T II E 
INIQUITY OF 
COMPULSORY VACCINATION, 
AND THE 
UNCONSTITUTIONALITY OF ITS STATUTES. 
BY ALFRED E. GILES 
Now, truth, perform thine office; waft asi le 
'I’lie curtain drawn by prejudice and pride; 
lieveai to wondering eyes 
This more tlian monster in his proper guise.”— 
Lite life of the flesh is in the blood.—LerMints X IV/.. II. 
"Parents often 11 nil some one of tlieir children tainted with morbid humors, unlike 
any other member of the family, and which they are wholly unable to account for, ex- 
cept on the supposition of foul matter taken into the system by vaccination.—II. 
Trull. M. /)., Yew York. 
HYDE PARK, MASS. : 
1’liKSS OF TI1K NORFOLK COUNTY OAZKTTK 
1881. PREFATORY. 
Tiie writer published in The Norfolk Oointy Gazette of 2!)th of last October, 
a short article, entitled The Vaccination Delusion, wherein, together with his own 
arguments, he employed certain others, previously used by Mr. Henry Bergh, (the 
well-known chief officer of The New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to 
Animals,) in his letter in the Boston* Post of October 24th. The following week’s 
Gazette,—that of November 5th, contained an article, entitled The Utility of Vacci- 
nation, over the signature of Ur. YV. S. Everett, a highly esteemed physician of Hyde 
Park. A reply to it appeared in the next issue of the Gazette, November 12th, which 
with some revision is herein published, in the hope that by reaching other circles of 
readers, it may aid towards the speedy repeal of those insidious ruthless iniquities— 
the Massachusetts Compulsory Vaccination Statutes,—which, in scriptural phrase, 
frame mischief by a law. 
A. E. G. 
Hyde Park, Mass., November l(i, 1»81 In the hope of your kind co-operation for the repeat, 
or other annulment of the c,on\\mU\\v-vaccination Statutes, 
leaving it to the option of every citizen whether or not to he 
vaccinated. 
With the respects of 
the Erriion. THE INIQUITY OF 
Compulsory Vaccination. 
“ For the mystery of iniquity doth already work. ’ 
A REPLY TO I)R. W. S. EVERETT’S “UTILITY OF VACCINATION.” 
Revised and reprinted from the Norfolk County Gazette of Nov. 12, 1881. 
Editor of the Norfolk County Gazette,—On 
the first clay of the battle of Chickatnauga, 
September 19, 18G3, a well ancl hearty 
soldier of the Union army, eighteen years 
of age, was captured by the Confederates, 
and afterwards taken with about five 
thousand other prisoners to Richmond, 
Va. Subsequently,- about November, he, 
with other captives-, was removed to 
Danville, Va., where they remained until 
the following spring. He relates his ex- 
perience while there substantially as 
follows:— 
“During the time we were at Danville 
we suffered considerably from cold and close 
confinement. The small-pox also broke 
out among us, and attacked a good many, 
but in most cases in a mild form. Those 
afflicted had it its violently as could be ex* 
pected under the circumstances, their sys- 
tems being in such a depleted condition 
that the disease had nothing to feed on. In 
fear of it, and to prevent it, many were 
vaccinated. I was not—and I thank Provi- 
dence that I was not—as I knew some to 
suffer worse from vaccination than they 
would have clone from the small-pox, even 
though it terminated fatally; for it did ter- 
minate fatally in the cases of vaccination, 
and after more suffering than could possibly 
have ensued from the dreaded disease itself. 
The vaccine virus proved to be poisonous 
in some cases. I knew a man whose left 
arm was eaten to the bone by it, the bone 
being visible, and the cavity, which was 
circular in shape, was as large in circum- 
ference as an ordinary orange. After 
months of excruciating pain the man died. 
“But sometimes the vaccination did not 
even prevent the small-pox. A man with 
whom I, bunked was vaccinated, and it 
“took” what would be considered immense- 
ly well, a very large scab developing upon 
each arm. Yet this man took the small- 
pox, and badly, while I—to take another 
view of the case,—although I had not bee. 
vaccinated for about thirteen j’ears, and yet 
hacl been exposed to the disease in almost 
every way, and had slept with this man 
while he was taking it, and after he return- 
ed from the small-pox hospital with his 
sores but partially healed up, remained per- 
fectly free of it. I thought if I must have 
it, I must, and there was an end of the mat- 
ter, there being no way of avoiding it that I 
could see; and I do not know but the late 
vaccination, while the disease was already 
thickly scattered about the house, increased 
the danger of contagion, by throwing the 
blood into a fever of the same kind; while 
by leaving the blood undisturbed, if the dis- 
ease was not intercepted, the chances of 
taking it were at least not augmented.” 
