266 THE WONDERFUL CENTURY. CHAP. xvm. 



population. The fact of 95.7 per cent, of the small-pox 

 patients having been vaccinated agrees with that of our 

 Highgate Hospital, but is even more remarkable as ap- 

 plying to the population of a whole country, and is alone 

 sufficient to condemn vaccination as useless. And as 

 there were 5070 deaths to these cases, the fatality was 

 16.5 per cent., or almost the same as that of the last cen- 

 tury; so that here again, and on a gigantic scale, the 

 theory that the disease is " mitigated " by vaccination, 

 even where not prevented, is shown to be utterly base- 

 less. Yet this case of Bavaria was chosen by a strong 

 vaccinist as affording a striking proof of the value of 

 vaccination when thoroughly carried out; and I cannot 

 find that the Commissioners took the trouble to make the 

 comparisons here given, which would at once have shown 

 them that what the case of Bavaria really proves is the 

 complete uselessness of vaccination. 



This most misleading, unscientific, and unfair pro- 

 ceeding, of giving certain figures of small-pox mortality 

 among the well-vaccinated, and then, without any ade- 

 quate comparison, asserting that they afford a proof of 

 the value of vaccination, may be here illustrated by an- 

 other example. In the original paper by Sir John 

 Simon on the " History and Practice of Vaccination," 

 presented to Parliament in 1857, there is, in the Appen- 

 dix, a statement by Dr. T. Graham Balfour, surgeon to 

 the Royal Military Asylum for Orphans at Chelsea, as 

 to the effects of vaccination in that institution that 

 since the opening. of the Asylum in 1803 the Vaccination 

 Register has been accurately kept, and that everyone 

 who entered was vaccinated unless he had been vacci- 

 nated before or had had small-pox; and he adds: " Satis- 



