3;o MY LIFE 



scales, but that with that exception T could see no substantial 

 difference between them. The other diagram was on a greatly 

 exaggerated vertical scale, so that the line showing each year's 

 death-rate went up and down with tremendous peaks and 

 chasms, while mine approximated more to a very irregular 

 curve. But my questioner could not see this simple point; 

 and later he recurred to it a second time, and asked me if 

 I really meant to tell them that those two diagrams were both 

 accurate, and when I said again that though on different scales 

 both represented the same facts, he looked up at the ceiling 

 with an air which plainly said, " If you will say that you will 

 say anything ! " 



The Commission lingered on for six years, and did not 

 issue its final report till 1896, while the evidence, statistics, and 

 diagrams occupied numerous bulky blue-books. The most 

 valuable parts of it were the appendices, containing the tables 

 and diagrams presented by the chief witnesses, together with 

 a large number of official tables and statistics, both of our own 

 and foreign countries, affording a mass of material never 

 before brought together. This enabled me to present the 

 general statistical argument more completely and forcibly than 

 I had done before, and I devoted several months of very hard 

 work to doing this, and brought it out in pamphlet form in 

 January, 1898, in order that a copy might be sent to every 

 member of the House of Commons before the new Vaccina- 

 tion Act came up for discussion. This was done by the 

 National Anti-Vaccination League, and I wrote to the half- 

 dozen members I knew personally, begging them to give one 

 evening to its careful perusal. But so far as any of their 

 speeches showed, not one of the six hundred and seventy 

 members gave even that amount of their time to obtain in- 

 formation on a subject involving the health, life, and personal 

 freedom of their constituents. Yet I know that in no work 

 I have written have I presented so clear and so conclusive a 

 demonstration of the fallacy of a popular belief as is given in 

 this work, which was entitled " Vaccination a Delusion : its 

 Penal Enforcement a Crime, proved by the Official Evidence 

 in the Reports of the Royal Commission." This was included 



