WHO ARE THE UNVACCINATED?
III.—Then we are asked to believe that though vaccination may not keep off smallpox, it makes it milder, and in proof we are entertained with low rates of mortality among the vaccinated and high rates among the unvaccinated.
We reply, to make a fair comparison between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated, it would be necessary to compare class with class, physique with physique, age with age. In other words, the subjects of smallpox should be constitutionally equal, their difference being limited to vaccination present or vaccination absent. So much is obvious.
But when or where has such comparison been even attempted? Nor would it be easily practicable: for the vaccinated comprise the best portion of the community, physically; but who are the unvaccinated? They are the waifs and strays of civilisation, the offspring of the miserable and the vagrant, who, without fixed domicile, escape the attention of the vaccination officer. These, whatever their ailment, whether measles, pneumonia, diarrhœa, would exhibit a higher rate of mortality than the vaccinated; but would it therefore be safe to argue that vaccination was not only good against smallpox, but against measles, pneumonia, and diarrhœa? Yet it is these, the lowest physically and most neglected of the population, who drift into smallpox hospitals, who are exhibited as fearful examples of the neglect of vaccination. It might be added, they are unbaptised as well as unvaccinated, and probably the one defect may be as prejudicial as the other.