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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 daring the year in the London population
under 10 years of age."
This " great saving of children from death by small-pox
can only have been due to vaccination, and largely to the
operation of vaccination law."
It must be remembered, moreover, that the mortality of smallpox
in vaccinated children, small though it be, is unduly high, for
the reason, doubtless, that so much of the vaccination which passes
current is imperfect, there still being many medical men who
systematically evade the spirit of the law, and disregard the
teachings of experience, as summed up in the instructions issued
by the Board for the guidance of public vaccinators A prime
condition of vaccination, "successful" from the official standpoint,
is the production of four typical vesicles; but we are told that
there is a "form of private vaccination that offers itself in competition
with public vaccination, and which parades its inefficency
as a reason for its acceptance by ignorant people. Its professors
say to young mothers,' Do you come to me and I won't hurt your
baby; I'll make only one place on its arm, not four, as those
public vaccinators do.' ''It will excite little surprise therefore,
that, whereas the vaccination is done in almost equal proportions
by public vaccinators and private practitioners, the proportion
of deaths from small pox, among children under ten, is far
greater among the patients of private practitioners, than among
children vaccinated by the public vaccinators; and this despite
reasons, to which Dr. Buchanan refers, which might fairly
lead us to expect a quite different result, were it not for
the admittedly superior average vaccination conferred by
the official operators.
Here, then, we have a record of the "saving of 12,000
lives, by vaccination, to children under ten years of age" in the
one year, 1881, when the total mortality from small-pox did
not amount to one-third of the mortality in the epidemic of
1871. This saving is justly attributed to the operation of the