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 CHAPTER II

MUCH OF THE EVIDENCE ADDUCED FOR VACCINATION IS WORTHLESS

will now proceed to discuss the alleged value of vaccination by means of the best and widest statistical evidence at our command; and in doing so we shall be able to show that the medical experts, who have been trusted by the Government and by the general public, are no less deficient in their power of drawing accurate conclusions from the official statistics of vaccination and small-pox mortality than they have been shown to be in their capacity for recording facts and quoting figures with precision and correctness.

In the elaborate paper by Sir John Simon, on the History and Practice of Vaccination, presented to Parliament in 1857 and reprinted in the First Report of the Royal Commission, he tells us that the earlier evidence of the value of vaccination was founded on individual cases, but that now " from individual cases the appeal is to masses of national experience." And the marginal reference is, " Evidence on the protectiveness of vaccination must now be statistical." If this was true in 1857, how much more must it be so now, when we have forty years more of " national experience" to go upon. Dr. Guy, M.D., F.R.S., enforces this view in his paper published by the Royal Statistical Society in 1882. He says: "Is vaccination a preventive of small-pox? To this question there is, there can be, no answer except such as 23