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having been found." In the Metropolis as a whole, the loss is
somewhat greater than in Kensington. In England and
Wales, as we learn from the annual report of Dr. George
Buchanan, Medical Officer to the Local Government Board,
''the returns give evidence of about 95 per cent. of the
infantile population having received the benefits of vaccination
within the first year" after their birth; it follows that the
infant population is made up of "19 vaccinated to each
unvaccinated individual.'
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; but the pertinacity with which some
misguided persons still decry the most beneficent of medical
discoveries shows no sign of abatement, and as their teaching is
calculated to prejudice the general public against the wise compulsion
authorized by law, I do not hesitate to refer again to
the pregnant proofs of the efficacy of vaccination, as a protection
against small-pox, contained in the annual report for 1881 of
the Medical Officer to the Local Government Board, lately republished.
Dr. Buchanan refers, in the first place, to the
relative mortality from small-pox in the vaccinated, and in the
unvaccinated, inhabitants of London, which formed the subject
of a Memorandum which he submitted to the Board in June,
1881, and from which I extract the following Table:—