BRIEF EXTRACTS 
' \ \ 
FROM 
HIGH AUTHORITIES 
Exposing the Evils of ifnccigotiog 
THE GREAT MEDICAL DELUSION OF THE 
NINETEENTH CENTURY, NOW 
EXCITING POPULAR 
INDIGNATION. 
PROVIDENCE, R. I. 
Snow & Farnham, Printers, 
1891. PRINTED FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION. 
NOTES 
ON 
VACCINATION. 
DEDICATED TO 
The Board of Guardians for the Union of 
West Bromwich. 
OLDBURY: 
The Midland Printing Company, Limited, Simpson Street. To the Members of the West Bromwich Board of Guardians. 
Gentlemen : 
We, the undersigned, defendants in the recent prosecutions taken 
against us by your instructions for the non-vaccination of our chil- 
dren, beg to submit the following remarks for your consideration, 
and trust the facts contained herein may at least induce you to re- 
frain from any further prosecutions for medical heresy until the 
present Royal Commission has issued its report on the practice of 
vaccination. 
( Signed), 
WILLIAM ARNOLD, Solicitor’s Clerk, Oldbury. 
ARTHUR T. CARR, Solicitor, Birmingham. 
THOMAS PROVERBS, Engineer, Langley Green. 
_ ) Analytical and Manufacturing 
A. TROBEIDGE, } Larlgley Green. 
Sept. 28th, 1889. Notes on Vaccination, 
l.—Vaccination is no protection from, and has not dimin- 
ished, Small-pox. 
Vaccination was made compulsory by Act of Parliament in the 
year 1853. The Act was further amended and made more stringent 
in 1867, and again in 1871 ; yet each succeeding epidemic since 
1853 has proved more fatal than those preceding it. 
Deaths from Small-pox 
in England and Wales. 
Ist Epidemic 1857-58-59 14,244 
2nd “ 1863-64-65 20,059 
3rd “ 1870-71-72 44,840 
Date. 
In the Report of the Metropolitan Asylums Board for 1887, 
53,000 cases of small-pox are recorded, of which 41,061 are 
admitted to have occurred in vaccinated persons. 
Sheffield, according to Dr. Barry, is a town in which vaccination 
has been most thoroughly carried out, 98 per cent, of the births 
being efficiently vaccinated; yet in the 1871-72 epidemic 1,007 
deaths from small-pox occurred, the population then being 240,000. 
In the recent epidemic (1887-8) 7,001 cases were reported, with 
648 deaths in a population of 316,000. Of these 7,001 cases, 5,851 
are admitted by Dr Barry to have been previously vaccinated ; whilst 
221 of the above cases occurred among the re-vaccinated, and in- 
cluded twelve soldiers and six hospital attendants. 
At Ashton-under-Lyne there were 108 cases of small-pox, of 
which 95 were admitted to have been previously vaccinated, includ- 
ing two re-vaccinated hospital nurses. 
In the fifteenth report of the Medical Officer of Health for the 
Hereford Union, which has just been issued, 56 cases of small-pox 
are recorded, 54 of which are entered as occurring in the vaccinated. 
Of the two unvaccinated cases, one was that of a baby two months 4 
old, who took the small-pox from its re-vaccinated father. There 
were three deaths, the whole of which occurred in the vaccinated. 
"'Of the 54 vaccinated cases, five are reported as having been re- 
vaccinated, whilst one (in the parish of Marcle) occurred in a 
gentleman “ who had been vaccinated and re-vaccinated no less 
than four times, with any amount of marks therefrom.” He had 
“ a very sharp attack,” and communicated the disease to four other 
members of his household, three of whom had been recently re- 
vaccinated, the fourth being a baby which had been vaccinated 
about twelve months previously. 
[For outbreak of small-pox amongst the vaccinated inmates of 
St. Joseph’s Industrial School, Manchester—See Appendix B.] 
2.—The Medical Faculty are at hopeless variance as to the 
nature of vaccine, the source from whence it may be 
obtained, and the method of vaccinating. 
The following are a few of the many sources from which vaccine 
is obtained : 
(a) Horse-grease—either used direct from the greasy heel of a 
horse, or indirectly by passing it through the system of the cow. 
This was the only vaccine recommended by Jenner, who described 
horse-grease as “the genuine life-preserving fluid.” 
(b) Cow-pox— arising spontaneously in the cow declared by 
Jenner to be non-protective against small-pox, but extensively used 
and propagated by Drs. Woodville and Pearson. 
(c) Small-pox Virus inoculated on the cow—declared by Dr. 
W. B. Carpenter to be the only vaccine possessing a scientific basis. 
This small-pox lymph was largely propagated by Mr. Badcock, of 
Brighton, who vaccinated more than 14,000 persons with it himself, 
and supplied it to more than 4,000 medical practitioners. This is 
still the principal variety of lymph in use in Brighton, and is con- 
stantly being propagated from arm to arm throughout the country.— 
Vide Nineteenth Century Magazine for October, 1881, p. 652. 
In reference to this lymph, Dr. Cameron,— a member of the 
medical staff of the Local Government Board,— writing to The 
Times of November 24th, 1879, says : 5 
“ Now what I want to know is what has become of this lymph? 
“ My reason for asking the question is that more recent and search- 
“ ing experiment has demonstrated that it is not vaccine lymph at all,- 
“ but small-pox lymph, capable of being inoculated apparently with 
“ greater safety to the individual than ordinary small-pox, but, like 
“ the mildest inoculated small-pox, capable of propagating that dis- 
“ ease in the most virulent form by infection.” 
When doctors differ who shall decide? 
3.—The Medical Faculty now admit that syphilis and other 
inoculable diseases are spread by vaccination. 
Dr. George Wyld, M. D., Edinburgh, an ardent advocate of vac- 
cination, says: The in-vaccination of syphilis “was long denied 
“ by medical men, but it is now admitted, and therefore, of course, 
“ you require to exercise very great care how you vaccinate.” 
The deaths from syphilis in children under one year old have in- 
creased since the date of compulsory vaccination from 607 to 1,738 
per million of births per annum.— Vide Parliamentary Return, 
November otb, 1880. [Appendix A.] 
Dr. Charles Creighton, M. D., a leading authority on Pathology, 
states that “The so-called syphilitic properties of vaccine are not a 
“contamination of it by another virus, but a revival of those in- 
“ herent properties of cow-pox, to which it owes its- original collo- 
“ quial name of a pox.” 
4.—Vaccination is a direct cause of death. 
The Registrar General records 316 deaths from u Cow-pox, or 
other effects of vaccination,” during the six years, 1881 to 1886. 
