year." The facts, well known to every enquirer, are: that the very highest small-pox mortality in the last century in a year was 3,992 in 1772, while in 1871 it was 7,912 in London, or more than double; and in the same year, in England and "Wales, it was 23,000. This amazing and almost incredible misstatement was pointed out and acknowledged privately, but never withdrawn publicly!
The late Mr. Ernest Hart, a medical man, editor of the British Medical Journal, and a great authority on sanitation, in his work entitled The Truth about Vaccination, surpasses even Dr. Carpenter in the monstrosity of his errors. At page 35 of the first edition (1880), he states that in the forty years 1728-57 and 1771-80, the average annual small-pox mortality of London was about 18,000 per million living. The actual average mortality, from the tables given in the Second Report of the Eoyal Commission, page 290, was a little over 2,000, the worst periods having been chosen; and taking the lowest estimates of the population at the time, the mortality per million would have been under 3,000. This great authority, therefore, has multiplied the real number by six! In a later edition this statement is omitted, but in the first edition it was no mere misprint, for it was triumphantly dwelt upon over a whole page and compared with modern rates of mortality.
Yet one more official misstatement. About the year 1884 the National Health Society, with the approval of the Local Government Board, issued a tract entitled Facts concerning Vaccination for Heads of Families, in which appeared the statement, " Before the introduction of vaccination, small-pox "killed 40,000 persons yearly in this country." We have already shown that Dr. Lettsom's figure, 36,000, was utterly unfounded, and probably three or four times greater than the truth. Here we have a semi-official and widely-distributed statement even more remote from the truth. In later issues of the same tract this particular states ment is withdrawn, and a different but equally
