Note 16 — Chapter IV · TWO GREAT EXPERIMENTS WHICH ARE CONCLUSIVE AGAINST VACCINATION

These figures (for the Army and Navy) are obtained by averaging the annual death-rates given in the tables referred to, and are therefore not strictly accurate on account of the irregularly varying strength of the forces. But the error is small. In the case of the Navy, from 1864 to 1888 the mortality accurately calculated comes out more, by nearly six per cent. than the mean above given, and in the case of the Army for the same years about one per cent. more. For Ireland the calculation has been accurately made by means of the yearly populations given at p. 37 of the Final Report, but for the Army and Navy materials for the whole period included in the diagrams materials are not available in any of the Reports.