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146
The Vestry added that they had brought the subject under the
notice of the Local Government Board, and suggested that at the
first convenient opportunity a Bill should be introduced into
Parliament for transferring the administration of the laws relating
to Vaccination, so far at least as the Metropolis is concerned, from
the Poor Law Guardians to the various Local Sanitary Authorities;
they requested your Vestry, if able to concur in the views above
set out, to make similar representations to the Government.
The communication was referred to the Works, Sanitary, and
General Purposes Committee for consideration, and ultimately the
St. James' Vestry was informed that your Vestry agreed as to the
desirability of dissociating Public Vaccination from Poor Law
Administration, and concurred in the recommendation that Public
Vaccinators and Vaccination Officers should be appointed by the
Local Sanitary Authority; but being of opinion that the general
control and administration of the Vaccination Laws in the
Metropolis should be vested in a Central Board, elected by and
representing the Vestries and District Boards—a Board which
should be the Hospital Authority also—and there being as yet no
such Board in existence, your Vestry had come to the conclusion
that no useful action in the matter could be taken at the present
time.
With regard to the protection against small-pox afforded by
vaccination—differing in degree as this does according as the
vaccination is more or less "successful"— it should be unnecessary
to say anything in these days; but the perverse pertinacity with
which a certain number of misguided persons decry this most
beneficent of medical discoveries shows no sign of abatement, and
as their teaching is well calculated to prejudice the general public
against the wise compulsion enforced by Parliament, I do not
hesitate to refer again to the pregnant facts in regard to the
efficacy of vaccination as a protection against small-pox submitted
to the Local Government Board by their Medical Officer, Dr..
Buchanan, in his report for 1881. Dr. Buchanan, first of all,
refers to the relative mortality from small-pox in the vaccinated,
and in the unvaccinated, inhabitants of London, which formed the