650 The Vaccination Question Reconsidered. [November, 
children, as evidence of the failure of the vaccination system 
as at present carried out.” 
What do these faCts mean ? Mr. P. A. Taylor, if we do 
not misconstrue him, cuts the knot by declaring that vac- 
cination never was a real faCtor in the question at all, — that 
its apparent success at the beginning of the century was due 
merely to its introduction coinciding with a temporary lull 
in the disease. Since then successive waves of the epidemic, 
more and more severe, have swept over us, and the impo- 
tence of the safeguard becomes each time more and more 
manifest. 
Dr. Cameron, as we think, more impartially holds that 
vaccination had, and still has, a certain power, which, how- 
ever, is gradually declining, owing to the transmission of the 
lymph through such multitudes of human systems. This 
degeneration, joined to a temporary exacerbation of the cha- 
racter of the disease, may well account for the present 
lamentable results. The saving-clause of the “ Lancet ” — 
“ as at present carried out ” — admits of more than one in- 
terpretation. It may amount to a charge of negligence 
brought against the surgeons who perform the operation. It 
may imply the notion conveyed in Dr. Carpenter’s sixth 
proposition, that vaccine protection depends upon the number 
of marks left upon the arm. But this view disagrees with Dr. 
Cameron’s admission, that the 
increase of the disease had 
been most striking in the best vaccinated class of cases. 
A number of hospital reports, quoted by Mr. Taylor, show 
that the percentage of cases and of deaths bears no ratio to 
the number of marks traceable on the arm. Thus the 
“ Report of the Metropolitan 
District Asylums ” gives a 
table of deaths of children under five years old from small- 
pox. Of those which had been vaccinated at all the per- 
centages were— 
One mark 
... 22 per cent. 
Two marks 
... 28 „ 
Three marks 
... 18 „ 
Four marks 
0 
Five marks 
... 16 „ 
A similar table for persons be 
of age runs thus : — 
tween thirty and forty years 
One mark 
... 16 per cent. 
Two marks 
... 20 „ 
Three marks 
... 21 
Four marks 
... 23 „ 
Five marks 
... 8 
