The Press., 1884-07-03
NEW STATISTICS OF VACCINATION.

Our readers are well acquainted, says the Pacific Medical Journal, with the her culean struggle of the British anti-vaccina- tionists, now continued for ten or fifteen years, directed against the compulsory vac- cinat1on law. From year to year the move ment has been gaining strength. Socie- ties have been organized in all quarters, periodicals established, funds largely con tributed, and .smany of the leading men and women of England, including not a few of the nobility, enlisted in the enter prise. Judging from the clamor that filled the air, the heart and head of the kingdom were gained over to the humane enter prise. At last the long travail of the moun- tain eliminated in the introduction of the repeating bill in the house of commons. The hour of promise was come, and tri- umphant majority of the representatives of the people of Great Britain would re- ward the labers and verify the sanguine predictions of the anti-vaccinationists The vote was taken of 3O2 members pres
 "Ridiculus mus p It is probable that majority of the sixteen were favorable to vaccination, but, like John Bright, hostile to the compulsory clause so that vote on the merits of vaccination simply would have found not more than eight of the members opposed to it.
 The advocates of vaccination were pre- pared for the contest. Sir Lyon Playfair led the way by showing that whereas in the last century the annual deaths from small pox in England and Wales averaged {, ,O0O in the million of population, in the forty years of the voluntary vaccination that followed, the average was 600 in the million that in the period from 1841 to 1854, when gratuitous vaccination was in troduced, the average fell 10 3O5 that un- der the first obligatory act from 1854 to 1871 there was further reduction to 2O3 and that from 1871 to 1883, the time dur ing which the present compulsory law had been in operation, the average had been reduced to 156 in the million.
 Dr. Cameron said that in the last fifty years, out of 27,215 ascertained cases of vaccination and characterization, in $500 cases of non-vaccination the deaths were 3, 400, or 40 per cent, while of the remain ing IS, 515 cases of vaccination the deaths were only at the rate of F per cent. @& Sir Charles Dilke, secretary of the local gov ernment board, also came to the support of vaccination with some interesting fig ures. There were 10, ,5Q4 persons, he said, employed in the London postal service, all Ol WuoIn were 1equIfeu GO Uo' VaccAndIeO on entering the service, unless the opera tion had been performed within seven years previously. In the ten years from 1870 to 1880 there had not been single case of death from small pox ill this force, and al- though there had been an epidemic dur l ing that period there had been only ten cases among the men, and they very slight.
 Another point, which, we presume, was not overlooked in the discussion, though no mention is made of 1t in the account be- fore us, relates to the deformity among those who survived. In his sketch of Ol- iver Goldsmith, Thackery mentions that the disease ''fell afoul of the poor little child face when he was eight years old and left him scared and disigured for life.' At the same time, he adds, the ''small pox scourged all Europe and rav- aged the roses off the checks of half the world" Persons now living can recollect the pock- marked faces which abounded among foreigners in the first quarter of the present century, particularly among immigrants from n! 4Ireland. At the present date pock- marked face is comparatively rare