§ MR. LUPTONI beg to ask the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he will ascertain and inform the House which of the Cantons constituting the Swiss Republic have abolished compulsory vaccination, and which of them still enforce it; and whether the population of the Cantons in which compulsion has 29 been retained show a liability to smallpox greater or less than the liability-shown by the population of the Cantons which have abolished compulsion.
§ THE SECRETARY TO THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. RUNCIMAN,, for Sir EDWARD GREY) DewsburyOur latest information (1900) respecting Vaccination Law in Switzerland represents:—
§ 2 Cantons as having never passed such Law.
§ 9 Cantons as having repealed a former Vaccination Law.
§ 2 Cantons as not enforcing their Vaccination Law.
§ 12 Cantons as having Vaccination Law more or less in force.
§ Switzerland, in recent years, has not suffered much smallpox; in the period 1900–04 (inclusive) there occurred in this country some 800 cases only of the disease. These cases were fairly evenly distributed between the thirteen Cantons not enforcing, and the twelve cantons giving effect to Vaccination Law. But though the disease may be regarded as fairly evenly distributed in the five years in question over the whole population, it affected very differently children under ten years of age. Of the 800 odd smallpox attacks, 180 were of children under ten; and of these 180 children, twenty-six are recorded as vaccinated, while 154 are returned as unvaccinated. Of the twenty-six vaccinated children taking smallpox, none died; whereas of the 154 recorded as vaccinated and attacked by the disease, twenty-seven died.