The above writer was subsequently re- 
moved to Andersonville, where he contract- 
ed diseases which caused him much suffer- 
ing after his release and return home. At 
last a physician in the town where he re- 
sided, and who for six months had been 
endeavoring to get his consent to allow 
him to treat liis case, induced him to place 2 
The Iniquity of Compulsory Vaccination. 
himself under his permanent care. This 
physician gave him morphia and other pre- 
parations of opium, which so injured the 
patient that, in his detestation of that drug, 
and as a warning to other people, he wrote 
an autobiographical sketch entitled Opium 
Eating, published by Claxton, llemsen & 
Hatfeltinger in Philadelphia in 1876, from 
whose pages, 15-17, the preceding extracts 
are made. 
This sketch, which accidentally came to 
hand just before I read the learned article 
of our esteemed townsman, Dr. W. S. Ev- 
erett, in last week’s Gazette, on “The Util- 
ity of Vaccination,” contains some pertin- 
ent facts for consideration. Small-pox, as 
the doctor shows, is a destructive disease. 
In the times and places to which he refers, 
its ravages were great, and were probably 
increased, among other causes, by the un- 
hygienic medical treatment under which its 
victims suffered. But though small-pox be 
a dangerous disease, compulsory vaccina- 
tion does not prevent nor cure it. In my 
younger clays I believed in the efficacy of 
vaccination •, I had been told by respected 
friends and physicians that it was useful; 
and I had not heard it questioned; but sub- 
sequent experiences and wider observa- 
tions have destroyed my confidence in it. 
Though I do not oppose voluntary vaccina- 
tion, and observe with interest the results 
of that practice, yet I do detest all meth- 
ods and statutes for enforcing vaccination 
on unwilling people. Here in Massachu- 
setts, whose Constitution guarantees to 
every individual the enjoyment in safety and 
tranquility of his natural rights, the exist- 
ing statutes* require parents to cause their 
children—each one before it attain the age 
of two years—to be vaccinated, and prohib- 
it their admission to the public schools 
until that surgical operation has been per- 
formed. It matters not that the child is as 
healthy a one as ever was born on this 
planet, that its breath is sweeter than roses, 
and its blood purer than the crystal river of 
the water of life, the Massachusetts stat- 
utes require that its parents shall cause the 
virus—the pus of a gangrenous sore in a 
diseased beast—to be injected into the 
veins of that innocent, loving and lovable 
child, before it attain the aye of two yearsT 
and afterwards, that it shall not be admit- 
ted into the public schools, which its par- 
ents are taxed to support, until the wicked, 
insidious and dangerous operation has been 
performed. 
It was once believed that a man’s house 
was his castle, his place of refuge from all 
enemies; but the Vaccination Statutes re- 
quire a man to admit the loathsome gan- 
grene of the vaccinator into the veins and 
tissues of his body, the house he lives in, 
into the very citadel of his life. Its medi- 
cal advocates, many of whom are mere 
hum-drum routine practitioners, looking to 
vaccination fees as one source of pro- 
fessional income, insist that vaccination 
is not injurious. But other intelligent 
physicians—keen observers—testify that 
though often its subjects have suffi- 
cient constitutional vigor to throw off its 
noxious influences, yet not unfrequently it 
produces dangerous, and even fatal results. 
Dr. J. A. M. Muuu, in his letter published 
at the Belfast (Ireland) Evening Telegraph 
of 27tli of last May, says: “The propa- 
gation of syphilis, scrofula, cutaneous dis- 
eases and a host of hereditary maladies, is 
fairly attributable to vaccination, and in 
many instances have been directly traced to 
it. I have observed,” he writes, “four 
cases myself in which the connection was 
unmistakable, and many others in which it 
was more or less obscure. There is no 
method, either chemical or microscopical, 
of ascertaining with any degree of certainty 
the purity or impurity of so-called lymph; 
consequently in any given case we are ut- 
terly unable to describe its results.” 
Dr. William Hitch man, an eminent phy- 
sician in Liverpool, with whom I became 
personally acquainted while there, inform- 
ed me that his experience as a public vac- 
cinator, and in private practice, had made 
known to him an increasing number of fa- 
tal cases of small-pox after vaccination 
from 1841 to 1871 inclusive; and that, on 
the other hand, during the whole of that 
time small-pox had annually appeared year 
after year without previous vaccination un- 
der his own personal supervision, with no 
fatal result, and not unfrequently with no 
seriousnor protracted impairment of health. 
