of this is the
case, and that with each year of freedom from menace an increasing
proportion of the population fails to secure the protection from small
pox attack which vaccination confers.
Referring to the variation in the proportion of conscientious
objectors in my Report for 1908, I wrote as follows:—
"In the non-small pox years, 1898-1900, conscientious objectors
rapidly increased from 2.5 per cent. to 6.2 per cent. During the small
pox years which followed 1900 the number of conscientious objectors
underwent a marked diminution. During the succeeding non-small
pox years the disappearance of the disease produced a condition of
things during which conscientious objection progressively increased."
This progressive increase has continued at an alarming rate during
the present year. For every 100 children vaccinated there are 24 6
who escape owing to the statutory declarations of their parents.
Nearly half of the surviving children remain unprotected from small
pox by vaccination. I have said, and I repeat with a full sense of the
responsibility of the utterance, that I know of no circumstance affecting
the health of Willesden so charged with menace as this unprotected
state of its population in regard to small pox. Experience has shown
—and, unfortunately, there is no reason to anticipate that it will not
again show—that disaster in the form of ravaging epidemics of small
pox sooner or later overtake those communities who neglect extensively
to protect themselves from its attack. The pity of it is that a
healthy population, such as that of Willesden, should thoughtlessly
challenge so formidable a conflict.
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