THE HORRORS OF SMALLPOX.

Thames Star, Volume XII, Issue 3968, 16 September 1881, Page 2

THE HORRORS OF SMALLPOX.

No' less than 44,000 persons died in England of smallpox during the three years 1870-72. A writer to the "Modern .Review" recently quoted these figures as a proof that vaccination was an inefficient preyentatiye, but he was replied to by a reviewer in the Spectator as follows : — "He of the Modern Be view is clearly ignorant of the fact that a hundred years ago the smallpox mortality of London alone (with its then population of tinder a million) was often' greater in a six months' epidemic than that of the 20,000,000 of England and Wales is now in any whole year; the average number of deaths by smallpox was estimated at eight per cent, of the total mortalitj of the country; that of the the enormous mortality of children under 10 years of age the mortality by smallpox constituted one half; that whilst it is now the exception to hearbf a case of small pox in the persons or families of one's friends, or even wider acquaintances, it was then exceptional for any one in whatever rank of lite, to attain middle a&e without having been the subject of its attack—that 'seaming and pitiing' of the face were then so common that it was estimated that out of every three persona that one met in the street one showed traces of it; that for a ' professional beauty ' to have herface disfigured by smallpox was an incident often introduced into the novels and tales of 'the period;' and that loss of sight by that disease was then so frequent that at least one*; third of the inmates of blind asylums, within my own time, owed their priva*l tion to it." There are very few of the great improvements made in the lot of mankind which are able to quote so vast and clear a body of evidence in their favour as stands'to the credit of *ac cination. !