19
young child with confluent small-pox in a bunyia's house in the midst of the town
of Kotree ; the child was in a pingah (a kind of swinging cradle), and in the same
cradle there were two other children who had never suffered from small-pox, nor had
ever been vaccinated. The father and mother only submitted the two unprotected,
children to the Vaccinator on my bringing the case to the notice of the Magistrate.
Again, a few days ago, my 1st Assistant brought to my notice that local Vaccinator
Ramzan had received eight annas from each of two bunyias to let off their two
children from being vaccinated, when he was vaccinating in their village of Meeranshah,
in the Mehur Talooka.
10. There were 19,027 persons vaccinated under one year old, and 39,177 above
that age. This gives 31.2 per cent. of the former and 68.7 of the latter, being 8.5
per cent. more under one year old than 1866. It is unquestionably of great import-
ance that children be vaccinated early in life ; but it seems to me that the importance
of vaccinating children under one year old has been too much advocated, and it is not
without very strong reasons and much thought on the subject that I put forward this
opinion, opposed as it is to the best authorities in England, and to the views again and
again expressed by the Heads of my Department in their annual reports on Vaccina-
tion ; but my experience has led me to the belief, which was arrived at sixty years ago
in some parts of Germany, that children under one year old are less susceptible to
small-pox and vaccination than children over that age. In Bavaria, this belief has in a
measure regulated the period of life, stipulated by law, at which vaccination must be
practised. The law in that country since 1807 (Bavaria was the first country in
which vaccination was made compulsory) compels all children to be vaccinated be-
tween the 1st of May and end of July who were born in the previous calendar year ; i. e.,
excepting such as are ill and unfit for vaccination ; there must, therefore, be a large
number vaccinated above one year old. In the "blue book" on the history and prac-
tice of vaccination, presented to both Houses of Parliament in 1857, Mr. Simon, in a
note at page XXXII., thinks that the full susceptibility to small-pox is developed
most in the second and third years of life ; and I presume that susceptibility to vac-
cination is also greatest at the same time. But I am absolutely certain that the
susceptibility to vaccination increases from birth to three years of age. When I
examine on the eighth day after vaccination the children of a village among whom
there is a number of infants under one year old, there is certain to be a considerable
proportion of them requiring re-vaccination, whereas those above one year old seldom
fail to be successful on the first vaccination. Again, the "insertion success" is very
much less among very young infants than among children of two or three years old.
Take, for instance, twenty children under one year old—say ranging from one to twelve
months, and twenty above that age—say ranging from thirteen months to three years ;
let all the conditions under which they are vaccinated be the same, as far as the condi-
tions are controllable, and the certainty is that there will not be above half as many good
vesicles on the arms of the younger lot of children as on the older, supposing all to
have three insertions in each arm. During the last five years I have examined (up to