306 THE WONDERFUL CENTURY. CHAP. xvm. 



gards the variations at different periods and between dif- 

 ferent diseases. The second part, from 1838 onward, 

 is from the Keports of the Kegistrar-General, and is 

 more complete in giving all deaths whatever. Its lines 

 are, therefore, as it were, on a higher level than those of 

 the earlier period, and can only be compared with it as 

 regards proportions of the different mortalities, not so 

 accurately as to their total amounts. The main teaching 

 of this diagram a teaching which the Commissioners 

 have altogether missed by never referring to diagrams 

 showing comparative mortalities is the striking cor- 

 respondence in average rise and fall of the death-rates 

 of small-pox, of zymotics, and of all diseases together. 

 This correspondence is maintained throughout the whole 

 of the first part, as well as through the whole of the 

 second part, of the diagram ; and it proves that small-pox 

 obeys, and always has obeyed, the same law of sub- 

 servience to general sanitary conditions as the other great 

 groups of allied diseases and the general mortality. 

 Looking at this most instructive diagram, we see at once 

 the absurdity of the claim that the dimunition of small- 

 pox in the first quarter of our century was due to the 

 partial and imperfect vaccination of that period. 

 Equally absurd is the allegation that its stationary char- 

 acter from 1842 to 1872, culminating in a huge epi- 

 demic, was due to the vaccination then prevailing, 

 though much larger than ever before, not being quite 

 universal an allegation completely disproved by the 

 fact that the other zymotics as a whole, as well as the 

 general mortality, exhibited strikingly similar decreases 

 followed by equally marked periods of average uni- 

 formity or slight increase, to be again followed by a 