The last August number of the Vaccina- 
tion Inquirer and Health Review ( a very val- 
uable magazine for all who wish to become 
acquainted with both sides of the Vaccina- 
tion Question; it is published by E. W. Al- 
len, 4 Ave Maria Lane, Paternoster How, 
London,) gives the particulars of the vac- 
cination of a company of French soldiers 
* The General Statutes, Chapter 26, Section 27 re- 
quire that children be vaccinated before they at- 
tain the asre of two years. Chapter 41, Section 8, 
prohibits the admission of any child to the public 
schools, who has not been duly vaccinated. The Iniquity of Compulsory Vaccination. 
3 
last December. Fifty-eight of them were 
vaccinated by the regimental doctor from a 
Spanish child. In a few days the whole of 
the fifty-eight, without exception, were in- 
fected with syphilis. 
G. S. Gibbs, Esq., F.S. S., has calculated 
that in addition to the deaths of over 300 
children, per annum, under one year of age, 
of Syphilis, in London, there are 800 afflict- 
ed with this disease, who survive, and who, 
on being vaccinated, furnish impure lymph 
for the life-long contamination of thousands 
of helpless and innocent babies. 
In the Annual Report of the Massachu- 
setts Board of Health for the year 1871, 
pp. 542-5, may be read some account of the 
diffusion of small-pox by the vaccinations 
of one of the doctors in the town of Spen- 
cer, in this State. Some cases of small-pox 
having there appeared, the compulsory vac- 
cination law was invoked, the inhabitants 
were alarmed, and, as a consequence, to 
save themselves from the law and their 
children from small-pox, they sent for the 
doctors to vaccinate them. Now to state 
the matter exactly in the briefest possible 
terms—for the State officials made as short 
work in their report of it, as possible—I will 
here quote its words as follows : 
“52 children had virus inserted in their 
arms by Dr. Fontaine. Within 14 days 
after this operation these children entered 
the hospital, in the eruptive stage of small- 
pox. At the examination before the grand 
jury concerning the charge of manslaugh- 
ter, based on the death from small-pox, of 
one of the children alleged to have been in- 
oculated, no witness testified to the fact 
that small-pox virus was taken and used, 
although there were plenty wlib felt con- 
vinced that such was the case. Dr. Fon- 
taine denied the charge.” 
How does the reader regard this sicken- 
ing record? Who was responsible for the 
diffusion of small-pox in Spencer? Alas! 
for the sad parents whose children were 
there sacrificed on the Molech altar of com- 
pulsory vaccination. 
“A voice was heard in Ramah, 
Weeping and great mourning, 
Rachel weeping for her children ; 
And she would not be comforted.” 
Other cases showing the sad results of 
vaccination could be adduced, sufficient to 
till all the columns of the Gazette; but 
probably enough have been given to satisfy 
the candid reader. Dr. Everett shows that 
small-pox was a very destructive disease 
prior to the discovery of vaccination. So 
also was the plague, and there are times 
and places now-a-days when cholera and 
yellow fever are very destructive, and 
number their victims by the tens of thou- 
sands. These maladies — epidemics, as 
they are named,—appear whenever and 
wherever the unwholesome conditions of 
human life necessitate their existence. But 
Dr. Everett endeavors' to show that since 
vaccination was introduced the mortality 
from small-pox has much diminished; and 
therefore he infers that that diminution of 
mortality has ,been caused by vaccination. 
Just here is where the opponents of vaccin- 
ation take issue with him. They believe 
that the diminution of the small-pox mor- 
tality arises from belter modes of living, 
and is a necessary consequence of improv- 
ed sanitary conditions of life among people. 
Tile plague—the black death of the Middle 
Ages—has not appeared in Western Europe 
nor in the United States since the introduc- 
tion of vaccination, but its absence has not 
been owing to the practice of vaccination, 
but rather to the disuse and the banishment 
of the unwholesome conditions of life which 
are necessary to develop it. 
