318 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Mortality from Smallpox in Rhode Island before and after General Gratui- 

 tous Vaccination and Compulsory Vaccination of School Children. 



AFTER. 



FrrE-TEAR 



Periods. 



1878-'82... 

 1883-'87... 

 1888-'92... 



Popula- 

 tion. 



276,531 

 304,284 

 345,506 



Mortality 



from 

 smallpox. 



7 

 3 

 4 



Or a proportion to population of 

 5 deaths after to 100 before. 



Deaths from Smallpox in Massachusetts, by Decades. 



Previously to 1872 there had been an almost universal neglect of vaccination, and the 

 idea of compulsory vaccination had not come into people's minds. The great epidemic of 

 1872, which swept around the world and destroyed thousands of lives, had the effect of 

 rousing people to the value and practice of vaccination. Still, the factory towns, which 

 were ever receiving fresh relays of the unvaccinated from Canada especially the paper- 

 mill towns, with rags from all over the world would every now and again have an out- 

 break. At last stringent laws were passed at the instigation of the Board of Health for the 

 vaccination of school children, and self interest accomplished the work in factories with 

 such obvious good results that now a stringent State law aids in producing the result shown 

 in the smallest of the three lines. 



There is no need to recite how the States whose situation ex- 

 poses them to cholera and yellow fever have, through their boards, 

 provided themselves with all the means of enforcing necessary 

 quarantine, and with the best disinfecting apparatus known to 

 science, the mere possession of which has put old-fashioned panics 

 to flight. Alas for Georgia! She stands forth a dismal foil to 

 the above, and a dark object lesson. When yellow fever smote 

 her second commercial town in 1893, her former State Board had 

 been abolished and there was no organized authority. The 

 Brunswick epidemic ought to silence the rivalries among doctors 



