13 MAY 1871, Page 3

The Registrar-General's accounts of the epidemic of small-pox are becoming

alarming. The deaths in London last week were 288, and the total number for the last quarter were twelvefold for the same quarter of 1869. They were then 400. They are now 4,903, of which 2,400 have occurred in London. The great centres of infection are London and Liverpool—where the rate of mortality from this cause has been 8 per 1,000—the mining districts of Durham, and South Wales. The epidemic is believed to have been brought here by the French refugees, but its great fostering cause is the neglect of vaccination, due mainly to the teaching of two or three scoundrels and a great many fools. Scarlet fever, however, is diminishing, having decreased from last quarter by 5,660 fatal cases.