from small-pox; in the other we have a picked body of 220,000 men, who, on the evidence of the medical authorities, are as well protected as they know how to make them, and among whom, therefore, small-pox should be almost or quite absent, and small-pox deaths quite unknown. Let us see, then, what has happened in these two cases.
Perhaps the most remarkable and the most complete body of statistical evidence presented to the Commission was that of Mr. Thomas Biggs, a sanitary engineer and a town councillor of Leicester. It consists of fifty-one tables exhibiting the condition of the population in relation to health and disease from almost every conceivable point of view. The subject is further illustrated by sixteen diagrams, many of them in colours, calculated to exhibit to the eye in the most clear and simple manner the relations of vaccination and sanitation to small-pox and to the general health of the people, and especially of the children, in whose behalf it is always alleged vaccination is enforced. From this wealth of material I can give only two diagrams exhibiting the main facts of the case, as shown by Mr. Biggs' statistics in the Fourth Report of the Royal Commission, all obtained from official sources.
The first diagram (No. VIII.) shows in the upper part, by a dotted line, the total vaccinations, public and private, since 1850.[1] The middle line shows the mortality per million living from the chief zymotic diseases—fevers, measles, hooping-cough, and diphtheria—while the lower line gives the small-pox mortality. We notice here a high mortality from zymotics and from small-pox epidemics, during the whole period of nearly complete vaccination from 1854 to 1870. Then commenced the movement against vaccination, owing to its proved uselessness in the great epidemic when Leicester had a very much higher
- ↑ From 1850 to 1873 the private vaccinations have been estimated according to their proportion of the whole since they have been officially recorded.
