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giving a mortality of 7.9 per cent.; whilst of the unvaccinated cases, 124
died, being a mortality of 38.5 per cent. The general mortality, for the year
1870, in the Small-Pox Hospital, has been 15.4 per cent. The mortality
amongst the unvaccinated children, under the age of 10 years, was as high
as 42 per cent.
The Medical Officers of the Small-Pox Hospital further state, that "not
a single fact has occurred within our experience during the past year to
shake our confidence in vaccination, when properly performed;" but, they
add, that "vaccination is an operation of considerable delicacy, and requires
much care, in order to secure the advantageous results it is capable of imparting.
The failures of vaccination to prevent fatal small-pox, which have
occurred, are almost all of them due to the careless and imperfect manner in
which it has been practised."
The Medical Officers conclude their very valuable annual report in the
following words: "We believe that re-vaccination, extensively practised,
and with the same precautions to ensure efficiency as ought to he observed in
primary vaccinations, will prove to be the most ccrtain mode that could be
adopted of checking the present epidemic of small-pox"
The present epidemic, as stated in my last report, did not commence in
this district until August last, a period of about nine months after the date
of the commencement of the epidemic, as is shown in the number of admissions
into the Small-Pox Hospital. As the disease does not at present show
any signs of abatement, it is impossible to form an accurate judgment as to
the length of time the epidemic may continue. It therefore follows that our
efforts to check the spreading of the disease must not be relaxed. But in a
large and closely-confined population, such as is found to exist in this district,
the difficulties in adopting efficient measures to prevent the communication
of the disease from one person to another are such as to be
almost insurmountable. Thus we found, on a house-to-house inspection, a
case of small-pox in a room occupied by several persons engaged in making
coats and other woollen garments; in other rooms cases of small-pox have
been found, where persons were engaged in sack-making; and in one case,
the Inspector saw the sacks lying on the bed, in which a child was lying
with small-pox in a confluent form. Again, the bodies of persons who have
died of small-pox in a public institution, have been removed to rooms occupied
as sleeping rooms by the relatives of the deceased. From this last mentioned
cause small-pox appears to have extended to several of the adjacent
houses. Further, we have no power to compel the removal of patients
to a hospital, not even in the case where parents neglect their young children,
by leaving them in a room accessible to all the other inmates of a house,
under the charge of an elder child. A case of this kind occurred in the
attic room of No. 33, Royal Mint Street, where the parents were said to get
drunk daily, and who had left two of their children suffering from small-pox in
the charge of a boy about 10 years of age. Then, again, the clothes and