COMPULSORY VACCINATION.

Te Aroha News, Volume XII, Issue 1749, 10 July 1895, Page 2

COMPULSORY VACCINATION.

During the year 1891 Leicester, the anti-compulsory vaccination great ; stronghold, has been much iu evidence i especially in the public press of the country. ! Notwitstanding the prognostications of evil concerning Leicester, the town has successfully emerged from the small-pox outbreak of 189294, while and other well vaccinated places have suffered severely, the position of Leicester is more than maintained. The British Medical Journal of April 21st, 1894, gives a list of eleven towns, namely— Glasgow, Warrington, Halifax, St Albans, Liverpool, Manchester, Brighouse, Birmingham, Salford, Aston Manor, and Leicester, where the average death rate amongst the unvaccinated cases was alleged to reach the figure of 36-2 per cent, while at Leicester it was only 15'8 per cent. Therefore the small-pox death rate of unvac-/ cinated Leicester is confessedly less byi 20-4 per cent than the average of this? group of towns, or a percentage diminution gain in favour of ■ Leicester of ' more than 66 per cent. As regards the death rate from all causes, it appears that from 1868-72, with vaccination- in full swing, Leicester’s death rate was nearly 27 per 1000 living, or five per 1000 above that of England and Wales. In 1894, practically without vaccination, the death rate of Leicester was only 14.4, being the lowest death rate of any manufacturing town, and the lowest but one of the 33 great towns periodically re coided by the Registrar-General.