This is only a small proportion of such fatalities. At Norwich, 
in 1882, four children were killed by the effects of vaccination ; at 
Great Cornard, in November, 1883, three children met a similar 
death, whilst at Gainsborough a similar set of disasters resulted in 
the death of eight children. These fifteen deaths were certified, 
after official inquiries, as due to vaccination, but in only one case 
had vaccination been mentioned in the death certificate. 6 
Dr. Henry May, Health Officer to the Aston Union, in an article 
on Certificates of Death, says : “In certificates given by us volun- 
tarily it is scarcely to be expected that a medical man will give 
“ opinions which will tell against or reflect upon himself in any way. 
“ As instances of cases which may tell against the medical man him- 
“ self, I will mention erysipelas, arising from vaccination and puer- 
“ peral fever. A death from the first cause occurred not long ago 
“in my practice, and although I had not vaccinated the child, yet 
“in my endeavor to preserve vaccination from reproach I omitted 
“ all mention of it in my certificate of death.” 
In July, 1869, Dr, Lankester, the Coroner for Middlesex, refused 
to recognize vaccination as a cause of death, and altered a verdict, 
which had been returned as “ Death from the effects of vaccination,” 
to “ Death by the visitation of God.” The cause of death was thus 
registered at Somerset House. 
In face of these statements, it is no surprise that in the above 
recorded fifteen deaths from vaccination a certificate to that effect 
was only given in one instance. Assuming this proportion of cor- 
rect certificates to cases to be general throughout the country, the 
above 316 deaths recorded by the Registrar General indicate a 
death-rate of 790 per annum from “Cow-pox and other effects of 
vaccination.” 
For every death from vaccination there are many cases of life- 
long injury. 
5.—A large and influential number of medical men have 
declared themselves against the practice. 
Dr. John Epps, twenty-five years director of the Royal Jennerian 
Institute, after vaccinating about 120,000 people, finally declared in 
1861 : 
“The vaccine virus is a poison. As such it penetrates all organic 
“ systems, and infects them in such a way as to act repressively on 
“ the small-pox. It is neither antidote nor corrigent, nor does it 
“ neutralize the small-pox, but only paralyses the expansive power 
“ of a good constitution, so that the disease has to fall back upon the 7 
“ mucous membrane. Nobody has a right to transplant such a mis- 
chievous poison compulsory into the life of a child.”—London 
Vaccine Institute Report, 1863.” 
Dr. W. J. Collins, L. R. C. P., Edin., M. R. C. S., England, 
whose son is a member of the present Royal Commission on Vac- 
cination, stated before the select committee of 1871, that—“ He had 
“ ceased to vaccinate for ten or twelve years. He had known per- 
“ sons who had been vaccinated and re-vaccinated suffer dreadfully 
“ from small-pox ; two of whom died of the most hideous confluent 
“form after successful vaccination and re-vaccination, one of them 
“ three times vaccinated. He had vaccinated thousands, but at last 
“ abandoned the practice, and gave up at least £5OO a year by so 
“ doing. He found that cow-poxing weakened the powers of vital- 
“ ity and often proved fatal.” 
Ur. R. H. S. Carpenter, the Hon. Secretary of the Medical Alli- 
ance Association, in a long letter to the Hospital Gazette, of Sep- 
tember 22nd, 1888, points out the attendant dangers of vaccination, 
and records several terrible disasters from the practice. He strongly 
condemns the compulsory infliction of an operation attended with 
such ghastly results. The editor, in a foot note, declares vaccina- 
tion to be “one of the burning questions of the day,” to both sides 
of which the columns of the Hospital Gazette will be open. ’ 
Dr. Charles Creighton, M. D., Demonstrator of Anatomy in the 
University of Cambridge, and a man of high standing in his profes- 
sion, is the author of the lengthy article on “Vaccination ” in the 
recently issued “ Encyclopedia Britannica,” which deals a severe 
blow to the practice in question, and marks an epoch in the vaccina- 
tion contx-oversy. This article has fairly taken the medical world 
by surprise, and the weighty arguments against vaccination therein 
have, as yet, met with no attempt at refutation. In one of the 
latest productions from his pen, on this subject, he says: “Anti- 
“ vaccinists have scrutinized the evidence ” for and 
against vaccination ” to some purpose ; they have mastered nearly 
the whole case ; they have knocked the bottom out of a grotesque 
superstition.” 8 
6.—The enforcement of the Law is entirely at the option 
of the Guardians. 
The President of the Local Government Board—Mr. Ritchie— 
said in the House of Commons, on February 17th, 1888, in refer- 
ence to the “Order” of October 31st, 1874, setting forth the duties 
of Guardians as to prosecutions, that it “Was not binding on 
“Boards of Guardians; the Order was merely a communication 
“ and it rested entirely with Boards of Guardians to exercise their 
“ discretion in the matter.” 
Vaccination is rapidly becoming unpopular throughout the land, 
as is indicated by the increase of active resistance against the en- 
forcement of the law. During the five years ending 1886, the 
number of prosecutions for non-vaccination amounted to 12,800, 
notwithstanding the fast increasing number of Unions in which the 
Guardians decline to prosecute. Among such may be mentioned— 
Banbury, Barrow, Biggleswade, Bingley, Dewsbury, Falmouth, 
Gloucester, Halifax, Haworth, Hull, Keighley, Kettering, Leicester, 
Luton, Oldham, Penzance, and the Metropolitan district of Shore- 
ditch. In Eastbourne no magistrate can be found to sit upon vac- 
cination cases, and no prosecutions have taken place since 1884. 
In other towns no auctioneers can be found to sell the goods of per- 
sons distrained upon under this odious law ; whilst many Boards of 
Guardians have suspended prosecutions awaiting the report of the 
Royal Commission now sitting. 
The granting of this commission is an official admission that vac- 
cination is open to question, and those who regard it as a useless 
and hazardous delusion are at least entitled to the benefit of the 
doubt, whilst the question is sub judice. 
The power to enforce this unequal law, or not, is entirely in your 
hands, and you have an absolute discretion as to its exercise. 
We therefore appeal to you to withdraw from the vexatious prose- 
cution of parents who feel compelled, on conscientious grounds, to 
protect their children from what Sir Thos. Watson, M. D., F.R.S., 
has described as the “ ghastly risk” of vaccination. m 
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General Register Office, Somerset House, BRYDGES P. HENNIKER, 
[392—Sess. 2. ] bth November, 1880. Registrar Gem 
12 
Years. 
1867 
to 
1878. 
12 
Y ears. 
1855 
to 
1860. 
8 
Years. 
1847 
to 
1854. 
Years. 
20,859 
1,738 
14,369 
1,197 
4,860 
607 
Syphilis. 
10,798 
900 
O) -Tr 
Vj O0 
-<J o 
99S 
0861'Z 
Scrofula. 
52,268 
4,356 
39,765 
3,313 
24,340 
3,042 
Tabes 
Mesenterica. 
4,038 
337 
3,056 
254 
1,405 
175 
Skin 
Diseases. 
CD 
Oi oS 
9,466 
789 
6,590 
823 
Erysipelas. 
2,092 
174 
3,178 
265 
1,543 
193 
Phlegmon 
including 
Pyaemia. 
