That rested on the mere _ipse dixit_ of a few persons. No doubt, in the crowded and unhealthy neighbourhoods of the poor, where no attention was paid to cleanliness, serious consequences might follow upon the mere scratch of the lancet or anything else, but that furnished no real argument against the system. He quite acknowledged they had no right to prevent Mr. Tomkins keeping any disease he liked in his own house, but if Tomkins came out amongst other people, and poisoned them, they had a right, and it was their duty to the nation, to take measures for preventing him. Dr. Thompson was then called upon. He thought in such an important matter they ought to put aside feeling and look only to the facts themselves. In the first place, great credit was due to Dr. Jenner for pressing so forcibly upon public notice the system of vaccination, although no doubt he did not discover it. If vaccination did not preserve persons absolutely, neither did a previous attack of small-pox, for he knew a case of a woman who had it seven times, and died from the last attack. A strong point had been made by the other side on the statement that there had been a great increase in the number of deaths registered from chest diseases since the introduction of vaccination. He most unhesitatingly admitted that to be a fact, but why was it? It was not because of vaccination, but in consequence of the introduction of the use of that instrument (producing a stethoscope) for sounding the chest. Previously there were next to no means of discovering chest disease, and persons dying from it were registered as dying from other forms of disease. There had been no increase shown in the number of deaths from chest disease. More than 20,000 cases had been under his care during the last seven or eight years, and he had found that persons suffering from consumption had, in a very large proportion, suffered from small-pox also. He believed small-pox to be an exciting cause of consumption, rather than a preventative as had been asserted. Previous to vaccination, as many as 4,000 in 1,000,000 died from small-pox, and that number, since its introduction, had fallen to 158. He really, in his ignorance, had thought that the anti-vaccination movement would have ceased in face of the facts from St. Giles’s and Ireland. The chairman: The sanitary habits of the people have something to do with the improvement in Ireland.