§ MR. COBB (Rugby)I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for India if he has any information to show whether the steadily increasing death-rate from enteric fever among European troops in India occurs in an exceptionally high ratio among those recently re-vaccinated; whether he is aware that there was a large increase in the number of cases of enteric fever when the children who were vaccinated in 1853, in consequence of the compulsory Vaccination Act of that year, began to come forward as recruits and be re-vaccinated in 1871 and the following years; and whether he will, as an experiment, arrange for the 1141 abrogation for a suitable time of the present Regulation for the compulsory re-vaccination of recruits, which is now applicable even to those pitted with smallpox, so that a statistical test may be afforded as to whether those recruits who may elect not to be re-vaccinated thereby reduce their liability to enteric fever?
§ * SIR J. FERGUSSONThe Secretary of State has no information on the points raised in the first two paragraphs of the question, nor does he consider himself responsible for the medical treatment of recruits.