THE REDUCTION OF SMALLPOX.
From whatever side regarded, the original and successive claims made for vaccination are seen to have broken down; but a practice endowed and enforced as a poll-tax for the benefit of the medical profession is not lightly surrendered. Instead a variety of defences, more or less ingenious, are thrown out.
I.—One of these is the reduction of smallpox. It is said, “Smallpox was once a common disease, and is now a comparatively rare one—How are we to account for this improvement otherwise than by the introduction of vaccination?”
The answer is, that smallpox was declining before vaccination was introduced, and that, too, in spite of the extensive culture of the disease by variolation; and the decline continued during the first part of the present century whilst as yet nine-tenths of the people were unvaccinated. Several diseases once common have abated or disappeared; and why should we attribute to an incommensurate cause a similar abatement in smallpox? Leprosy, once extensively prevalent in England, has disappeared. Why? It died out gradually; but suppose some rite, analogous to vaccination, had been brought into vogue contemporaneously with its decline, would not the rite have had the credit, and would not its practitioners have called the world to witness the success of their prescription?