168,797 
14,066 
108,088 
9,007 
41,570 
5,196 
Bronchitis. 
212,053 
17,671 
155,089 
12,924 
97,026 
12,128 
Diarrhoea. 
468,856 
39,071 
468,241 
39,020 
298,939 
37,367 
Atrophy and 
Debility, in- 
cluding Pre- 
mature Births 
949,539 
79,128 
808,538 
67,378 
479,203 
59,900 
Total of the 
preceding 
causes. 
875,854 
72,996 
1,019,378 
84,948 
772,579 
96,572 
All other 
causes. 
YEARLY 
AVERAGE. 
YEARLY 
AVERAGE. 
YEARLY 
AVERAGE. 
a 10 
APPENDIX B. 
The case of St. Joseph’s Industrial School, 
Manchester. 
In July, 1888, an outbreak of Small-pox occurred amongst the 
inmates of the above school, which contained at that time 146 
children, with sisters and attendants.. The regulations of the estab- 
lishment require the production of a certificate of vaccination on 
admission ; and the superintendent, Mrs. Gunning, says she knows 
of only one exception—that of a girl entering the institution where 
there was some doubt as to her vaccination. Every sister is re- 
quired to be re-vaccinated on taking service in the institution. 
Small-pox broke out on July 6th, and during the same month 3 
sisters, 5 attendants and 58 children—more than one-third of the 
toted inmates,—were removed to the Monsall Hospital suffering from 
the disease.—Vide The Times, August 10th and loth, 1888. 
“ What renders the Cow-pox Virus so extremely singular is, that 
“ the person who has been thus affected is for ever after secure from 
“ the infection of the Small-pox ; neither the exposure to the variolous 
“ effluvia, nor the insertion of the matter into the shin, producing 
“ this distemper—Jenneh’s Inquiry, 1798. “If an offense come out of the Truth, better it is that the offense come than 
the Truth be concealed.” 
Small-Pox 
AND 
Vaccination 
Alexander Milton Ross, M. D., M. A., F. R. S. L., Eng. 
Member of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, Quebec 
and Manitoba. 
Member oj the British and French Association for the Advancement of Science 
Etc., etc., etc. 
BY 
TO THE READER. 
J SHOULD be false to myself, and false to the best interests of 
humanity did 1 not record my conviction, based on irrefutable 
facts, that vaccination is an unmitigated curse, and the most 
destructive medical delusion which has ever afflicted the human race. 
I know full well that the vaccinator sows broadcast the seeds of many 
filthy diseases of the skin, the blood, the hair and the eyes, which are 
transmitted from generation to generation—an ever-abiding curse to 
humanity. In the interest of health, purity and truth, in the interest 
of true science, on behalf of tens of thousands of children, I ask you, to 
give this indictment a fair and righteous judgment. 
Toronto, Cairaba: 
The Budget Printing & Publishing Company, 64 Bay Street. 
18S8. Telling Unpopular Trains. 
unpopular truth to the public is 
Ml not pleasant, still unpopular truth should 
be told; for good may follow, though one 
cannot tell how or when. It maybe contradicted, 
or it may find here and there a disciple; or the 
author of it may be reviled, persecuted, impris- 
oned, or held up to the scorn and ridicule of the 
public. In one or other of these ways attention 
may be drawn to the subject, and a spirit of in- 
quiry excited which may result in the overthrow 
of the existing error. SMALL-POX 
AND 
VACCINATION. 
By Alexander M. Ross, M. D., F. R. S. L., Eng. 
MALL-POX is a member of the group of diseases termed 
zymotic, or fermenting, which have their origin in unwhole- 
some conditions of life, and, in common, are diminished or prevented 
by the reduction and removal of these conditions. 
A very wide diversity of opinion exists among medical writers re- 
garding the antiquity of small-pox. It is quite certain, however, 
that we have no authentic description of any disease possessing the 
characteristics of small-pox till the sixth century, a. d., when it is 
described as breaking out in Arabia. It was widely disseminated 
by the wars of Mahomet and first appeared in Europe during the 
invasion of Spain by the Moors. The terrible scourge rapidly ex- 
tended over Europe, and into whatever country it penetrated, 
amongst whatever people it found a home, and wherever its ravages 
decimated the people, the conditions which formed its development 
and its diffusion were one and the same. It was born in filth and 
nourished by filth, and claimed its victims where uncleanliness dwelt, 
a selection, indeed, which is a common characteristic in connection 
with the rise and spread of all zymotic diseases. “ During the mid- 
dle ages,” says Sir Lyon Playfair, m. d., “ not a man or woman in 
Europe ever took a bath.” Personal and domestic cleanliness was 
utterly ignored. Man is his own worst enemy. Ignorance and 
superstitution have made him view this pestilence as a thing of 
superhuman origin and a punishment for national sins ; whereas, 14 
it is too true, that the small-pox and cholera plagues of the present 
time, like those of centuries past, owe their existence to the un- 
healthy condition by which we are surrounded, and to the irregular 
and unsanitary lives which characterize a great majority of the 
human race. Disease is the fruit of disobedience, and we must 
learn the fact that to obey is better than to sacrifice—that cleanliness 
is the only natural, hence scientific protection from filth diseases. 
Causes of Small-Pox. 
The causes then which give rise to and propagate small-pox are 
within our control and are preventable. They may be summed up 
briefly as follows : Overcrowding in unhealthy dwellings or work- 
shops, where there is insufficient ventilation, and where animal and 
vegetable matter in a state of decomposition is allowed to accumu- 
late ; improper and insufficient food, habits of intemperance, idle- 
ness, immorality, and unsanitary habits of life, such as neglect of 
ablution and the free use of pure water, and other irregularities of a 
like nature. To the removal, therefore, of the causes which are 
disease producers, the effort and skill of the sanitarian and philan- 
thropist must be directed. The perfection of our sewerage system, 
the prompt attention to outbreaks of infectious disease, the imme- 
diate isolation of the infected, the purification of our atmosphere, 
the preservation of open breathing spaces, a pure and plentiful water 
supply, the inculcation of cleanly habits among the people, with the 
cleanliness of our streets, courts, and alleys, the prompt removal of 
decomposing matters, these and many other duties demand the con- 
stant attention and vigorous efforts of our sanitary authorities. 
Legislation can do much, the people can do more, but the people 
must be taught the importance of the subject in all its relation to 
their daily life ; our children must be educated in the science of life 
how to promote it and how to preserve it. Social and sanitary 
science, by producing a healthy mind in a healthy body, will teach 
a man how to regulate and economize his life. 
What I Believe. 
(1.) That epidemic diseases are the creation of municipal and 
personal neglect of cleanliness. That any medical theory which sets 15 
aside the laws of health, and teaches that the spread of natural or 
artificial disease can be advantageous to the community, is mislead- 
ing and opposed to science and common sense. 
