Before putting the resolution to the meeting the Chairman intimated to Dr. Routh who had sent up his card that if he wished to move an amendment he could now do so. Dr. Routh said: It was not his intention to move a formal amendment to the resolution, but merely a negative vote. He was very much surprised at the two speeches he had heard. He had no doubt, both the gentlemen were perfectly convinced they were right, but he did not know how they could have come to that conclusion if they had taken statistics. They had been told that the mortality from every form of disease had increased, but it had not done so from small-pox. The population was increasing, and therefore there were more deaths than there used to be. The speakers on the other side were taking a time when the whole population of the kingdom was not more than 20,000,000, and comparing the gross number of deaths then with those that took place now; they ought, if they meant to deal fairly, to take the number of deaths to the million of population. It had been said that by the statistics of the Small-pox Hospital a greater number of persons were there who had been vaccinated than had not. What was the fact? The official return showed the following:—Number of deaths among the unvaccinated, 35 per cent.; vaccinated with one vaccine cicatrice, 7; with two cicatrices, 4; with three, 1; with four, 5–10ths. Well-marked, 2; badly-marked, 18; those who had previously had small-pox, 19. This last average showed that the vaccine was a better preventative than small-pox itself. Dr. Seaton, medical officer of the Privy Council, had published a return showing the annual death-rate in England and Wales. The death-rate per million of population during the 30 years previous to vaccination was 3,000. In ’38 and ’40, when vaccination was diffused, but before it was gratuitous, it was 770. The average for nine of the years when public vaccination was gratuitous but not obligatory was 304, and during the time it was both gratuitous and obligatory, the vaccination death-rate was 202 per million. Who, in the face of that, would maintain that vaccination was not a preventative of small-pox? Having referred to the ravages the disease used to commit, and the powerful nature of the small-pox virus, he proceeded to say that a great deal had been made of the fact that more people died of other diseases than usual, when deaths from small-pox were few in number. It stood to reason that if they saved a certain number of people from a certain disease, they must leave a greater number than if they had not saved them to die afterwards from some other disease. So, when a fearful epidemic had just left a place the number of deaths for some time afterwards was much smaller than at any other time during a long period of health. The reason of this was that nearly all the weak had been killed. It had been said that vaccine put into the system a great number of noxious diseases.