When General B. F. Butler was in com- 
mand at New Orleans, many people believ- 
ed that a pestilence would there appear, 
but he sagaciously forestalled the epidemic 
by substituting throughout that metropolis 
sanitary sewerage and cleanliness in lieu of 
tilth and pestilential conditions of life. The 
same principle explains the comparative ex- 
emption of Europe and America during the 
present century, from the ravages of small- 
pox. Right sanitary and hygienic condi- 
tions of life, wholesome regimen, clean- 
liness, sobriety, temperance, and a good 
conscience, not simply vaccination alone, 
will save people from the plague, from 
small-pox, from yellow fever, from cholera, 
and from all other epidemics. There is no 
other royal road than this, to the acquire- 
ment of, and preservation of good bodily 
health. 
As to the small-pox statistics figured out 
by the medical officer of the London Local 
Government Board, which Dr. Everett 
prints, I attach little or no value to them as 
affecting the main question. They are il- 
lustrations of the arrangements and cook- 
ery, to which statistics can be subjected. 
Jn my article, “The Vaccination Delusion,” 
published in the Gazette of October 29th, 
appeared certain statistics, given by the 
Registrar-general of London in relation to 
the mortality from small-pox during the 
last thirty years within that metropolis, 
which statistics, Mr. Henry Bergli, the 
well-known chief officer of the New York 4 
The Iniquity of Compulsory Vaccination. 
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to 
Animals, had accepted, and argued from 
as follows :— 
should “be permitted to repose with what 
degree of confidence” they can, upon 
it. Certainly! that privilege, or, rather, 
personal right,—for it is a matter of pri- 
vate judgment pertaining strictly to them- 
selves—doubtless all anti-vaccinators will 
readily acknowledge. The vaccinators may 
even go further, if they wish to. 1 hey 
may vaccinate and re-vaccinate, inoculate 
and re-inoculate themselves daily, and as 
much oftener as they please, and with every 
variety of lymph, vaccine and bovine, human- 
ized, bestial, or fishy—that they can obtain, 
and I know of no one who will oppose them 
in thus manifesting their appreciation of 
Dr. Jenner’s alleged great discovery. 
But will I)r. Everett reciprocate this tol- 
erance, this liberality of living and practice, 
to anti-vaccinators? Will he favor the ad- 
mission into the public schools of their 
perfectly healthy children, innocent of all 
vaccine lymph infused into their veins? 
Ah! No! He has already intimated, in his 
learned article, that their “presence is con- 
tamination” and their “contact shall be 
death.” But here I would ask to whom is 
their presence contamination, and their 
contact death? Is it to the vaccinated chil- 
dren, side-by-side with whom they sit? But 
if vaccinated, (and Dr. Everett affirms 
that vaccination “is the only protection we 
have”) now can such children he con- 
taminated, OR DEATH-STRICKEN BY SMALL- 
POX, FROM WHICH THEY ARE ALREADY 
SHIELDED BY TIIEIR VACCINATION? A MAN 
CLAD IN BULLET-PROOF ARMOR, DOES NOT 
MAKE HIMSELF ONE WHIT MORE SECURE BY 
COMPELLING HIS NEIGHBORS ALSO TO WEAR 
armor. Evidently Dr. Everett distrusts 
the efficacy of vaccination in protect- 
ing the vaccinated children; and, if he dis- 
trust it, it is monstrous tyranny on his part 
to force it upon unwilling people, who are 
as citizens no less good and intelligent than 
he is himself. 
But let us see what physicians and other 
persons, who have studied the subject as 
much as Dr. Everett has, and perhaps more 
so, have said respecting it; and as Dr. Ev- 
erett is not averse to statistics, a Fellow of 
the English Social Science Society. John 
Pickering, may here first express his opin- 
ion, not unlikely matured by his statisti- 
cal studies, as follows: 
“Vaccination is a folly and a crime; it is 
not a prophylactic against sinall-pox, but, 
on the contrary, produces it; and, in addi- 
tion, it is a fearful engine of death, by com- 
municating, along with the vaccine virus, 
other diseases, all equally lethal, and which 
are yearly on the increase.” 
Decades. 
Estimated Popu’n. 
Small-pox Deaths, 
1851 60 
2 570,489 
7,150 
1861 70 
3.018,19:1 
8,347 
1871-80 
3,466,486 
15 543 
"It seems to me,” said Mr. Bergh, "that it is 
absurd in the face ot' these returns, to say 
that vaccination lias "deadened the flame” or 
saved the lives of thousands, as is erroneous- 
ly supposed, or that the deaths accrue from 
the "u n vaccina ted residuum,” as many be- 
lieve, seeing, that in the first decade, when few 
comparatively, were vaccinated, the mortality was 
not half as great as in the last, when 85 per cent, 
ol the infant population had received the benefit 
of tlie state endowed prophylactic. 