(2.) That exemption from small-pox, cholera, and other filth 
diseases, is not to be found in vaccination, but in the enforcement 
and extension of wise sanitary regulations, such as better habitations 
for the people, perfect drainage, pure water in abundance (and free 
to the poor), wholesome food, and inculcating amongst all classes 
of the community habits of personal and domestic cleanliness. 
(3.) That vaccination is utterly useless and affords no 'protection 
whatever from small-pox. For proof, I refer to the official reports 
of the Montreal small-pox hospitals, showing that hundreds of thor- 
oughly vaccinated people were sti’icken with small-pox, and that 
scores of them died, having on their bodies one, tivo, and in some 
cases three vaccine marks. And further, the fact that the ravages 
of the epidemic were confined exclusively to that section of Montreal 
noted for uncleanliness and non-observance of sanitary regulations. 
(4.) That vaccination (during an epidemic of small-pox) is an 
active and virulent factor, in propagating small-pox by creating a 
susceptibility to the disease. 
(5.) That vaccination is not only useless but absolutely danger- 
ous, as it frequently causes troublesome swellings of the arms and 
glands, and filthy diseases of the skin, blood, hair and eyes. 
(6.) That compulsory vaccination is an outrage on the natural 
and inalienable rights of man and should be resisted by physical 
force if peaceful means fail. 
Vaccination 
In times when the laws of health were imperfectly undex-stood the 
fanciful discovery was made that by poisoning the human blood with 
the vii’us of small-pox (1720), or cow-pox (1800), a future attack 
of small-pox would be prevented. Before the present system of vac- 
cinating with cow-pox was introduced the practice of inoculating 
with the virus of small-pox was followed (1720-1800). The effects 
of this inoculation were greeted with the warmest praise. It was 
considered certain that small-pox would be completely “ stamped 
out” by this means. For eighty years inoculation.claimed its annual 16 
sacrifice of deluded devotees. Roused from this sleep of death, the 
fact forced itself upon all classes that they were sacrificing their off- 
spring at the shrine of a fetish more vengeful than any of which 
heathen nations ever worshipped. History furnishes no parallel to 
the useless and destructive havoc which was wrought by medical 
men of that period. It is said that the physicians of the time 
(1720-1800), Avere slow to admit the pretended virtues of inocula- 
tion ; but when they did accept it they asked no more questions, 
but with the remorseless instincts of a class of men but half removed 
from a state of semi-barbarism they continued the loathsome and 
destructive practice until Parliament put an end, to a rite which, 
whilst it was an enormous source of revenue to the medical profes- 
sion, threatened the extinction of the race. When inoculation Avas 
relegated to the same tomb Avith other abandoned medical delusions, 
then this hideous fallacy of vaccination Avas introduced, substituting 
the putrid pus of diseased cattle for the syphilitic and scrofulus exuda- 
tions of filthy men. 
The founder of this monstrous fallacy—vaccination—Avas Edward 
Jenner, a native of Gloucestershire, England. In 1798 he called 
public attention to his discovery (?) that cow-pox virus introduced 
into the human body was a protection for life against small-pox 
(see Baron’s Life of Jenner), In order to convince those Avho 
doubted the value of this pretended discovery he experimented by 
inoculating with small-pox virus those he had previously vaccinated 
with cow-pox virus. Some of the persons thus experimented on 
did not have the small-pox, but unfortunately for his discoA’ery, 
others fell victims to his experiments. He then discovered (?) that 
there were tAvo kinds of eruptions on the udder of the cow, one of 
which Avas spurious, while the genuine coAV-pox was produced by 
contagion with grease in the horse. The coavs in his neighborhood 
were sometimes milked by men as well as by women, and men 
Avould sometimes milk the coavs with hands foul with the grease 
from dressing the heels of horses afflicted with what is called grease, 
a filthy exudation from sick horses. With this grease the dirty fel- 
loavs poisoned the coavs’ teats, which soon became covered Avith run- 
ning sores, or horse-grease cow-pox. This is what Jenner finally 
pronounced a sovereign antidote against small-pox. (See Baron’s 
Life of Jenner, Vol. i, p. 135.) 17 
As Jenner’s horse-grease cow-pox soon fell into disrepute as a pre- 
ventive of small-pox, as originally asserted by him, humanized cow- 
pox was resorted to by arm to arm vaccination, and for many years 
this delusion was adhered to until proof was laid before the British 
Parliament that scrofula, syphilis, and many other foul diseases of 
foul men and women were transmitted to infant children through 
vaccination. Then this miserable delusion was abandoned, after 
having filled the world with untold misery and woe. 
At the present time the vaunted prophylactic is calf-pox virus. It 
is said by the advocates of vaccination that Jenner’s horse-grease 
cow-pox has lost its power as a preventive, owing to transmission 
from arm to arm. Hence to retrieve the credit of vaccination the 
calf project has been started, with the unscientific nonsense about 
resorting to pure lymph from the calf I 
How Vaccine Pus is Obtained. 
The vaccine virus or corruption is obtained by passing either 
small-pox, cow-pox, or humanized pox through cattle as follows : 
A calf or heifer is inoculated on its shaved abdomen in about sixty 
places. Upon the punctures thus made vesicles form. The vesicles 
run their due course, and the vaccine virus which they contain is 
ready for use in about six days—for use, namely, from the living 
animal for the purpose of vaccinating human beings, and for collec- 
tion in a fluid state into tubes, or in a dxy state on ivory points. 
After seven days the calf is returned to the butcher for ordinary 
use—namely, as food for those fond of calf meat. 
The pus thus obtained from the calf is called calf lymph, but it is 
not calf lymph. It is the serum of a particular disease of the calf 
thrown out upon the skin. Calf lymph is the natural fluid that cir- 
culates in the lymphatic vessels of the calf—a healthy thing, as re- 
mote from scabs and pox as day is from night. It is this virus from 
the calf that our children are now being poisoned with ; thousands 
of points and tubes filled with this filthy pus are now being used by 
vaccinators. Nobody has the right to transplant such a mischievous 
poison into the life of a child ! 18 
What is Vaccine Pus? 
It is high time, in the interest of humanity and science, to stop 
and ask, What is vaccine pus? How does it injure our race? 
Vaccine pus—for it is not lymph—is constituted of blood corpus- 
cles in progress of destructive fermentation ; and for that reason 
alone it is a physiological crime to infuse it into the blood of a 
human being. Fungi are also present in vaccine virus, in the form 
of small round cells, which have molecular movements. These cells 
are in a state of ferment or zymosis and are the micrococci vaccince, 
or pathogenic globular bacteria. These bacteria are found in large 
numbers in vaccine virus, of which they are not only the active ele- 
ment, but the factor in transplanting filthy diseases of the blood and 
and skin in the human body. Truly this vaccine virus is a poison- 
ous iclior, a heterogeneous substance, a blood-poison by means of 
which is planted the germs of numberless diseases which destroy the 
lives of thousands upon thousands of our race. 
