CHAP. xvm. VACCINATION A DELUSION. 305 



rejected. It will be found that all the evidence that 

 seems to prove the value of vaccination is of this un- 

 trustworthy character. This conclusion is enforced by 

 the fact that the more recent hospital statistics show that 

 small-pox occurs among the vaccinated in about the same 

 proportion as the vaccinated bear to the whole popula- 

 tion; thus again indicating that the earlier figures, show- 

 ing that they were proportionately five or six times as 

 numerous, and the death-rate of the unvaccinated twice 

 or thrice that of the average of pre-vaccination days, are 

 altogether erroneous, and are due to the various kinds of 

 error or misstatement which have been pointed out 

 (pp. 229-232). 



Having thus cleared away some of the misconceptions 

 and fallacies which have obscured the main question at 

 issue, and having shown that, by official admission, the 

 only valuable evidence consists of " large masses of 

 national statistics," which should have been dealt with 

 by a commission of trained statisticians, I proceed to 

 show, by a series of diagrams embodying the official or 

 national statistics brought before the Commission, or to 

 be found in the Reports of the Registrar-General, what 

 such statistics really prove ; and I ask my readers to look 

 again at those diagrams as I refer to them. 



Diagram I. exhibits the most extensive body of 

 national statistics available, showing at one view the 

 death-rates from Small-pox, from the other chief Zy- 

 motic Diseases, and the Total Mortality, from 17 GO to 

 1896. The first portion, from 1760 to 1836, is from 

 the " Bills of Mortality," which, though not complete, 

 are admitted to be, on the whole, fairly accurate as re- 