"These facts, coupled with the additional one 
that during the twenty-six weeks ending July 2, 
183') persons died in that city of small-pox, 122 
ot whom were under 5 years of age, show an en- 
ormous increase ot small-pox, and aie, utterly 
subversive of the claims ot vaccination and call 
loudlv tor a repeal of the despotic laws, wherever 
they exist, of compulsory vaccination. 
"Again, the advocates of that system take no 
notice of the improved sanitary condition of the 
civilized world in their flattering exhibits, but 
boldly credit vaccination with all they see or 
rather think they see. 
“As I had the honor to state,” continued Mr. 
Bergli, "at a public meeting in Tremont Tem- 
ple the other evening, the opinion is last gain- 
ing ground that to the illogical and fatal prac- 
tice ol impregnating a healthy body with the 
foul mucus of a diseased animal is to be attribut- 
ed those terrible scourges ol the human race, to 
wit:—Consumption, scrofula, cancer and the like, 
which sweep away so many millions of mankind, 
annually, from the face of the earth.” 
Do these statistics have any influence with 
Dr. Everett? No! Ignoring the fact that 
vaecinnation was made compulsory by an 
tict of Parliament in the year 1853, and again 
in 1837, and yet more stringent in 1871, and 
that therefore, probably many, if not the 
greater part, or all of the above small-pox 
victims had been vaccinated, Dr. Everett 
dismisses the preceding statistics with the 
remark that Mr. Bergli,— 
"Is overwhelmed with disappointment and hor- 
ror and astonishment because thirty-one thous- 
and and forty deaths have occurred in thirty 
years, in an estimated population varying from 
two and one-half to three and one-half millions of 
people; and we are therefore gravely informed 
that vaccination is a failure and a delusion, when 
there is no reason to suppose that it is known 
whether a single individual of this thirty-one 
thousand had been vaccinated, or whether they 
had not. There is no need to say more.” 
Thus it appears that from the same sta- 
tistics Mr. Bergli and Dr. Everett drew dif- 
ferent conclusions, each according to his 
capability of correct perception. The 
reader can judge for himself. 
Dr. Everett next pleads that those per- 
sons who “know nothing better” than 
vaccination as a preventive to small-pox The Iniquity of Compulsory Vaccination. 
5 
Next let Francis W. Newman, Emeritus 
Professor, Oxford University, speak. He 
says: “The doctors who advise vaccina- 
tion have no right to be listened to with 
deference; for they have been guilty of 
monstrous and deadly blunders. A quarter 
of a century back they rebuked and scoffed 
at those—some of the graduates in medi- 
cine—who informed them that vaccination 
may propagate, and has propagated, any or 
every disease that is in the blood. To the 
last moment they hardened themselves 
against conviction, and when unable any 
longer to deny it, they showed no humility, 
no confession of error, no abashment.” 
Professor Kraniehfleld, of Berlin, gives 
his conclusions thus: “I too,” he says, 
“have vaccinated my fourteen children at a 
time when I did not knowhow injurious it was. 
To-day I would desist the authoiuties 
AND THE POLICE LAW.” 
But let us see how certain Americans 
have expressed themselves as to the mat- 
ter. Prof. Alexander Wilder, M.D., editor 
of the New York Medical Tribune, says, in 
his pamphlet entitled “Vaccination a Medi- 
cal Fallacy” : “Vaccination is physiologi- 
cally and morally wrong, and its advocates 
are inherently conscious of it, or else they 
would trust to argument and conviction.” 
“The act of vaccination is simply the con- 
tamination of a patient’s body with a blood 
poison. Its most fitting eulogy is found in 
the New Testament—Satan casting out Satan. 
The conclusion is inevitable; it icill not be 
done.” He also says: “There is nothing 
in the nature or elements of vaccine pus- 
tule, or of the ferment of the body of the 
patient, which vaccination creates, to coun- 
teract small-pox tendencies, or to eradicate 
them. It is simply the outcome of a filthy 
disease. The idea of employing such an 
agency to purify the constitution from any 
poison is repugnant to the plainest princi- 
ples of common sense. The act of vaccin- 
ation is simply the contaminating of a 
patient’s body with a blood poison.” 
