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therefore, the mortality from small-pox among the unvaccinated
was about a hundredfold the mortality from small-pox among the
vaccinated. This degree of protection was given to children under
ten, by the average current vaccination of London." *
" If the London children under ten 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 of
the 55,000 unvaccinated, we should not now be considering 125
small-pox deaths, and how can they be reduced, but we should be
confronted with an additional 12,000 and more deaths from smallpox,
occuring 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, as we are
informed, medical men who systematically evade the spirit of the
law, and disregard the teachings of experience, as summed up in
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
* " The power of a thorough vaccination to protect against death from smallpox
" (it is stated) "'is at least ten times greater than the power of much that
passes under the name of vaccination."
f Primary vaccination only is compulsory in England. In Germany, revaccination,
ever since 1874, has been compulsory during the "school period"
of children's lives ; the result being that, " duriug the ten years last past
Germany has not only experienced smaller death rates by small-pox than
ever before, but even lias passed from a position of inferiority to England
into a position of distinct superiority as regards its immunity from the
disease. ... In the large towns (since 1874). small-pox death rates have
become actually trivial."