The chief sufferers from deficient and unsuitable food are the young, their suffering having form in various ailments, and among them smallpox. I have repeatedly had to point out how smallpox is especially an affection of childhood, and how in Scotland, for instance, it used to be almost exclusively confined to the young, like measles and whooping-cough. The like was true of Sweden; for of the deaths from smallpox from 1774 to 1798—
| 8·19 | per cent. | were under one year of age; | |
| 21·90 | ” | between one and three; | |
| 31·77 | ” | ” | three and five; |
| 23·74 | ” | ” | five and ten; |
a total of 85·60 per cent, being mere children. Or, to put it otherwise—
| In 1778, | when | 16,607 | perished, | 13,096 | were under ten. |
| 1784 | ” | 12,453 | ” | 11,789 | ” |
| 1786 | ” | 671 | ” | 625 | ” |
| 1798 | ” | 1,357 | ” | 1,207 | ” |
and so on.
Now, whilst I have no wish to minimise the sadness and culpability of the mortality of the young, I have yet to maintain that its consequences are by no means so serious to the State as when the heads of families and bread-winners are stricken down; and that it is a gross exaggeration to compare the fatality of smallpox with that of men slain in battle. Again, we have to recollect how many of the young die from smallpox, so to say, needlessly, from inattention and malpractice. This was clearly recognised in a Royal Letter issued from Stockholm in 1763, recommending variolation, in which the Medical Board was directed “to instruct the common people how children should be treated when suffering from natural smallpox,” assigning the cogent reason, “because many more children die from want of care than from the disease.” The assertion may be taken as indisputable; and, being true, it stands for the fact that the mortality from smallpox might have been largely reduced if parents had had the knowledge and the means to nurse their offspring through their illness. They died less of smallpox than of ignorant and defective treatment whilst under smallpox.
I have also to observe that smallpox in Sweden was steadily declining toward the close of the century, and that the decline continued into the present century. Taking the years in decades from 1749 to 1868, and casting the average, we have these results—
| Decade. | Population. | Deaths Annually. | Annual Death-rate per 1,000. | Annual Deaths from Smallpox. |
| 1749-58 | 1,821,009 | 50,556 | 27·76 | 6,056 |
| 1759-68 | 1,946,258 | 53,288 | 27·38 | 5,309 |
| 1769-78 | 2,028,141 | 59,262 | 29·22 | 4,535 |
| 1779-88 | 2,140,315 | 56,766 | 26·52 | 5,179 |
| 1789-98 | 2,246,744 | 57,883 | 25·76 | 3,810 |
| 1799-08 | 2,394,432 | 63,365 | 26·46 | 3,282 |
| 1809-18 | 2,444,568 | 67,537 | 27·63 | 690 |
| 1819-28 | 2,787,025 | 63,121 | 22·60 | 373 |
| 1829-38 | 2,976,829 | 70,168 | 23·57 | 633 |
| 1839-48 | 3,255,604 | 68,080 | 20·91 | 299 |
| 1849-58 | 3,588,571 | 78,218 | 21·80 | 816 |
| 1859-68 | 4,016,690 | 79,033 | 19·68 | 861 |
With these details before us, we are in a position to appreciate the claim made for vaccination, that it exterminated Smallpox in Sweden.