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Ratio of the Mortality of SmalUpox to the Total Mortality . Prom 1706 to 1720 , one in 12 . 7 ; that is , 78 in 1 , 000 . Erom 1745 to 1759 , one in 11 . 2 ; that is , 89 in 1 , 000 . Prom 1785 to 1798 , one in 10 . 6 ; that is , 94 in 1 , 000 . From 1805 to 1818 , one in 18 . 9 $ that is , 53 in 1 , 000 .
In all these computations , fractions are not noticed in the last column of numbers . " From this statement it would appear , that the proportion of deaths from small-pox to the total mortality increased in the course of last century ;
so that inoculation appears to have added to the mortality . It was in the rural population that the effect of inoculation in diffusing small-pox was chiefly felt . In this situation there is much less intercourse of persons with each other than in towns , so that not only many individuals escaped from
exposure to this infection during their whole life , but whole districts were known to haye been exempt from it
for a long series of years , before it was universally diffused by inoculation . " But Sir Gilbert does not think this quite a just scale whereby to measure the relative mortality of small-pox ; for in the course of that century the general mortality itself was greatly diminished in relation to the population *
" But the truly important result from these statements consists in the clear , undeniable , and great diminution of deaths since the introduction of vaccination . It appears that in the last 15 years the mortality from small-pox , in the bills of mortality , has not been much more than one half of what it
was in the two like series of years in the middle and latter end of the last century . ' If to this be added the out parishes and the unregistered burials among the Dissenters , Sir Gilbert Blane calculates that the account of lives saved in this metropolis by vaccinati on , in the last 15 years , will stand as follows : —
Within the bills of mortality 12 , 853 Without the bills of mortality 2 , 570 Unregistered cases . . . 7 , 711 Total . 23 , 134 He then goes on to remark on the
fluctuations in the number of deaths *** the last 15 years , which he partly attributes «> to the smallpox inoculation of out-patients having , by an unr accountable infatuation , been kept up
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at the small-pox hospital for several years after the virtue of vaccination had been fully confirmed , " " and partly to prejudice , created by mischievous publications . This mortality , " he thinks , " though little more than onehalf of what it was in former times , might have been entirely saved , if vaccination had been carried to the same
extent as in many cities and whole districts on the continent of Europe , in Peru * and Ceylon . "It is now matter of irrefragable historical evidence , that vaccination possesses powers adequate to the great end proposed by its meritorious oiscoverer , in his first promulgation of it
in 1798—namely , the total extirpation of small-pox . The first proof of this was at Vienna , where , in 1804 , no cases occurred , except two strangers who came into the city with the disease upon them . In 1805 , there did not occur a single death from it in
Copenhagen . Dr . Sacco , the indefatigable superintendent of vaccination in Lorn * bardv , stated , in his annual report * 3 rd January , 1808 , that the small-pox had entirely disappeared in all the large
towns in that country ; and that in the great city of Milan it had not appeared for several years . Dr . Odier , of Ge * neva , so favourably known for his high professional , scientific and lkerary acquirements , testifies that , after a vi *
* In the summer of 1811 , the author was called to visit , professionally , Don Francisco de Salazar , who had arrived a few days before in London , on his route from Lima to Cadiz , as a deputy to the Spanish Cortes . He informed me , that vaccination had been practised with so much energy and success in Lima , that for the last twelve months there had
occurred * not only no death from , but np case ; of , small-pox ; that the new-borty children of all ranks are carried as regularly to the vaccinating-house , as to thi font of baptism ; that the small-pox is
entirely extinguished all over Peru ; nearly so in Chili ; and that there has been no compulsory interference on the part of the government to promote vaccina tion .
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Sir Gilbert Blane on Vaccination : £ SS
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1820, page 285, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2488/page/29/
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