312 THE WONDERFUL CENTURY. 



CHAP. XVIII 



ing this test, we find that these revaccinated soldiers and 

 sailors have suffered in the thirty-one years during which 

 the materials for comparison exist, to almost exactly the 

 same extent as poor, half -starved, imperfectly vaccinated 

 Ireland (p. 282)! Another and still more striking com- 

 parison is given. The town of Leicester is, and has 

 been for the last twenty years, the least vaccinated town 

 in the kingdom. Its average population from 1873 to 

 1894 was about two-thirds that of the Army during the 

 same period. Yet the small-pox deaths in the Army 

 and Navy were thirty-seven per million, those of Leices- 

 ter under fifteen per million. 



Thus, whether we compare the revaccinated and thor- 

 oughly " protected " Army and Navy with imperfectly 

 vaccinated Ireland, or with almost unvaccinated Leices- 

 ter, we find them either on a bare equality or worse off 

 as regards small-pox mortality. It is not possible to 

 have a more complete or crucial test than this is, and it 

 absolutely demonstrates the utter uselessness, or worse 

 than uselessness, of revaccination ! * 



In the face of this clear and indisputable evidence, 

 all recorded in their own Reports, the Commissioners 

 make the astounding statement: " We find that particu- 

 lar classes within the community amongst whom revacci- 

 nation 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 conta- 



1 So late as 1892 (January 16) the Lancet declared in a leading 

 article: " No one need die of small-pox; indeed, no one need have it 

 unless he likes that is to say, he can be absolutely protected by vac- 

 cination once repeated." Surely, never before was misstatement so 

 ignorantly promulgated, or so completely refuted! 



