J. J. Garth Wilkinson, M.R.C.S.E.

But it is demonstrable that vaccination has no influence whatever over the small-pox death rate. For the whole hospital death rate now of vaccinated and unvaccinated is just about 18 per cent.; almost exactly what it was before vaccination existed. The tables of Jurin in the last century, and of Marson now, attest this. There is, then, no difference in the hospital mortality of small-pox since vaccination. The difference is, that vaccination has sorted the deaths into two classes, and that the unvaccinated are from the necessity of the case, the rotten sheep of health, rotten before they were sorted, and afterwards. A thousand other factors, which cannot be causal, would, as sorters, produce the same effect as non-vaccination. Thus, the people who wear best black and employ fashionable tailors, die of small-pox at a vastly less rate than those who wear fustian; and these again, than those who arc in rags. The drinkers of the best port die less in the case than the drinkers of the cheapest beer. Any circumstance that shows condition and social quality, as vaccination also does, is attended with a smaller death rate from zymotic diseases; anything that demonstrates weak persons and sordid surroundings, which non-vaccination docs, is attended with the greater death rate. But the sifting process produced by a thousand circumstances is of no consequence. For put the two heaps of deaths together, and they come to just the same figure now, as before vaccination existed.—From the Eastern Daily Press, Sept. 2nd, 1881.