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PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 1037 
arguments with which he supports his opinion, to accept his 
conclusion. If his view approaches the truth, then we must be 
living in a Fool’s Paradise, and falling very far short of the pro- 
tection which ought to be afforded to the public against so 
dreadful a disease. Germany, Belgium, Sweden, and some of the 
States in North America, are said to be twenty years ahead of 
England in respect of the inspection of meat ; so when our legis- 
lators once more turn their attention to this question, ample and 
practical experience is available for guidance in these countries. 
My remarks would be incomplete without some reference to 
small-pox, one of the most infectious of all communicable diseases. 
Nothing seems to me to indicate more strikingly that we lag, in 
public heaith matters, behind the age than the attitude which 
several colonies maintain towards compulsory vaccination. The 
fact that the large populations of New South Wales and Queens- 
land are practically unvaccinated communities is a matter for 
surprise and misgiving. The protective power of vaccination is 
now as well-established as any fact in any of the most rigid of 
the inductive sciences. Barring the dread that disease may be 
conveyed by the use of humanised vaccine lymph, and as the 
ground for such fear is now extinguished by the substitution of 
sterilised calf lymph, no objection remains to the compulsory 
enforcement of vaccination. Speaking as one who has seen the 
ravages of small-pox among the unvaccinated, no man—legislator 
or private citizen—if he has ever witnessed the terrible spectacle 
which so many of these persons under small-pox present, can be 
anything but a supporter of compulsory vaccination. Having 
suffered an attack of small-pox at the age of 20, I took special 
advantage of my immunity, as a student, to see all that could be 
seen and learned respecting this disease in a large city hospital, 
from which it was then never absent. No ordinary disease presents 
such shocking features ; and, certainly, legislators do not realise 
their weighty responsibilities to the people when they continue in- 
different to the disastrous contingency of an invasion of this very 
horrible disease. Quarantine is, and has been, serviceable ; but 
it is no unusual thing to hear the remark made, even by chairmen 
of Public Health Boards, that we are bound, some day, to witness 
its appearance in Australia. When it does come, and gets beyond 
quarantine control, then pity will be felt for the unvaccinated. 
A parade of statistics seems to me to be unnecessary in pressing 
the urgency for effective vaccination. I may be allowed to 
summarise the position which it holds to-day in the following 
manner :—- 
(a.) Indisputable evidence is in hand to show that the mor- 
tality from small-pox, where vaccination has been 
practised, has been reduced 72 per cent. 