Prof. Robert E. Gunn, M.D., Dean of the 
United States Medical College in New York, 
in his pamphlet entitled “Vaccination : Its 
Fallacies and Evils,” says: “Vaccination 
has been made compulsory in our schools; 
Vaccinators have gone from house to house 
to vaccinate old and young, and the pro- 
fession have enjoined the people to have re- 
course to repeated re-vaccination, and yet 
small-pox prevails; and the majority who 
suffer from it have been vaccinated.” 
Carl Spinzig, M.I)., in his very scientific 
and elaborate article in the St. Louis Clini- 
cal Record for February and March, 1881, 
and since reprinted in pamphlet form, en- 
titled “Failure of Vaccination,” closes his 
careful discussion of the matter as follows : 
“Now, in conclusion, in view of the patlio- 
chemical action of variola, and the clanger 
and utter futility of vaccination above abun- 
dantly set forth, must not, then, its claimed 
“protection” against small-pox be regard- 
ed as vanity, and its continued practice a 
crime?” 
In looking over the second Report of the 
State Hoard of Health, Lunacy and Charity, 
mentioned by Ur. Everett in his learned ar- 
ticle, I found there the following pertinent 
testimony, which, as he did not cite it, I 
will here quote: “A French writer, Verde 
de Lisle, saj's, ‘Vaccination has caused 
mental and physical degeneration of the 
human species, diminished men’s stature, 
incapacitating them for the fatigues of mili- 
tary service, or even the exercise of danc- 
ing.’ ” Also, at the bottom of p. 189 in the 
same volume, appears this significant note : 
“In small-pox hospitals a majority of the 
patients can usually show more or less well 
marked scars or other evidences of vaccin- 
ation.” Which certainly shows that vac- 
cination does not protect from small-pox. 
One more witness shall close the testi- 
mony. Let Dr. R. K. Noyes, late resident 
surgeon to Boston City Hospital, take the 
stand. In his book entitled “On the Self 
Curability of Disease,” published last year, 
on p. 42, he thus gives his opinion : “I be- 
lieve vaccination has been the greatest uni- 
versal delusion that has ensnared mankind 
within the last three centuries. It origin- 
ated in fraud, ignorance and error. It is 
absurdly unscientific and impracticable. It 
has been promotive of very great evil, and 
I cannot accredit to it any good.” 
From the time when patient Job cried 
out, “Ye are all physicians of no value, ye 
are forgers of lies” (Job xiii: 4) ; from the 
time when Asa, King of Judah (ii Chroni- 
cles xvi: 12) for the cure of his disease, 
sought to the physicians, and as a conse- 
quence slept with his fathers and died; from 
the time when the woman with the issue of 
blood (Mark v. 2.»), who spent all her liv- 
ing upon physicians, and suffered > many- 
things from .them, and was nothing better- 
ed,but rather grew worse; to the time when, 
to relieve General Washington of the croup, 
they blistered and bled him to death; to the 
time when Charles Sumner and Louis Agas- 
siz, each under their care and medicines, 
died, while subsequent autopsies disclosed a 
normal condition of their vital organs; to 
the time when English physicians quar- 
relled among themselves at the bedside 6 
The Iniquity of Compulsory Vaccination. 
of the dying Beaconsfleld; to the time 
when the chosen physicians and surgeons 
of the United States assembled around 
the sick-bed of President Garfield to ex- 
tract from his body the assassin’s bullet. 
—blundered,—and behold he died ; have 
the services of doctors as a profession, or 
any school of them, been such as to make 
it just and desirable that their theories, 
prescriptions and practices should be au- 
thoritative and final over all other people, 
or entitle them to be the tribunal of last 
appeal on medical matters, or to hold 
any special privileges from the State? 
Their dogmatisms, their quarrels, their 
blunders, their jealousies, their cliques, 
their enmities, their inoculations, their 
feuds, their vaccinations and vivisections 
are notorious. Into the pleasant pastures 
and peaceful arenas of true science they 
have not yet entered. The idea of making 
perfect health a crime, and of punishing its 
possessors as criminals, because they will 
not permit themselves or their children to 
be diseased by the Infusion into their veins 
of moistened putrid animal pus, is one 
which could not have originated anywhere 
except iu the minds of medical and legisla- 
tive quacks. What right has Ur. Everett 
or his fellow-practitioners to subject the 
bodies of myself and fellow-citizens to his 
lancet or scarificator, and the infusion into 
our bodies, of pus from a diseased heifer? 
