Morning journal and courier., 1883-07-06
Friday, July 6. 1883.
A USERUL DIsCUSsION.

!
 Those opposed to vaccination are stronger
 and better organized in England than in any
 other country, and they have made good
 deal of noise against the practice. They have
 representatives in Parliament, and one of I these, Mir. P. A. Taylor, the member for
 Leicester, introduced the following resolu- ton : ''That in the opinion of this house it l is inexpedient and unjust to enforce vaccin- l ation und penalties upon those who regard it as unadvisable and dangerous" and he supported the resolution in 8 very bitter speech.
 Mir. Taylor's resolution and speech gave rise to 8 thorough discussion of the subject of vaccination, in which discussion Sir Lyon
 Playfair took part, and he gave g masterly
 array of facts which ought to set the ques- ton at rest, and which would if there were
 no prejudice. He pointed out that in forty
 years from the introduction of vaccination
 into England the death rate from smallpox
 had fallen from :, 1000 per million to 600 per
 million. In 1841 the government began to
 give gratuitous vaccination, and in thirteen
 years the average mortality had come down
 to 305 per million. Then vaccination was
 made compulsory, and in 1871 the mortality
 had fallen again to 223 per million. In the
 years 1871-73, when true compulsion was in
 force, only 156 per million was the mortality
 Tate. Scotland and Ireland show a decline in
 the average mortality, only to a greater degree
 for in Scotland. in 1882, Che rate was only
 per million. The speaker said the disease
 was stamped out in Scotland. Furthermore,
 ha de1 hha &IsoA %ha
 that sanitation had chiefly diminished small pox was fallacious, because between the peri cd of gratuitous vaccination (1840-1s53) and the period of compulsory vaccination (1871- 1883, the mortality from smallpox among children under five years of age decreased by 80 per cent, while the mortality among such children from all other diseases decreased by only per cent
 Dr. Playfair showed also how the smallpox epidemic in England in 1871, 1877 and 1881 demonstrated the value of vaccination In the epidemic of 1871 the registrar generals statistics show that there was for the whole ! kingdom only one death proportionatsly | among the vaccinated to every forty four l among the unvaccinated. In London | the mortality among the vaccinated | was 90 per million, and among the | 1850 per million. In America, Dr. Playfair also said, the deaths of the un- were 50 per cent. in Boston, GA | per cent. in Philadelphia, 54 per cent, in Montreal, and the mortality among the vac cinated was from 15 to F per cent. In 1871, | of the 3,0o0,o00 children in sthe kingdom | under five years of age, the number of the I was thirty or forty times greater | than that of the unvaccinated, but the deaths | of the latter class were from one hundred | and twenty te- one hundred and sixty times as ] large as among the vaecinated-
 How the remarkable facts presented by 1 Dr. Playfair looked to the House of Com mons may be judged by the vote taken at | the end of the discussion. Three hundred | and two members voted and the anti-vacci- | nation party had only sixteen votes. They l can, however, console themselves with the | thought that the discussion provoked by | them has done much good in bringing the l facts to the attention of the people of Eng land