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18
Parish of Saint George the Martyr, Southwark.
Since the paragraph referring to Vaccination was written, I am happy to say ???
Mr. Taylor's motion has been thrown out; but I should like to be allowed to quote ???
statistics given by Sir C. Dilke in the House of Commons on that occasion.
He says, "It had been contended that the decline of small-pox had been due to ???
proved sanitary conditions. But this was disproved by a comparison between the period from
1847 to 1853, when vaccination was not compulsory, and the period since 1861, during
which vaccination had been enforced. The reduction in cases of small-pox was from 100
to 51 among people of all ages; but it was only from 100 to 20 in the case of children
under five years of age. The corresponding reduction in the case of all other diseases was
from 100 to 93 in grown people to from 100 to 94 in children under five years old. These
figures, he thought, proved that the great decline in small-pox had not been due to
improved sanitary conditions. He believed it was a mistake to suppose that vaccination
had been no protection to nurses in small-pox hospitals, but that many of them would
have died if they had not been vaccinated. The case of the Post Office was very
interesting. There were 10,504 persons employed in the Postal Service in London. All
of them were required to be vaccinated on entering the service, unless the operation had
been performed within seven years previously. In the ten years, 1870-80, there had not
been a single case of death from small-pox; and although there had been an epidemic
during the period mentioned, there had been only ten slight cases of small-pox amongst
all the servants of the Post Office. In the Telegraph Department the numbers were not
quite so good, for there had been twelve cases in a staff averaging 1500 men. Assuming
that these figures were correct, and that 96 per cent of the population of the metropolis were
vaccinated and 4 unvaccinated, they might draw an interesting inference from the figures of
the last great epidemic. In the whole of the hospitals of the Metropolitan Asylums Board on
that occasion, there had been 1358 deaths, of which not 4 but 40 per cent. were among
persons altogether unvaccinated. In the period since the epidemic there had been 679 deaths,
and in 453 cases the persons were unvaccinated, while in only 226 were they vaccinated.
So that out of 3,360,000 persons vaccinated in London only 226 died, while out of 140,000
unvaccinated 453 died. As to the diseases alleged to have been caused by vaccination,
it was distinctly shown there was a decrease in the mortality from erysipelas, and Mr.
Hutchinson had clearly shown in regard to one particular disease that the risk of
communication was so extremely small that it need not stand in the way of compulsory
vaccination.
THOS. H. WATERWORTH, M.D.