the city we are all the time encouraging a high degree of
receptivity towards this very disease? I should call this a
very clear case of straining at the international gnat and
swallowing the municipal camel. The community at present is at
the mercy of its least instructed members. A most sensible
suggestion is that if an outbreak of smallpox occurs in
Halifax, the cost of it should be borne by the unvaccinated and
by the anti-vaccinators. The fact is we have forgotten what
smallpox is like. In 1796 before Jennerian vaccination, the
death-rate from smallpox in England was 18.5 per cent. of
deaths from all causes; in London between 1838 and 1869 it was
1.4 per cent., while in 1871--the worst year for smallpox since
vaccination became compulsory--the deaths from smallpox were
barely 4.5 per cent. of deaths from all causes, a proportion
which was exceeded 93 times in the eighteenth century. At the
present moment the deaths from smallpox in London constitute a
little under 0.24 per cent. of deaths from all causes, or 77
times less than in pre-Jennerian times.

According to MacVail, in the pre-vaccination period smallpox
was nine times as fatal as measles and seven and one half times
as fatal as whooping cough. To-day in the vaccinated community
its fatality is negligable, in the unvaccinated it is as high
as it was in the Middle Ages. In the city of Berlin, where
vaccination is absolutely compulsory, there is no smallpox
hospital at all; the cases of smallpox in that city being only
a few unvaccinated foreigners. In 1912 the deaths in New York
City were as follow: 671 from measles, 614 from scarlatina, 500
from typhoid fever, 187 from whooping cough and 2 from
smallpox.