All men in Massachusetts have an equal 
right with Dr. Everett to their respective 
religious opinions and practices. Why 
should they not all have an equal right with 
Dr. Everett to their respective medical 
opinions and practices? In a land of boast- 
ed freedom, have its citizens no individual 
rights which are secure from the invasions 
of legislators and doctors? Certain revo- 
lutions have taught and are teaching the 
would-be rulers that each and every man, 
woman and child have certain essential, in- 
alienable, undying, natural rights, which 
inhere in,and grow out ol their constitutions 
as human beings. They are sacred from 
the touch of all persons, and ought especi- 
ally to be kept unpolluted from the greedy 
grasp of priests, doctors and legislators. 
Whoever would encroach on them, the same 
are thieves and robbers. 
The Constitution of Massachusetts de- 
clares that the end and purpose of govern- 
ment is to secure to individuals who com- 
pose the body-politic, “the power of enjoy- 
ing in safety and tranquility their natural 
rights and the blessings of life.” Good 
health, if a person be so fortunate as to in- 
herit it, or otherwise possess it, is a “natu- 
ral right.” One does not derive it from 
doctors or legislators. He possesses, and 
it is in, and of him, from the nature of his 
being. No right is more inherent in, or 
more essential to, a man in this work-a-day 
world than, good health. No one of “the 
blessings of life” is more valuable. Surely 
the Legislature has no rightful power to im- 
peril that good health, by compelling its 
possessor to submit himself to the disputed 
theories and experiments of the doctors. 
The Constitution also declares that if “the 
property of an individual should be appro- 
priated to public uses, he shall receive a 
reasonable compensation therefor.” A 
man’s good health is his property. It en- 
ables him to obtain a livelihood and give 
honor and support to the State. A man’s 
body iu Massachusetts is his property. 
Formerly, in the Southern States, many 
men’s bodies were their master’s property. 
Notwithstanding the late civil war, the idea 
of alien ownership in man, has not entirely 
disappeared. Even in Massachusetts, cer- 
tain doctors are in the delusion that they 
are so far owners of the bodies of their 
neighbors, as to entitle them, under certain 
conditions, to vaccinate those bodies, with 
the compelled consent of their owners, as 
if unconstitutional and inhuman compul- 
sory vaccination statutes could confer the 
right. If the Legislature, believing that 
universal vaccination is a public benefit, 
enact statutes compelling people to submit 
to it, and any of them be thereby injured, 
is not such person entitled to a reasonable 
compensation? How large, and what shall 
be the compensation to the innocent child, 
or the healthy man or woman, whose body 
has been poisoned with syphilis, or scrofu- 
la, or incipient consumption, diphtheria, 
cancer, tumor, erysipelas, ulcers, boils, or 
other diseases by the operation? It is not 
the legitimate business of the Legislature, 
to select, or to favor any one of the many 
existing medical systems and theories of 
the doctors, nor is it good policy, to attempt 
to coerce any one of the inhabitants, much 
less all the people, to take any particular 
one’s medicines, or to submit to his prac- 
tices; anymore than it is its function to 
establish a particular religious system, and 
to compel the people’s acceptance of it. 
Both one and the other are tyrannies, and 
perversions of honest legislation. 
No! one of the ends and purposes 
of government in Massachusetts is to se- 
cure to individuals of the body-politic, the 
power of enjoying in safety and tranquility 
the preservation of good health,and the pos- 
session of their own bodies, free from the The Iniquity of Compulsory Vaccination. 
7 
jeopardy of the vaccine virus, the medicines, 
the pet theories, and other machinations of 
the many doctors that surround them. Long 
may that right be maintained and preserved 
from encroachment. The medical profes- 
sion have never been agreed as to the effi- 
cacy of vaccination. Some doctors and 
some people believe that vaccination pre- 
vents small-pox; and other doctors and 
other people, equally intelligent, that it, 
like other unwholesome conditions of life, 
tends to produce small-pox and many other 
diseases. Not less stupendously absurd 
and unconstitutional, therefore, are the ex- 
isting Statutes of Massachusetts, compel- 
ling vaccination, than would be Statutes 
universally prohibiting it; and if unconsti- 
tutional, they are void and of no legal 
effect, and no member of any School Com- 
mittee is under obligation to obey, or to 
enforce them. Yettrue State policy—that is, 
an honest respect for the natural rights, 
personal liberty, bodily health, and the mo- 
rality of the people, require that the exist- 
ing Compulsory Vaccination Statutes of 
Massachusetts should be repealed, as 
were the cruel witchcraft statutes, (enact- 
ed in a former day, to preserve the spiri- 
tual health of the people) at the earliest 
possible moment, leaving every person at 
liberty to be vaccinated, or not vaccinated, 
according as each one may be assured in 
his own mind. Let every yoke be broken 
AND THE OPPRESSED GO FREE. 
