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per 1,000 of deaths borne by the early years of life, and a steady
proportionate increase in the death borne by adults. This diminution
continued as vaccination became more and more efficiently performed,
and ceased again with the neglect of vaccination.
More remarkable still is the fact that the proportion of adults
deaths in the period 1870-4 (including the years of the pandemic), was
greatest, and the proportion of infant deaths less, than at any previous
period included in the diagram.
The chart (Diagram 7) in reality shows nothing more than that
there was during the years 1870-1 an enormous increass in the total
deaths from Small Pox; it gives no indication of the fact that the
stress of the disease did not, as formerly, fall chiefly upon the children,
of whom a considerable portion had been vaccinated, but that it fell on
adults, most of whom were either unmeditated or had outlived the immunity
which had been conferred by vaccination in infancy.
* * * * * *
The foregoing statement and the facts and figures which I have
laid before you show with great clearness that both in small and large
communities, in Hospitals and out of them, those who are protected by
vaccination not only resist infection from Small Pox more easily, but
suffer less severely when attacked, and more often recover than those
who neglect this means of defence which is offered freely to all
It has incidentally been shown that the so-called risks of vaccination
are infinitesimally small, and that vaccination and re-vaccination
(about the 10th and 20th years of life) should be universally practised if
the nation is to be effectively protected.
I have taken all the above evidence, not from foreign lands and
from those who live under conditions different from our own, but from
the every day life of our own country and from the experience of those
who are in charge of our own Hospitals.
I now wish to make a few observations as to the relative
frequency of Small Pox in some European countries, and the influence
of Vaccination thereon:—
General Observations as to the Relative Frequency of
Small Pox in some European Countries.
The following information may be useful to those Councillors
who have not had an opportunity elsewhere of studying the comparative
mortality from Small Pox, and the causes that influence the same.
In countries where there is much vaccination and re-vaccination,
relatively to the population there is little Small Pox. In Prussia, both