CHAP. xvin. VACCINATION A DELUSION. 267 



factory evidence can therefore, in this instance, be ob- 

 tained that they were all protected." Then he gives the 

 statistics, showing that during forty-eight years, from 

 1803 to 1851, among 31,705 boys there were thirty- 

 nine cases and four deaths, giving a mortality at the rate 

 of 126 per million on the average number in the Asylum, 

 and concludes by saying: " The preceding facts appear 

 to offer most conclusive proofs of the value of vaccina- 

 tion." But he gives no comparison with other boys of 

 about the same age and living under equally healthy 

 conditions, but who had not been so uniformly or so re- 

 cently vaccinated; for it must be remembered that, as 

 this was long before the epoch of compulsory vaccina- 

 tion, a large proportion of the boys would be unvacci- 

 nated at their entrance, and would therefore have the 

 alleged benefit of a recent vaccination. But when we 

 make the comparison, which both Dr. Balfour and Sir 

 John Simon failed to make, we find that these well-vac- 

 cinated and protected boys had a greater small-pox mor- 

 tality than the imperfectly protected outsiders. For in 

 the First Eeport of the Commission (p. 114, Table B) 

 we find it stated that in the period of optional vaccination 

 (1847-53) the death-rate from small-pox of persons from 

 ten to fifteen years 1 was 94 per million! Instead of 

 offering " most conclusive proofs of the value of vacci- 

 nation," his own facts and figures, if they prove 

 anything at all, prove not only the uselessness but 

 the evil of vaccination, and that it really tends to in- 

 crease small-pox mortality. And this conclusion is 



1 This almost exactly agrees with the ages of the boys, who are ad- 

 mitted between nine and eleven, and leave at fourteen. (See Low's 

 " Handbook of London Charities.") 



