It is to be observed, that we have not here the record of the deaths in the whole of London, but merely the number of intramural interments, which diminished as a number of graveyards became gorged beyond capacity of decomposition and assimilation, and relief was sought in the cemeteries of extra-mural parishes, such as St. Pancras and Marylebone. It is only thus that the diminishing number of burials (which ranged from 25,000 to 30,000 during many years of the 18th Century) is to be accounted for. In this light we have to consider the following table, where we note fewer burials, less smallpox, less fevers, but more measles. Burials from From From From Years. all Diseases. Smallpox. Fevers. Measles. 1801 19,374 1461 2908 36 1802 19,379 1579 2201 559 1803 19,582 1202 2326 438 1804 17,038 622 1702 619 1805 17,565 1685 1307 523 1806 17,938 1158 1354 530 1807 18,334 1297 1033 452 1808 19,954 1169 1168 1386 1809 16,680 1163 1066 106 1810 19,893 1198 1139 1031 ------- ------ ------ ---- 185,737 12,534 16,204 5680 From whatever cause there was an abatement of smallpox, but it was a continuous abatement which had set in before Jenner was heard of; and at the same time we must repeat that at this day (when all swear by the unity of Nature and the correlation and convertibility of her forces) it is grossly unscientific to pick out smallpox from the zymotic diseases and deal with it as an independent entity. It is a fever among fevers, bred and propagated in the same conditions, and can never be studied apart from its associates without serious misunderstanding. These Bills of Mortality, as compared with the more accurate statistics of our own time, are of little value; but, such as they are, they are constantly referred to, and their items used, as by Baron, as pretexts for most unwarrantable assertions. Any influence of Vaccination on the smallpox mortality of 1801-10 was practically nothing. Vaccination was limited to a few thousands, and those chiefly of the classes least subject to the disease. The great seething mass of metropolitan squalor, in which smallpox and typhus were endemic, was untouched by the vaccine lancet. If the new practice did good, it was in discrediting and discouraging the culture of smallpox in variolous inoculation.