liv LIFE OF DK. KOLLESTON. 



Small Pox epidemic in 187 1. A poor woman whom he had 

 engaged as laundress in the Small Pox Hospital refused to be 

 re-vaccinated. 'I almost went down on my knees to entreat 

 her,' he said. 'No, she had a drunken husband, her family 

 depended on her work, she could not afford to lie idle if her 

 arm should become swollen and incapacitated after vaccination. 

 So she had her way, caught small-pox, and died.' He used to 

 say that he felt he had the guilt of that woman's death on his 

 soul, for not having insisted on her being re-vaccinated. This 

 outbreak of small-pox in Oxford engaged him in some of his 

 hottest public controversies. News reached him on a journey 

 abroad that some members of the Local Board thought it un- 

 necessary to furnish and occupy the Small Pox Hospital which 

 had been built outside the city on the Woodstock Road. He 

 hurried home to press forward energetic measures to protect life 

 by setting up field-tents and resorting to strict isolation of cases 

 and other sanitary precautions. He used to work in visiting 

 the sick and convalescent, keeping a coat for such visits, that he 

 might not bring home infection. It was at this time that, in 

 answer to his demands for instant action, some one replied that 

 the disease was at present only among the children of the poor. 

 The torrent of rebuke which Rolleston poured on him is not 

 forgotten to this day. Scenes so exciting as this did not often 

 happen, but, as is usual on such Boards, there was many a rough 

 encounter. One of his demonstrators describes him coming 

 home about 5 o'clock one afternoon after a stormy meeting. 

 ' He came into my room and said, " After this meeting I shall 

 take a walk round the Parks. I feel tired." "I thought you 

 enjoyed meetings," said I. " So I do," he replied, "and there was 

 a rampage to-day, and where a rampage is (pointing to himself), 

 there is he." I laughed, and he said, " Yes, I know what you are 

 laughing at — you think where he is, there is a rampage — and 

 you are about right." ' Notwithstanding, he began to feel after a 

 while that this strife was wearing him, and taking his time from 

 his classes at the Museum, and he gave up the Local Board. 

 It seems to have been in 1867 that Rolleston first took a 



