CHAP, xviii. VACCINATION A DELUSION. 259 



yet the majority of the Commissioners still pin their 

 faith on vaccination, and maintain that the cumulative 

 force of the testimony in its favor is irresistible! And 

 further, that " sanitary improvements " cannot be 

 asserted to afford " an adequate explanation of the 

 diminished mortality from small-pox." 



It will now be clear to my readers that these conclu- 

 sions, set forth as the final outcome of their seven years' 

 labors, are the very reverse of the true ones; and that 

 they have arrived at them by neglecting altogether to 

 consider, in their mutual relations, " those great masses 

 of national statistics " which alone can be depended on 

 to point out true causes, but have limited themselves to 

 such facts as the alleged mortalities of the vaccinated and 

 the unvaccinated, changes of age-incidence, and other 

 matters of detail, some of which are entirely vitiated by 

 untrustworthy evidence, while others require skilled 

 statistical treatment to arrive at true results a subject 

 quite beyond the powers of untrained physicians and 

 lawyers, however eminent in their own special depart- 

 ments. 1 



Small-pox and Vaccination on the Continent. 



Before proceeding to discuss those special test-cases in 

 our own country which still more completely show the 

 impotence of vaccination, it will be well to notice a few 

 Continental States which have been, and still are, 

 quoted as affording illustrations of its benefits. 



1 As an example of the Commissioners' statistical fallacies in treat- 

 ing the subject of changed age-incidence, see Mr. Alexander Paul's 

 "A Royal Commission's Arithmetic" (King & Son, 1897), and, 

 especially, Mr. A. Millies' " Statistics of Small-pox and Vaccination" 

 in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, September, 1897. 



