Page:Vaccination a delusion.djvu/92

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VACCINATION A DELUSION
CHAP. VI

Diagram III. shows that similar phenomena occurred in England and Wales as a whole, the other zymotics and the total deaths obeying the same laws of increase and decrease as small-pox. Comparison with diagram I. shows the much greater severity of small-pox epidemics in London, illustrating the fact, which all the statistical evidence of all countries strikingly enforces, that small-pox mortality is, other things being equal, a function of density of population, while it pays no regard whatever to vaccination. This is further shown by the short, thick dotted line which exhibits the total number of vaccinations since 1872, when private as well as public vaccinations were first officially recorded, and which proves that the continuous decrease of vaccination since 1882 has been accompanied by a decided decrease, instead of an increase, in small-pox mortality.

Diagram IV. shows the statistics of mortality in Ireland and Scotland from small-pox and certain chosen zymotics, from the tables which were laid before the Commission by the official advocates of vaccination. These show two striking facts, which the Commissioners failed to notice in their Final Report. First, the smaller amount of small-pox mortality in Ireland than in Scotland, the latter being alleged to be well vaccinated, the former imperfectly so; and, secondly, the similar difference in the two chosen diseases and the general parallelism of the two. Here again we see clearly the influence of density of population, Scotland having a very much larger proportion of its inhabitants living in large manufacturing towns.

The next three diagrams, V., VI., and VII., show small-pox mortality in Sweden, Prussia, and Bavaria — countries which at previous enquiries were adduced as striking examples of the value of vaccination. They all show phenomena of the same character as our own country, but far worse as regards epidemics in the capitals; that of Stockholm, in 1874, causing a death-rate more than 50 per cent, higher than