Alfred E. Giles. 
Hyde Park, Nov. 9, 1881. 
CORROBORATIVE TESTIMONY. 
W. J. COLLINS, M.D., LONDON. 
“After occupying the position of Public 
Vaccinator for twenty years in one of the 
most populous metropolitan parishes, and 
having devoted twenty-five years to close 
study of the question, I have relinquished 
the practice of vaccination, with its emolu- 
ments, on the ground, that while it afforded 
no protection against small-pox, it was the 
frequent cause of dangerous and fatal 
diseases.” 
CONSTANTINE HERING, M.D., 
PHILADELPHIA. 
“I have more than once plainly seen, and 
often heard of, cases where children re- 
mainecl ailing from the time of vaccination, 
who were previously in robust health.” 
J. EMERY CODERRE, M.D., PROFESSOR OF 
“MATERIA MEDICA,” VICTORIA UNIVERSITY, 
AND FOR THIRTY YEARS PHYSICIAN AT 
HOTEL DIEU, MONTREAL. 
“The idea of introducing into a healthy 
organism the virus of an inflammatory and 
gangrenous malady, in order to keep it from 
which does not exist, is revolting 
to common sense.” 
“Now my suspicions become 
Firm convictions. My duties plain. Teach 
The people that—their sacrifice of infants 
To the vile superstition of vaccine 
Corruption is—viler than the sin of 
Israel offering their .first-born to Baal.” 
IMPORTANT TO SCHOOL COMMITTEES 
AND OTHER PERSONS. 
If school committees, teachers, lawyers, 
and other citizens who see that the Compul- 
sory Vaccination Statutes are Unconstitu- 
tional, and therefore are void and of no 
legal potency, will disregard them, as a 
prerequisite for the admission of unvacci- 
nated children to the public schools, they 
will thereby prevent the blood poisoning 
of many innocents. Such action on their 
part will probably lead to a speedy repeal 
of the statutes, or to an authoritative ex- 
position and nullification of them, by the 
Supreme Judicial Court of the State. Here 
in Massachusetts, where Samuel Adams, 
John Hancock, William Lloyd Garrison, 
Wendell Phillips, Theodore D. Weld, and 
other noble patriots have contended for 
natural rights and for righteous personal 
liberty, there are doubtless many persons 
who believe, with Peter and the apostles, 
they must obey God rather than men. Such 
persons will not obey Compulsory Vacci- 
nation Statutes, as against the natural and 
equal rights of their neighbors, or to the 
harm of their children. OPINIONS CONCERNING MEDICAL PRACTICE. 
Dif. Jacob Bigelow, formerly President of the Massachusetts 
Medical Society, in his Expositions of National Medicine, says : 
“1 Jll» certain that the unbiassed opinion of most, medical men of 
sound judgment and long experience is, that the amount of death 
and disease in the world would be less than it now is, if all disease 
were left to itself." 
1 he Medical profession is based upon a huge mass of 
learned ignorance and assumption.”—Andrew Jackson Davis. 
“It is my conviction, the result of considerable investica- 
tion, that should intelligence be transmitted and proclaimed by some 
undisputed authority, that on the last day of December next, the 
entire Medical profession — except the departments of Dentistry, Sur- 
gery and Obstetrics — would ‘positively make its last appearance’ 
in the world, mankind, even with their present limited knowledge 
of the laws of health, yea, even with all their diseases and infirm- 
ities upon them, would straightway be immeasurably benefitted.”— 
IV Great Harmonia, p. 383. 
Du. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Professor of Anatomy in 
the Medical School of Harvard University, in his Border Lines of 
Knowledye, says : “ The disgrace of medicine has been that col- 
lossal system of self-deception, in obedience to which, mines have 
been emptied of their cankering minerals, the entrails of animals 
taxed for their impurities, the poison bags of reptiles drained of 
their venom, and all the inconceivable abominations thus obtained, 
thrust down the throats of human beings suffering from some want 
of organization, nourishment, or vital stimulation.” 
Sir James Clark, M.D., in his letter to Dr. James Jack- 
son, quoted in Dr. O. W. Holmes’ Currents and Counter-currents 
in. Medical Science, writes : “As a physician advances in age, he 
generally, I think, places less confidence in the ordinary medical 
treatment than lie did, not only during his early, but even his 
middle period of life.”