CHAP. xvin. VACCINATION A DELUSION. 291 



ment, so directly opposed to the clearest and simplest 

 facts and to the evidence of official witnesses, proves the 

 incapacity of the Commissioners for the important en- 

 quiry they have undertaken. By their treatment of this 

 part of the subject they exhibit themselves as either 

 ignorant or careless, in either case as thoroughly in- 

 competent. 



The next passage that calls for special notice here is 

 par. 342, where they say, " We find that particular 

 classes within the community, amongst whom revaccina- 

 tion has prevailed to an exceptional degree, have 

 exhibited a position of quite exceptional advantage in 

 relation to small-pox, although these classes have in 

 many cases been subject to exceptional risk of con- 

 tagion." It seems almost incredible that such a state- 

 ment as this could be made as a conclusion from the 

 official evidence before the Commissioners, and it can 

 only be explained by the fact that they never made the 

 simplest and most obvious comparisons, and that they 

 laid more stress on bad statistics than on good ones. 

 They trust, for example, to the cases of nurses in hos- 

 pitals, 1 as to which there are absolutely no statistics in 



1 As regards the case of the nurses in small-pox hospitals, about 

 which so much has been said, I brought before the Commission 

 some evidence from a medical work, which sufficiently disposes of 

 this part of the question. In Buck's " Treatise on Hygiene and the 

 Public Health," vol. ii., we find an article by Drs. Hamilton and 

 Emmett on " Small-pox and other Contagious Diseases," and on page 

 321 thereof we read : 



"It is a fact fully appreciated by medical men that persons con- 

 stantly exposed to small-pox very rarely contract the disease. In the 

 case of physicians, health-inspectors, nurses, sisters of charity, 

 hospital orderlies, and some others, this is the rule ; and of over one 

 hundred persons who have been to my knowledge constantly exposed, 



