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throughout all the world, and under all possible
conditions, is that no sanitary measure is of such
inestimable and proved value against small pox
as vaccination and re-vaccination, and a further
proof of this is always found in the fact that
when small pox appears in a community the
antagonists of vaccination either run away from
the neighbourhood or else run with all speed to
obtain that vaccination which they have hitherto
shrieked themselves hoarse in decrying. If I had
my way I would compel the anti-vaccinators and
the Anti-Vaccination League to nurse and attend
on the small pox patients, and then they would
have an object lesson which even the most "convinced"
and "conscientious" of them could not
fail to be convinced by. The certainty is, how
ever, that if such an opportunity occurred, all the
anti-vaccinators would so quickly become patients
or corpses that the nursing and treatment of the
patients would, as at present, have to be undertaken
by doctors and nurses who had undergone
vaccination, and who, by that vaccination, would
then do, as they do now, walk unscathed through
all the terrible scenes of a small pox hospital."
As showing the tendency for the spread of
the exemption folly in certain districts of late
years, the case of Blackburn may be cited. This
is a town where last year there were 2,948 births,
with 234 deaths before vaccination, thus leaving
2,714 eligible for vaccination, and the returns
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