duced into Maryland
at least simultaneously with its introduction into Massachusetts. De
Curco introduced vaccination into Vienna, where its beneficial results
were displayed on a striking scale; previously the average annual
mortality had been about 835; the number now fell to 164 in 1801, 61 in
1802, and 27 in 1803. After the introduction of vaccination in England
the mortality was reduced from nearly 3000 per million inhabitants
annually to 310 per million annually. During the small-pox epidemic in
London in 1863, Seaton and Buchanan examined over 50,000 school
children, and among every thousand without evidences of vaccination
they found 360 with the scars of small-pox, while of every thousand
presenting some evidence of vaccination, only 1.78 had any such traces
of small-pox to exhibit. Where vaccination has been rendered
compulsory, the results are surprising. In 1874 a law was established
in Prussia that every child that had not already had small-pox must be
vaccinated in the first year of its life, and every pupil in a private
or public institution must be revaccinated during the year in which his
or her twelfth birthday occurs. This law virtually stamped small-pox
out of existence; and according to Frolich not a single death from
small-pox occurred in the German army between 1874 and 1882.
Notwithstanding the arguments advanced in this latter day against
vaccination, the remembrance of a few important statistic facts is all
that is necessary to fully appreciate the blessing which Jenner
conferred upon humanity. In the last century, besides the enormous
mortality of small-pox (it was computed that, in the middle of the last
century, 2,000,000 victims perished in Russia from small-pox), the
marks of affliction, blindness, deafness, etc., were plain in at least
one member of every family.

Asiatic cholera probably originated centuries ago in India, where it is
now endemic and rages to such an extent as to destroy 750,000
inhabitants in the space of five years. There is questionable evidence
of the existence of cholera to be found in the writings of some of the
classic Grecian and Indian authors, almost as far back as the beginning
of the Christian era. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
travelers in the East gave accounts of this disease. Sonnerat, a French
traveler, describes a pestilence having all the characteristics of
Asiatic cholera which prevailed in the neighborhood of Pondicherry and
the Coromand