學界普遍接受，天花是中國十八至十九世紀主要死因之一，可惜的是迄今罕有量化文獻可以證明。可供憑證的文獻僅有少數方志曾經記載天花盛行、麻子發生、以及種人痘和種牛痘的普及狀況。到十九世紀末期，仍未有天花疫苗接種的完整量化資料，得以分析天花如何在中國傳染。本論文首先簡短回顧天花與疫苗接種在臺灣的歷史，接着藉由分析珍貴的日治時期臺灣戶口調查簿、以及戶口普查中的量化資料，完整呈現臺灣島在十九世紀末期天花以及疫苗接種的真實狀況。

That smallpox was a leading cause of death in China in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is widely accepted, but this has rarely been documented quantitatively. Instead the prevalence of smallpox is inferred from scattered reports of epidemics, impressionistic reports of the numbers pockmarked by the disease, and from reports of efforts to staunch the disease through variolation and vaccination. Nor has the extent of vaccination in the population of late nineteenth century China ever been assessed quantitatively. This paper, after a brief review of the reported history of smallpox and vaccination in Taiwan, analyzes a unique source of evidence from the Taiwan household registers created in 1905 that provides quantitative measures of the smallpox and vaccination status of the island's population in the late nineteenth century.