vaccination, instead of saving thousands of infant lives, as has been claimed, really destroys them by thousands, entirely neutralising that great reduction which was in progress from the last century, and which the general improvement in health would certainly have favoured. It may be admitted that the increasing employment of women in factories is also a contributory cause of infant mortality, but there is no proof that a less proportion of women have been thus employed during the last twenty years, while it is certain that there has been a great diminution of vaccination, which is now admitted to be a _vera causa_ of infant mortality. Before leaving the case of Leicester it will be instructive to compare it with some other towns of which statistics are available. And first as to the great epidemic of 1871-2 in Leicester and in Birmingham. Both towns were then well vaccinated, and both suffered severely by the epidemic. Thus: LEICESTER. BIRMINGHAM. S.P. cases per 10,000 population 327 213 ” deaths ” ” ” 35 35 But since then Leicester has rejected vaccination to such an extent that in 1894 it had only seven vaccinations to ten thousand population, while Birmingham had 240, or more than thirty times as much, and the proportion of its inhabitants who have been vaccinated is probably less than half those of Birmingham. The Commissioners themselves state that the disease was brought into the town of Leicester on twelve separate occasions during the recent epidemic, yet the following is the result: 1891-4. LEICESTER. BIRMINGHAM. S.P. cases per 10,000 population 19 63 ” deaths ” ” ” 1·1 5 Here we see that Leicester had less than _one-third_ the cases of small-pox, and less than _one-fourth_ the deaths in proportion to population than well-vaccinated Birmingham; so that both the alleged _protection_ from attacks of the disease, and _mitigation_ of its severity when it does attack, are shown, not only to be absolutely untrue, but to apply really, in this case, to the absence of vaccination! But we have yet another example of an extremely well-vaccinated town in this epidemic—Warrington, an official report on which has just been issued. It is stated that 99·2 per cent. of the population had been vaccinated, yet the comparison with unvaccinated Leicester stands as follows: EPIDEMIC OF 1892-3. LEICESTER. WARRINGTON. S.P. cases per 10,000 population 19·3 123·3 ” deaths ” ” ” 1·4 11·4