CHAP.XVIII. VACCINATION A DELUSION. 283 



sioners' Reports, and it can hardly be contended that it 

 has any special advantages over our soldiers and sailors, 

 rather the other way. I have therefore given a dia- 

 gram (XII.), in which a dotted line shows the small-pox 

 mortality of the Irish people of the ages 15 to 45 in com- 

 parison with the Army and the Navy mortality for the 

 same years. (The figures for this diagram, as regards 

 Ireland, have been calculated from the table at p. 37 of 

 the " Final Report," corrected for the ages 15 to 45 by 

 means of Table J. at p. 274 of the Second Report.) 



This dotted line shows us that, with the exception of 

 the great epidemic of 1871, when for the bulk of the 

 Irish patients there was neither isolation nor proper 

 treatment, the small-pox mortality of the Irish popula- 

 tion of similar ages has been on the average below that 

 of either the Army or the Navy; while if we take the 

 mean mortality of the three for the same period (1864- 

 94) inclusive, the result is as follows : 



Army, mean of the annual small-pox death rate, 58 per million. 

 Navy, " " " " 90 



Ireland (ages 15-45), " " " 65.8 '" 



If we combine the Army and Navy death-rates in the 

 proportion of their mean strength so as to get the true 

 average of the two forces, the death-rate is 64.3 per mil- 

 lion, or almost exactly the same as that of Ireland. 



Now if there were no other evidence which gave simi- 

 lar results, this great test case of large populations com- 



1 These figures (for the Army and Navy) are obtained by averaging 

 the annual death rates given in the tables referred to, and are there- 

 fore not strictly accurate on account of the irregularly varying 

 strength of the forces. But the error is small. In the case of the 

 Navy, from 1864 to 1888 the tables enable the mortality to be accu- 

 rately calculated , and the result comes out more, by nearly six per 