A Colossal Medical Fallacy. 
More than twenty years ago I began a careful study of the subject 
of vaccination, and before I got through I was forced to the conclu- 
sion that vaccination was the most colossal medical fallacy that ever 
cursed the human race. Few physicians attempt to investigate this 
subject for themselves. They have been taught to believe its effi- 
cacy. They have vaccinated because it was the custom and they 
were paid for it. They have supposed vaccination would prevent 
small-pox because the best authorities said it would, and they accept 
it without a question. To such I would say that thirty years ago 
the entire medical profession believed that blood-letting afforded the 
only relief to all kinds of fever, and that a drink of cold water given 
to a fever patient was certain death. A few reformers denounced 
this barbarous practice, and some of them lived to see its complete 
overthrow, while the leading physicians fought for their lancets to 
the last. The leaders of the anti-slavery movement in the United 
States were regarded as lunatics. Some of them were killed and 
others narrowly escaped death at the hands of a mob, but they lived 
to see their principles triumph and their labors applauded by the 19 
civilized world. Thus it has ever been with every effort of reform, 
with every struggle of truth against error, and so it will be in this 
opposition of organized medical despotism to the enlightenment of 
the people regarding this beastly and barbarous practice of vaccina- 
tion. 
An Unpopular Cause. 
Those whose interest it is to uphold vaccination endeavor to make 
it appear that anti-vaccinators are ignorant cranks, and, therefore, 
not entitled to credence. The truth is that they are not ignorant, 
but have been compelled to abandon vaccination after giving the 
subject an impartial investigation. They have refused to vaccinate 
and relinquish quite a considerable sum of money yearly in vaccina- 
tion fees. They have espoused an unpopular cause and have made 
many sacrifices to uproot what they believe to be a grievous wrong. 
They have had everything to lose and nothing to gain in entering 
upon this crusade, and they are confident that every candid person 
who will honestly investigate this subject will see what a hideous 
delusion vaccination is. Anti-vaccinators are convinced that they 
are right and can afford to smile at the mean inuendoes, personal 
abuse and ridicule of interested, indifferent and stupid physicians 
who find it their interest to perpetuate this delusion. So completely 
has vaccination become a hobby of this period that ribaldry and 
abuse are the chief arguments employed to sustain it against criti- 
cism and question. Pro-vaccinators show by this that vaccination is 
defenceless against attack from scientific inquiry. 
Every remedy should be left to justify itself by its own efficacy, 
and its acceptance should be left to the discretion of the individual. 
The convictions of the individual should be as inviolable in the do- 
main of medicine as that of religion or politics ; and coercion in that 
is nothing less than tyranny, and should be resisted to the uttermost. 
It is but two or three centuries ago that we were torturing Quakers, 
drowning witches, and racking and staking heretics. The spirit of 
intolerance is now passing from the priest to the doctor, accom- 
panied, as usual, by fierce demands for official recognition—for 
office, privilege and power. What avails it that we have rid our- 
selves of ecclesiastical despotism if we are to be handed over, bound 20 
hand and foot, to the tender mercies of a place-hunting, dollar- 
worshipping, medical priesthood* The Compulsory Vaccination Act, 
of Ontario, is a filthy blot on the escutcheon of the Province, The 
greedy, needy, political doctors who framed that despotic Act; the ig- 
norant, stupid legislators who hurried it through the Legislature ; and 
the time-serving newspapers who were criminally silent whilst doctor- 
craft was busy in forcing the passage of this iniquitous Act, merit, 
and will receive, the contempt and scorn of coming generations of 
intelligent Canadians. The Ontario Legislature has no more right 
to command vice and disease than it has to forbid virtue and health. 
A Shifting Dogma. 
Edward Jenner, the introducer of vaccination, maintained that 
one vaccination protected a person for life. This, however, was 
soon found to be untrue. Then, one vaccination in infancy and one 
after puberty were deemed necessary. This also proved a delusion. 
Its advocates then advised a third vaccination at maturity. Then it 
was thought necessary that vaccination should be repeated every 
seven years ; and now, to be thoroughly protected, it is claimed 
that every one should be vaccinated every two or three years. This 
is the position occupied by the profession at present, although even 
in this there is a diversity of opinion among the so-called leading 
physicians. The fact is, no two physicians agree as to what con- 
stitutes effective vaccination. 
If vaccination and re-vaccination does certainly protect against 
small-pox, why do vaccinators insist on the - enforcement of quaran- 
tine regulations. Why do they exclude unvaccinated children from 
the public schools ? Why are those who have been protected by re- 
peated vaccinations so panic-stricken when a case of small-pox is 
discovered in their midst? Certainly these facts prove that they 
have no faith in their vaunted prophylactic. If vaccination is the 
protection it is claimed to be, why not prove that none but the un- 
vaccinated are stricken by small-pox—while the vaccinated never 
are attacked ?—why, because the truth is, that vaccination never 
protects against small-pox, the vaccinated and unvaccinated are alike 
susceptible to small-pox if surrounded by unsanitary conditions. If 21 
vaccination is the safeguard it is said to be by vaccinators, why not 
depend on it alone? Why not prove by facts that the vaccinated 
never take the small-pox but are safe under all circumstances, while 
the unvaccinated are certain to take the disease whenever exposed 
to it? This cannot be done, but, on the contrary, thousands of the 
vaccinated take the small-pox and many die with it just as the un- 
vaccinated do. 
Until the advocates of vaccination are willing to depend on this 
one prophylactic, they should cease to enforce it upon those who 
have no faith in it. 
Official Proof that Vaccination does not Protect from 
Small-Pox. 
The following official evidence is from vaccination sources and 
proves conclusive!}7 that vaccination does not protect from small- 
pox. It further proves that during a small-pox epidemic the vac- 
cinated, as well as the unvaccinated, are equally susceptible to the 
contagion if surrounded by unsanitary conditions. Much of what 
transpired in the Montreal small-pox hospitals was suppressed, 
especially whatever was likely to operate against the progress of 
vaccination, which proved a golden harvest to the vaccinators. But 
notwithstanding the conspiracy of silence a few official reports 
pregnant with proof against vaccination, and proving beyond ques- 
tion that a large proportion of the patients admitted into the Mon- 
treal small-pox hospitals had been vaccinated, and that many of them 
died, some with two, and others with three, vaccine marks upon their 
bodies. 
I refer to the official report trom the “Civic Hospital,” dated 
August 17, 1885 : “Up to this date, 133 patients suffering from 
small-pox have been admitted to the Civic Hospital; of these seventy- 
three were vaccinated, 56 had one mark, 13 two marks, and 4 three 
marks.” 
I refer to the official report from “ St. Roch’s Hospital,” dated 
October 22nd, 1885: “Number of vaccinated patients admitted 
since April, one hundred and ninety-seven.” 
