Mr. Peter Taylor has done a great service to sanitation.
On Tuesday he moved a resolution declaring the compulsory laws for vaccination " unadvisable and dangerous," and made a. speech repeating all the old arguments, the best of which are that other diseases have died away as well as small-pox, that the vaccine virus is sometimes impure, and that some vaccinated persons die of small-pox. Sir L. Playfair answered him by showing that out of 17,000,000 cases of vaccination, it was doubtful if disease had been produced in four cases; that small-pox was one of the most fatal as well as hideous of diseases; that the rate of mortality before vaccination was introduced was 3,000 per million, and is now 156 per million ; and that if sanitation had anything to do with the matter, it would have affected other diseases equally, which it has not done. He quoted also the awful mortality caused by smallpox in 1870 in the French Army among the Breton soldiers, whom there was no time to revacci- nate. The House divided, and 16 Members were actually found to vote for Mr. Taylor's motion, against 286.
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