Absolute care in vaccination and its universal adoption, combined with a compulsory re-vaccination on arriving at the age of puberty, would without doubt have by this time fulfilled Jenner’s most sanguine expectations, and smallpox would have become extinct. At the same time, if the government make vaccination compulsory, they have a most important duty to the public to perform. In the first place, they should undoubtedly ascertain that every known precaution is taken by all public vaccinators to protect from harm, or disease likely to arise from vaccination, those whom they compel to undergo the operation. Secondly, none but properly certified practitioners should be appointed to the stations. It is not alone sufficient that they be skilful vaccinators, they should also be able to take lymph skilfully from the vesicles without the admixture of the minutest particle of blood. An ignorant or careless vaccinator may do more harm than it is possible to trace. Thirdly, no lymph whatever should be used but that which is microscopically examined by one who thoroughly understands his work, and the public should be permitted to have a choice of either the humanised lymph or lymph direct from the calf. If these precautions were conscientiously carried out, we should soon have less objection to compulsion, and we should be in a fair way to seeing smallpox stamped out. In America, according to the _Asclepiad_, the subject has received careful attention. The Report of Dr Joseph Jones, President of the Board of Health, of the State of Louisiana, extends to four hundred pages, and embraces everything connected with smallpox, vaccination, and spurious vaccination; while drawings are freely interspersed to illustrate, from point to point, the author’s histories, views, or conclusions. Amongst the general conclusions which the author draws at the close of his treatise, the following are some of the most important: (_a_) Vaccination, when carefully performed on Jenner’s method, is as complete a protection from smallpox now as it was in the early part of the century; (_b_) Without vaccination, the application of steam and navigation and land travel would have, during the past fifty years, scattered smallpox in every part of the habitable globe; (_c_) Vaccination has not impaired the strength and vigour of the human race, but has added vastly to the sum of human life, happiness, and health; (_d_) Inoculation for smallpox, which preceded vaccination, induced a comparatively mild and protective disease, but multiplied the foci of contagion, kept smallpox perpetually alive, and increased its fatal ravages among mankind. BY MEAD AND STREAM. CHAPTER XLVII.—UNDER-CURRENTS.