I refer to the first official report from the “ St. Camille’s Hospital,” 
November Ist to 7th, 1885 : “ There are now in this hospital 188 22 
small-pox patients ; of these ninety-four are vaccinated. Among the 
dead are twelve who were vaccinated 
I refer to the first official report from “ St. Saviour’s Hospital,” 
covering a period of fifteen days, that is, from Oct. 15 to 31, it was 
stated there had been in all 67 patients admitted, of whom sixty had 
been successfully vaccinated, thirty-six having two vaccination marks, 
2 having three, and actually 3 having four. 
I refer to the second official report from “ St. Saviour’s Hospital,” 
November Ist to 7th, 1835 : “ Thirteen small-pox patients admitted ; 
of these nine were vaccinated and four (only) unvaccinated.” 
I refer to the third official report from “ St. Saviour’s Hospital,” 
November 28th up to and including Dec. 6th, 1885 : “ Number of 
patients admitted, 6 ; of these four hear evidence of vaccination, and 
two were not vaccinated.” 
I refer to the official report from “Crystal Palace Hospital,” Nov. 
28th up to and including Dec. sth, 1885 : “ Number of patients ad- 
mitted, 36 ; of these nineteen tvere vaccinated.” 
During the small-pox epidemic in Montreal in 1885, the medical 
profession was so intent upon collecting vaccination fees, that what- 
ever was likely to depreciate vaccination was withheld from the pub- 
lic. No record was kept of the number of vaccinated victims of 
small-pox, but it was well known to the public vaccinators that a 
large proportion of those stricken were fully 'protected (?) by vac- 
cination and re-vaccination. 
Determined to reach the truth, if possible, 1 kept a record of the 
name, nationality, age, and residence of every man, woman and child 
who died of small-pox from April, 1885, to Jan. 30, 1886, and had 
I not been seized with illness would have personally discovered who 
were vaccinated and who were unvaccinated, from inquiry among 
the relatives and friends of the deceased. However, I employed a 
capable and trustworthy medical man (not an anti-vaccinator) 
to do what I had proposed to do myself. The labor has 
been delicate, arduous, and expensive, requiring great patience, 
finesse, and tact ; but the work has been faithfully done, and I 
append the following summary of results, proving conclusively that 
nearly one-half of those who died from small-pox were protected ( ?) 
by vaccination : Summary of Montreal Small-Pox Epidemic, 1885-86. 
Ages at Death. 
French 
Canadians. 
Other 
Nationalities. 
Protestants. 
Vaccinated. 
Unvaccinated. 
Totals. 
Under six months 
194 
12 
6 
48 
165 
213 
Six months to one year 
299 
15 
10 
138 
186 
324 
One year to twenty 
2,243 
113 
49 
1,062 
1,343 
2,405 
Twenty to fifty 
144 
36 
29 
128 
81 
209 
Fifty to ninety 
13 
10 
3 
24 
2 
26 
Total. 
2,803 
187 
97 
1,400 
1,777 
3,177 
Latest Official Testimony from England. 
I refer to the following summary of the last report of the Regis- 
trar-General of England, which proves conclusively that vaccination 
does not diminish or protect from small-pox : 
In the first 15 years after the passing of the Compulsory Vaccina- 
tion Act, 1854 to 1868, there died of small-pox in England and 
Wales 
54,700 
In the second 15 years, 1869 to 1883, under a more stringent law, 
ensuring the vaccination of 95 per cent, of all children born, 
the deaths rose to 
66,447 
Total for 30 years 
121,147 
Of these, there died under five years of age 
51,472 
From 5 to 10 years of age 
16,000 
Total under 10 years 
67,472 
Herbert Spencer, in reference to the above, says : “ The measures 
enjoined by the vaccination acts were to have exterminated small- 
pox ; yet the registrar-general’s reports show that the deaths from 
small-pox have been increasing.—Social Statics, p. 367. 
Sir Thomas Chambers, Q. C., M. P., recorder of the city of Lon- 
don, says : “I find that of the 155 persons admitted at the small- 
pox hospital, in the parish of St. James’s, Piccadilly, 145 were 24 
vaccinated. At Hampstead Hospital, up to May 13, 1884, out of 
2,965 admissions, 2,347 were vaccinated. In Marylebone 92 per 
cent, of those attacked by small-pox were vaccinated. Official 
Report, 1884. 
“Of the 950 cases of sipall-pox eight hundred and seventy, 
or 91.5 per cent, of the whole cases, have been vaccinated.”—Dr. 
Mansion’s Report of High gate Hospital for 187]. 
“There were 43 cases treated in the Bromley Hospital between 
April 25 and June 29, 1881. Of confluent small-pox, tbei’e were 
16 cases ;of discrete, 13 ;of modified, 13. All the cases had been 
VACCINATED—THREE RE-VACCINATED. F. Nicolson, L.R. G.P., 
Lancet, August 27, 1881. 
London Standard, February 24th, 1883, says : “ It is well known 
that the small-pox patients in the hospitals of the Metropolitan Asy- 
lums Board are three-fourths of those persons who had been success- 
fully vaccinated in infancy ; and amongst such vaccinated persons 
there occur some of the worst cases of small-pox in which the erup- 
tion is confluent.”—From Leader on “St. Pancras Manslaughter 
Case.” 
Can anyone after this be found to contend that vaccination is a 
protection against small-pox? 
Official Evidence from Scotland. 
From the Scots Registrar-General’s Returns we extract the fol- 
lowing : 
Deaths by small-pox in Scotland of children under one year of age 
in 1871-3 : 
Year. Vaccinated. Unvaccinated. 
1871 64 142 
1872 314 64 
1873 139 39 
Total 517 245 
It can hardly be alleged that in the instance of these 517 babes 
their “protection had worn out by age,” or that constituting a tenth 
of the victims of the epidemic their deaths were “ rarities.” 25 
Official Proof from British India that Vaccination is Use- 
less, that Hygiene and Sanitation Afford the Only 
Reliable Protection against Zymotic Diseases. 
The Government Blue-book, entitled, “ Report on Sanitary Meas- 
ures in India in 1884-5,” is now issued. It is, in the main, a report 
for 1884. Of the population of 254,000,000 the number under reg- 
istration of death causes, &c., is 198,000,000. The year’s deaths 
were 5,239,218, of which small-pox contributed 333,382. The vac- 
cination staff of India is composed of 4,261 persons. The number 
vaccinated during the year by this special establishment was “no 
fewer than 5,834,861.” 
The facts and inferences in this Blue-book in respect of small-pox 
and vaccination are of extraordinary interest, being characterized by 
an impartiality and an absence of the suppressio veri and the sug- 
gestio falsi not always observed on the vaccination question, and 
which we are glad to recognize. 
Upon this subject the Army Commission observe : 
“We are thus brought face to face with the fact that, notwith- 
standing the existence of an active vaccination service, small-pox swept 
over the provinces just as if there had been none. It is clear that vac- 
cination has been incompetent to deal with the disease in its epidemic 
form, as is shown by the large staff of 4,261 vaccination officials. 
