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(N.B.—Of the 329 persons who died of Small Pox—vide
page 13—48 had been vaccinated, 63 imperfectly so, 45 were
not stated, and 173 had not been vaccinated at all, these including
97 unvaccinated children under the age of 12 years.)
The very large proportion of imperfectly vaccinated and unvaccinated
cases in the death returns from Small Pox suggest
the urgent necessity for early legislation as regards compulsory
re-vaccination. The preventive efficacy of re-vaccination is
placed beyond all doubt, and the various channels through
which the infection of Small Pox is convoyed are so numerous,
that a Sanitary Authority is almost powerless in checking the
spread of the disease in the absence of a compulsory law
securing during an epidemic tho re-vaccination of all those insufficiently
protected by primary vaccination.
Foremost among the causes rendering the prevention of the
spread of infection so difficult are ignorance and carelessness on
the part of parents and others, and the wilful concealment of the
existence of disease. In the better classes of Society it is the
exception to find a second case of Small Pox occurring in a
family; and this is not altogether because any superior method
of disinfection is adopted, or that the home may offer greater
advantages as regards the isolation of the patient, but is due to
the fact that the upper classes more readily avail themselves of
re-vaccination, and the family medical attendant, knowing he
will have a fee for each case, promptly re-vaccinates all those in
the household who may require it.
But with the poorer classes—and I refer especially to those
cases in which houses are lot in apartments—the obstacles in
the way of the sanitary authority are very great. Prevailing
amongst the uneducated is a popular belief that it one does not
fear any particular contagion, he will never take it, and those of
this belief are in the habit of visiting such cases with impunity,
to the imminent risk of the lives of those with whom they are
in frequent communication.
Another equally absurd idea with them is that attending a
mild attack of any infectious disease, there is little or no danger
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