and probably in all other European nations; and this improvement, or some special portion of it, must have acted powerfully on small-pox to cause the enormous diminution of the disease down to 1812, with which, as we have seen, vaccination could have had nothing to do. The only thing that vaccination seems to have done is, to have acted as a check to this diminution, since it is otherwise impossible to explain the complete cessation of improvement as the operation became more general; and this is more especially the case in view of the fact that the general death-rate has continued to decrease at almost the same rate down to the present day!
The enormous small-pox mortality in Stockholm has been explained as the result of very deficient vaccination; but the Swedish Board of Health states that this deficiency was more apparent than real, first, because 25 per cent, of the children born in Stockholm die before completing their first year, and also because of neglect to report private vaccinations, so that " the low figures for Stockholm depend more on the cases of vaccination not having been reported than on their not having been effected." (Sixth Report, p. 754, 1st col., 3rd par.)
The plain and obvious teaching of the facts embodied in this diagram is, that small-pox mortality is in no way influenced (except it be injuriously) by vaccination, but that here, as elsewhere, it does bear an obvious relation to density of population; and also that, when uninfluenced by vaccination, it follows the same law of decrease with improved conditions of general health as does the total death-rate.
This case of Sweden alone affords complete proof of the uselessness of vaccination; yet the Commissioners in the Final Report (par. 59) refer to the great diminution of small-pox mortality in the first twenty years of the century as being due to it. They make no comparison with the total death-rate; they say nothing of the increase of small-pox from 1824 to 1874; they omit all reference to the terrible Stockholm epidemics