These remarks are not intended to call into question the utility of 
vaccination. But, in presence of the facts, the question is a per- 
fectly relevant one—namely, whether dependence can henceforth be 
placed on vaccination as a protection against a small-pox epidemic? 
The question, of course, answers itself. .... This and similar ex- 
perience appears to show that the remedies, if such be available, will 
have to be extended beyond vaccination, and will have to deal with 
epidemic causes affecting localities and their inhabitants. If sanitary 
ivorh be neglected, no more dependence against small-pox epidemics 
ean be placed on vaccination. The true remedies lie elsewhere alto- 
gether (p. 203). 
“ The great differences which exist between adjoining population 
groups in their liability to epidemic attacks of small-pox, fever, and 
cholera are tolerably constant and not merely accidental, and these 26 
are our safest guides to sanitary work. The facts before us show even 
now where work requires to be done for lessening the liability of the 
people to attacks of the whole epidemic tribe of diseasesTand amongst 
them of small-pox, which in an epidemic year escapes from the influ- 
ence of vaccination alone, and occasions such results as we have de- 
scribed.” (p. 205). 
“ In large towns where the subsoil has become dangerously pol- 
luted by long neglect, the people are living in a state of health which 
may at any moment give way under the first breath of an epidemic. 
In the present case the great small-pox epidemic ravaged the prov- 
inces in spite of the persistent efforts of the vaccination service ; and 
it may be well, once for all to recognize that what may be called 
‘ epidemicity ’—a condition of these epidemic diseases which may 
show itself at any moment—is connected directly ivith the conditions 
under which the people live, and that, when it has once shoivn itself, 
the penalty of past sanitary neglect is certain to he exacted in spite of 
all palliative measures(p. 207). 
Certainly, no intelligent person will claim that vaccination protects 
from small-pox after reading the above official and unprejudiced re- 
port from vaccination officials. 
Testimony of Vaccinators. 
The evidence of the most observing among the vaccinating officers 
employed in Europe and America, proves beyond a question the in- 
tegrity of my claim that vaccination is both useless and dangerous. 
Dr. George Gregory, for fifty years director of the small-pox hos- 
pital in London, published the following declaration in the Medical 
Times of London : “ Small-pox does invade the vaccinated, and the 
extirpation of that dire disorder is as distant as when it was first 
heedlessly anticipated by Jenner.” He also declares further : “ The 
idea of extinguishing the small-pox by vaccination is as absurd as it 
is chimerical; it is as irrational as presumptuous.” 
Dr. W. J. Collins, for twenty-five years public vaccinator of Lon- 
don, England, testified before a committee of the British House of 
Commons that he had vaccinated thousands, but at last abandoned 
the practice and gave up at least £SOO a year by so doing.” He 
further testified that, “There really exists no change in the virulent 
character of the small-pox, notwithstanding the vaccination laws ; 
and of those attacked by the disease, at least two-thirds were 27 
satisfactorily vaccinated. I have not the least confidence in 
vaccination ; it often transfers filthy and dangerous diseases without 
offering any protection whatever.”—l Albert Terrace, Gloucester 
Gate, N. W., September 2nd, 1882. 
Dr. John Epps, twenty-five years director of the Jennerian Insti- 
tute, London, Eng,, had vaccinated about 120,000 people, but finally 
declared: “ The vaccine virus is a poison. As such it penetrates 
all organic systems, and infects them in such a way as to act repres- 
sively on the pox. It is neither antidote nor corrigent, nor does it 
neutralize the small-pox, but only paralyzes the expansive power of a 
good constitution, so that the disease has to fall back upon the mucous 
membrane.” And again : “ If the vaccine lymph does not produce the 
vaccine disease, it produces something else—i. e., a noxious agent is 
introduced to poison the system against the poison of small-pox ; but 
if it does not produce this effect it still poisons, without the benefit 
super-added of protection from small-pox.”—London Vaccine Insti- 
tute Report, 1863. 
Dr. Stowell, M. R. C.S., of London, Eng., (thirty years a public 
vaccinator), says : “ The nearly general declaration of patients en- 
ables me to proclaim that vaccination is not only an illusion, but a 
curse to humanity. First, it was asserted that vaccination protected 
for life. When this proved a failure, re-vaccination in every seventh 
year was proposed ; but this also failed.”—From Letter to the Lancet. 
Thomas Skinner, M. D., L. R. C. S., Liverpool, says; “That 
there are many who die of vaccination I have no doubt whatever; 
that they are maimed for life I have no doubt; and that scrofulous 
and other forms of disease are rendered active by it every physician 
in family practice knows to be an almost every-day occurrence. I 
saw a case the other day where the little patient has never slept for 
three weeks, or very little, and it cannot be touched without scream- 
ing. It is much emaciated and otherwise very ill. All this has 
arisen and dates from the date of its vaccination.”—Report on Vac- 
cination, 1884. 
Dr. Brereton, Sydney, New South Wales, says : “In my expe- 
rience I have seen more evils result from vaccination than I ever 
saw from small-pox. I have seen direct, fatal results from vaccina- 
tion. I have seen chronic—incurably chronic—disease the result of 
vaccination, and death after the lapse of many years ; and I have 
seen diseases of a destructive character introduced into the system 
through vaccination. Small-pox has steadily increased and is in- 
creasing as the practice of vaccination is more generally enforced.”— 
Evidence given before the Cabinet and Legislature at Sydney. From 
the Sydney Morning Herald, October 25th, 1881. 28 
Compulsory Vaccination of Infants 
William Hycheman, M. D., of New York, 1880, writing after 
forty years’ practice as a physician, says : “ I have recently dis- 
sected more than a dozen children, whose deaths were caused by 
vaccination, and no small-pox, however black, could have left more 
hideous traces of its malignant sores, foul sloughing, hearts empty 
or congested with clots, than did some of these little victims. 
Shame ! Indeed, scarcely a day elapses but I am called upon to 
witness the sufferings of vaccinated children, in the form of cerebral 
and gastric complications, persistent vomiting, bronchitis, diarrhoea, 
with pustules in the mouth or throat, (pharnyx), on the eyelids, and 
ulceration of the cornea, which remains opaque, and. may lead to 
blindness.”—N. Y. Medical Tribune, 1880. 
Dr. Fortescue, Sydney, New South Wales, says: “There are 
cases in which children having some inherent delicacy of constitu- 
tion, only wait for some depressing cause to develop symptoms of 
disease, and no doubt vaccination acts as the depressing cause, and 
the children are made ill in consequence of that depression, and in- 
directly by the process of vaccination.—Sydney Morning Herald, 
October 25th, 1881. 
Professor Bock, M.D., of Leipsic, Physician to the Saxon Army, 
says : “I have, in a forty years’ practice, seen far more evil than 
good from vaccination.” 
