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145
Mainly, however, Dr. Buchanan limits the scope of his
further enquiry on the subject to the mortality from small-pox
among children under the age of ten years, for the sufficient
reason that the limit embraces the period within which vaccination
has been efficiently compulsory.
The population of London under ten was 916,784, on Census
night, 1881, of whom, in round numbers, 55,000 were unvaccinated
and 861,000 were vaccinated. In 1881 some 782 small-pox
deaths occurred among the 55,000 unvaccinated, as against 125
among the vaccinated. "Upon equal numbers of the two
classes, therefore, the mortality from small-pox among the unvaccinated
was about a hundredfold the mortality from smallpox
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 they can be reduced, but we should
be confronted with an additional 12,000 and more deaths from
small-pox, 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.''†
*''The power of a thorough vaccination to protect against death from
small-pox "(it is stated) "is at least ten times greater than the power of much
that passes under the name of vaccination."
† 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, "during the ten years last past
Germany has not only experienced smaller death rates by small-pox than ever
before, but even has 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."