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small-pox deaths, and how can they be reduced, but we should be
confronted with an additional 12,000 and more deaths from smallpox,
occurring during the year in the London population under
ten 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 from
small-pox 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
inefficiency 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 is not surprising, therefore,
to learn that although the vaccination is done in almost equal
proportions by public vaccinators and by 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 quality of vaccination as performed by
public vaccinators.
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 of life is, I believe, justly attributed to the operation of the