§ MR. CREMER (Shoreditch, Haggerston)I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board whether he can state how many cases of small-pox were treated at the Metropolitan smallpox hospitals in each of the years 1898, 1899, and 1900; how many of those eases bore vaccination marks and bow many were unvaccinated; how many of the fatal cases in each year were vaccinated persons, and how many were unvaccinated; and how many cases were certified by medical men to be cases of small-pox and subsequently turned out to be not so suffering; and what steps he proposes to take to prevent such erroneous certification in the future.
§ MR. WALTER LONGI am informed that the number of cases of smallpox treated at the hospitals of the Metropolitan Asylums Board in the years 1898, 1899, and 1900 was five, eighteen, and sixty-six respectively. The number of cases which bore evidence of vaccination 918 in each of these years was five, fifteen, and forty-nine. There were no deaths in 1898; in 1899 there were three deaths, all of them vaccinated cases; and in 1900 there were also three deaths, only one of which was a case bearing evidence of vaccination. The number of persons wrongly certified by medical men to be suffering from small-pox in these years was thirty-one, eighteen, and thirty respectively. I have no authority to take any steps as suggested in the second paragraph of the question.