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* Calculated from pp. 112-114 of the Registrar-General's Supplement to
the Forty-Fifth Annual Report.
It will be seen that whilst the proportion of deaths from Small
Pox contributed by infants has so greatly diminished, there is no
corresponding diminution in the other infantile disorders mentioned,
and in two the proportion is actually greater.
It will therefore seem that there must be some other agency
than Sanitation at work to account for the diminution in the infantile
death rate from Small Pox. It has been suggested that Quarantine
and the Isolation of all those who have been exposed to the infection
of Small Pox would suffice to stay a local outbreak; but in any large
community such means are impossible and hopelessly inadequate, and
must bleak down as they did under the very limited strain of the local
outbreak at Leicester in 1890; and even if they were adequate, it is
difficult to see why the protection should be exerted especially on the
children and not on the adults, since Small Pox was, and now is, amongst
the unvaccinated, a disease falling with special severity on the earlier
years of life. There must be some other factor at work. I will endeavour
to lay before you some of the evidence there is to show that this factor
is Vaccination. You will hear all kinds of bad things said about
Vaccination, of which I will tell you a few,
1st, it is said that, as Vaccinia and Small Pox are totally distinct
diseases, it is impossible for Vaccination to protect against Small Pox.
2nd, that Vaccinia is nothing but Small Pox artificially transmitted
through the cow, and that statistics show that not only does
Vaccination not protect against Small Pox, but that it actual y causes
the disease