260 THE WONDERFUL CENTURY. 



CHAP. XVIII. 



We will first take Sweden, which has had fairly com- 

 plete national statistics longer than any other country: 

 and we are now fortunately able to give the facts on the 

 most recent official testimony the Report furnished by 

 the Swedish Board of Health to the Royal Commission, 

 and published in the Appendix to their Sixth Report 

 (pp. 751-56). Such great authorities as Sir AVilliam 

 Gull, Dr. Seaton, and Mr. Marson, stated before the 

 Committee of Enquiry in 1871 that Sweden was one of 

 the best vaccinated countries, and that the Swedes were 

 the best vaccinators. Sir John Simon's celebrated 

 paper, which was laid before Parliament in 1857 and 

 was one of the chief supports of compulsory legislation, 

 made much of Sweden, and had a special diagram to 

 illustrate the effects of vaccination on small-pox. This 

 paper is reproduced in the First Report of the recent 

 Royal Commission (pp. 61-113), and we find the usual 

 comparison of small-pox mortality in the last and present 

 century, which is held to be conclusive as to the benefits 

 of vaccination. He says vaccination was introduced in 

 1801, and divides his diagram into two halves, differently 

 colored before and after this date. It will be observed 

 that, as in England, there was a great and sudden de- 

 crease of small-pox mortality after 1801, the date of the 

 first vaccination in Sweden, and by 1812 the whole re- 

 duction of mortality was completed. But from that 

 date for more than sixty years there was an almost con- 

 tinuous increase in frequency and severity of the epi- 

 demics. To account for this, sudden and enormous 

 decrease Sir John Simon states, in a note, and without 

 giving his authority: " About 181.0 the vaccinations 

 were amounting to nearly a quarter of the number of 



