Of those who have smallpox naturally, one is found to die in six. Of inoculated patients, only one dies in two hundred and fifty. This at least is Dr. Willan’s calculation; and we are persuaded that it is very near the truth. In London, where it ought to be best ascertained, some eminent practitioners have stated the proportion to be so high as one in the hundred. The zealous anti-vaccinists have denied it to be greater, under judicious treatment, than one in a thousand. It cannot be denied, however, that besides the risk to life, the disease, even under the mitigated form, has frequently proved an exciting cause of scrofula and other dreadful distempers, and has often been attended with blindness and deformity. In Reynolds’s _System of Medicine_, it is stated by Marson that-- The Smallpox and Inoculation Hospital was founded in London in 1746, and inoculation was continued there until 1822. Dr. Gregory went carefully over the records of the Hospital for that period of seventy-six years, and found that only three in a thousand died of inoculation. The inoculated disease was usually very mild, but not invariably so. Scores of such testimonies might be adduced, twitching the reader from conclusion to conclusion; and in the conflict of authorities what is to be said? It is true that if we select what evidence we like, and call it sound, and reject what we dislike, and call it unsound, we may prove anything; but it is also true, that if we are to be fettered by evidence we shall stand paralysed amid contradictions. When men who are competent, and obviously honest, deliver varying testimony, we are driven to seek some method of reconciliation; and in this matter of Inoculation wherein our resort is to books, and about which we can have no immediate experience, we may derive much light from the corresponding practice of Vaccination. Thus, what is commoner than for vaccinators to assert, that never within their sphere of observation have they witnessed a single case of injury resulting from Vaccination--not one! Subject any dozen ordinary practitioners to judicial examination, and they would thus testify with scarcely a note of variation. On the other hand, take any dozen mothers of families, especially from among the poor, and they would tell of illness, disease, and death following the vaccinators’ lancets. The men are more or less competent and honest, and the women likewise, and how shall we account for their variance? In the first place, the men have been drilled from the outset of their profession into the conviction that Vaccination is absolutely harmless, and if any disaster follows, it is coincidence, not consequence. Occasionally a practitioner of more vigorous intelligence than the average, like Mr. Henry May of Birmingham, sees what the mothers see, but does he report accordingly? Not at all. In Mr. May’s own words--