spect of vaccination. Again we stand amazed at a statement so contrary to the fact. But the Commissioners must of course have believed it to be true, or they would not put it in their Final Report, upon which legislation may be founded affecting the liberties and the lives of their fellow countrymen.
I submit to my readers with confidence that this statement, so directly opposed to the clearest and simplest facts and to the evidence of official witnesses, proves the incapacity of the Commissioners for the important inquiry they have undertaken. By their treatment of this part of the subject they exhibit themselves as either ignorant or careless, in either case as thoroughly incompetent.
The next passage that calls for special notice here is par. 342, where they say, " We find that particular classes within the community, amongst whom revaccination has prevailed to an exceptional degree, have exhibited a position of quite exceptional advantage in relation to small-pox, although these classes have in many cases been subject to exceptional risk of contagion." It seems almost incredible that such a statement as this could be made as a conclusion from the official evidence before the Commissioners, and it can only be explained by the fact that they never made the simplest and most obvious comparisons, and that they laid more stress on bad statistics than on good ones. They trust, for example, to the cases of nurses in hospitals, [1] as to which there are absolutely no
- ↑ As regards the case of the nurses in small-pox hospitals, about which so much has been said, I brought before the Commission some evidence from a medical work, which sufficiently disposes of this part of the question. In Buck's Treatise on Hygiene and the Public Health, Vol. II., we find an article by Drs. Hamilton and Emmett on "Small-pox and other Contagious Diseases," and on page 321 thereof we read:
"It is a fact fully appreciated by medical men, that persons constantly exposed to small-pox very rarely contract the disease. In the case of phyicians, health-inspectors, nurses, sisters of charity, hospital orderlies, and some others, this is the rule; and of over 100 persons who have been to my know-
