SMALLPOX 215 



" That disease, over which science has since achieved a series 

 of glorious and beneficent victories, was then the most terrible 

 of all the ministers of death. The havoc of the plague had been 

 far more rapid; but the plague had visited our shores only once 

 or twice within living memory; and the smallpox was always 

 present, filling the churchyards with corpses, tormenting with 

 constant fears all whom it had not stricken, leaving on those 

 whose lives it spared the hideous traces of its power, turning the 

 babe into a changeling at whom the mother shuddered and 

 making the eyes and cheeks of the betrothed maiden objects of 

 horror to the lover." 



In England and Wales the annual mortality from 

 smallpox prior to the year 1796 was about 3000 

 for every million of the inhabitants. Less than a 

 century later, in 1890, the total number of deaths 

 from this disease during an entire year was only 

 fifteen. In Germany, where vaccination is compul- 

 sory and children must be revaccinated at the age 

 of twelve, smallpox is almost unknown. 



In the year 1888 there were but no deaths from 

 this disease in the entire German Empire. In France, 

 where vaccination is very much neglected, the mor- 

 tality from smallpox is about 35 per 100,000 inhabit- 

 ants (1889). Brouardel, a French author, from a 

 consideration of the statistics of the two countries, 

 arrives at the conclusion that " revaccination ought 

 to be made obligatory." In Scotland, when vaccina- 

 tion was optional (1855-64), the mortality was con- 

 siderable (340 per million inhabitants), but when it 



