Volume 2

Reports of the Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the subject of Vaccination; with minutes of evidence and appendices / Vaccination Commission.

  • Great Britain. Royal Commission on Vaccination.
Date:
1889-1897
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Reports of the Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the subject of Vaccination; with minutes of evidence and appendices / Vaccination Commission. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

    629/798 (page 57)
    560 vaccinated persons over 10 years of age, 36 died, or 6*4 per cent. Of 36 unvaccinated persons of a similar age 12 died, or 33'3 per cent. 209. At Leicester two vaccinated children under 10 were attacked, neither of whom -^PP- VL, died. Of unvaccinated children of a similar age, 107 were attacked, of whom 15, or 140 per cent., died. Of vaccinated persons over 10 years of age, 197 were attacked, of whom two died, or 1-0 per cent. Of the unvaccinated of a similar age, 51 were attacked, of whom four, or 7*8 per cent., died. 210. At Gloucester 26 vaccinated children under ten were attacked, of whom one, or App. VIL 3'8 per cent., died. Of unvaccinated children of a similar age 680 were attacked, of whom 279, or 41*0 per cent., died. Of vaccinated persons over ten years of age, 1,185 were attacked, of whom 119, or lO'O per cent., died. Of the unvaccinated of a similar age, 88 were attacked, of whom 35, or 39*7 per cent., died. 211. The history of the disease shows us that small-pox epidemics vary from time to time in the degree of their fatality quite apart from any question of vaccination. If the death-rate in relation to attacks be compared in the six towns, in the case of those over 20 years of age, a class which was in those towns probably in about the same condition as regards vaccination, it will be seen from the following table that the variations were considerable:— Persons over 20 years of age only. Attacks. Deaths. Fatality. Gloucester - - . . 962 135 14-0 Sheffield (to date of census) 2,313 253 10-9 Wiirrington . . - - 427 41 10-3 Dewsbnry . . . . 510 41 8-0 London - 1,411 99 7-0 Leicester . . - . 180 4 2-2 212. The facts which we have quoted from the reports upon the epidemics in the six towns dealt with, certainly afford strong support to the view that vaccination exerts a powerful influence on the fatality of the disease. It is said that the division into the classes of vaccinated and unvaccinated cannot be relied on as accurate. It is quite possible that the classification may not be strictly accurate, though great pains appear to have been taken to make it so. Doubtful cases were in general included amongst, the vaccinated class, and care was taken to see that none should be included in the un- vaccinated class except those who properly came within it. Where the doubtful cases were separately stated in the reports we have added them to the vac(;inated class for the purpose of our calculations. If a^ reasonable allowance be made for the possibility of error, it appears to us that the broad result would not be materially altered, and that the contrast between the fatality in the two classes would still be very remarkable. 213. It must be remembered that the argument to be derived from these statistics does not depend for its strength upon its being established that there was a strictly accurate discrimination between the vaccinated and unvaccinated. If those who contend that vaccination is altogether inefficacious be correct in their views, the fact that persons have been vaccinated can have no tendency to alfect their liability either to be attacked or to die of the disease. Those, therefore, who are selected as being vaccinated persons might just as well be so many persous chosen at random out of the total number attacked. So far as any connexion with the incidence of, or mortality from, small-pox is concerned, the choice of persons might as well have been made according to the colour of the clothes they wore. How comes it, then, that those selected out of the mass merely because, on the hypothesis we are considering, they have been the subjects of a wholly ineffectual or even mischievous proceeding should suffer from attacks of small-pox so much less fatally than the mass from which they are drawn ? 214. The figures are worth a closer examination. Taking the six towns together they are large. The unvaccinated attacked amounted to 2,321; of these S22 died, or 35-4j per cent. 1,449 of those attacked were under 10 years of age, of these 523 died, or 36-0 per cent. 870 were over 10 years of age, of whom 299 died, or 34*3 per cent. It is very noteworthy that amongst these persons selected because they were unvacci- nated, or believed to be so, the fatality under 10 years of age was 36-0 per cent., over that age 34-3 per cent.; the correspondence between these figures is singularly close. fr 2