Dr. Hoeber, Hamburg, says: “Vaccination is extremely prone 
to develop disease, being an attack upon the system in early child- 
hood, when, owing to teething, there is always a great predisposition 
towards disease. This lowers all the natural powers of resistance in 
the child, and, as a consequence, illness of various kinds, scrofulous, 
bronchial, etc., frequently follow.”—Her Prahtische Arzt, January, 
1878. 
Dr. B. F. Cornell, president of the Homoeopathic Medical Society 
of New York, says; “It is my firm conviction that vaccination 
has been a curse instead of a blessing to the race ; every physician 
knows that cutaneous diseases have increased in frequency, severity 
and variety to an alarming extent.”—Address delivered before the 
Homoeopathic Medical Society of New York, February 11th, 1868. 
Dr. Leander Joseph Keller, Chief Physician to the Austrian State 
Railways, kept a record of the mortality amongst the company’s 
servants and their families of 373 small-pox cases during 1872. 
Dr, K. concludes his paper thus : 
“1. Generally more vaccinated than unvaccinated persons are 
attacked by small-pox. 29 
2. Re-vaccination did not protect from small-pox, and did not 
lessen the general mortality. 
3. Neither vaccination nor re-vaccination exercised a favorable 
influence upon the small-pox mortality.” 
Dr. Joseph Hermann, Chief of the Imperial Wiede Hospital, 
Vienna, from 1828 to 1864 (from the Naturarzt), says: “ When a 
man has treated hundreds of cases of small-pox, both under sporadic 
and epidemic condition, through many years and at all seasons, he 
comes to the decided conclusion that vaccination has not the remotest 
effect on the outbreak, course or issue of the disease. Vaccinated 
persons, bearing unmistakable marks of the process on their arms, 
frequently have confluent small-pox ; while, at the same time, un- 
vaccinated people have it in the mildest form. * * * * * 
I am convinced that vaccination is the greatest mistake and delusion ; 
a fanciful illusion in the mind of the discoverer; a phenomenal ap- 
parition, devoid of scientific foundation, and wanting in all the con- 
ditions of scientific possibility.” 
Dr. Frank Hastings Hamilton, late Lieutenant-Colonel, Medical 
Inspector United States Army, says: “ Vaccination almost con- 
stantly produces the same results (i. e., ugly and untractable sores), 
and is in many cases followed by abscesses in the axillary, cervical 
and other glands.”—Treatise on Military Surgery, quoted hy Pro- 
fessor Jones in Researches upon Spurious Vaccination. P: 26, 
1867. 
Robert Liveing, M. D., F.R.C.P., A.M., Physician to the Skin 
Department, Middlesex Hospital, says : “ Vaccination frequently 
produces an attack of eczema, simply by setting up local irritation.”— 
Treatment of Skin Diseases, p. 7. 1877. 
Mr. Brudenell Carter, F.R. C. S., L. S. A., Ophthalmic Surgeon 
to St. George’s Hospital, says: “I think that syphilitic contam- 
ination by vaccine lymph is by no means an unusual occurrence, a 
large proportion of the cases of apparently inherited syphilis are in 
reality vaccinal ; the syphilis in these cases does not show itself until 
the age of from eight to ten years, by which time the relation be- 
tween cause and effect is apt to be lost sight of.”—Medical Exam- 
iner, May 24th, 1877. 
Dr. Nieraeyer, of Tubingen, 1879, {Text-Book of Medicine, 1879,) 
says: “It cannot be denied that vaccination sometimes endangers 
life, and in other cases leaves permanent impairment of health, 
especially cutaneous diseases and other scrofulous affections, due to 
the debilitating influence of the fever accompanying the vaccinia.” 
Sir James Y. Simpson, M. D., Edinburgh, says: “Small-pox 
can never be exterminated by vaccination.” 1878. 30 
Dr. Simon, medical officer to the Privy Council of England, says ; 
“ Srnall-pox after vaccination has been a disappointment both to the 
public and the medical profession.”—Report to the Privy Council. 
Thomas Brett, M. D., London, says: “After 50 years’experience, 
I arrived at the conclusion that vaccination was not only useless as a 
preventive, but dangerous ; I decline the risk of vaccination, and 
would not vaccinate my bitterest enemy.”—Speech, April 17th, 1883. 
Sir James Paget, Surgeon Extraordinary to Her Majesty, says : 
“ The progress of the vaccine and variolous infection of the blood 
shows us that a permanent, morbid condition of that fluid is established 
by the action of these specific poisons on it.” 
T. Mackenzie, M.D., F.R.C.P., Edin., Jan. 26th, 1882, says: 
“lean produce children of three different families where scrofula 
was never heard of till they were vaccinated, but whose necks are 
now a sad sight to see.” 
William Forbes Laurie, M. D., Edin., St. Saviour’s Cancer Hos- 
pital, Regent’s Park, says: “ Being anxious not to do mischief to 
my fellow-creatures I lately wrote to some M. P.’s on the subject. 
I asked them to come here and see for themselves the dismal results 
of vaccination in cases of paralysis, blindness of both eyes, hip-joint 
disease, consumption and frightful forms of skin disease. Though I 
received replies they have not yet inspected the cases.” 
The Lancet (London), January 21st, 1871, says: “From the 
early part of the century, cases of small-pox after vaccination have 
been increasing and now amount to four-fifths of cases.” 
Birmingham Daily Gazette, March 26th, 1886, says: “It is to- 
tally unnecessary to go outside of England in order to find proofs of 
death and disease arising from the practice (of vaccination).” From 
Leader on “ Vaccine Diseases in the Army.” 
W. Bruce Clarke, M. 8., F. R. C. S., records a state of “ Pyaemia, 
after vaccination—Death,” in a child at 14 weeks. Nothing unusual 
was noticed until after the Bth day ; an abscess formed in the left 
axilla, and others on the right forearm, right thigh and left wrist. 
The temperature rose to 103.4, and the child died exhausted on the 
19th day after the vaccination.—St. Bartholomew's Hospital Reports, 
1879. Vol. XV. 
Dr. Caron, Paris, late Government Physician to Paris Prisons, 
says: “Vaccination, so called, modifies not one tittle of either the 
virulence or the consequences of the small-pox. I have long since 
refused to vaccinate.” 
Prof. Emer. Francis W. Newman, of Oxford University, says : 31 
“ Nothing is clearer to anyone who will open his eyes than that what 
is now called vaccination has no effect in lessening small-pox, and 
has frequent and terrible effect in doing mischief.” 
Sir Henry Holland, Bart., M. D., F. R. S., says : “ It is no longer 
expedient in any sense, to argue for the present practice of vaccina- 
tion as a certain or permanent preventive of small-pox. The truth 
must be told, as it is, that the earliest anticipations on this point 
have not been realized.”—Medical Notes and Reflections. London : 
pp. 401, 415, and 416. 
The Students’ Journal and Hospital Gazette, January 14th, 1882, 
says: “ Many deaths have undoubtedly resulted from vaccination 
and an unknown number of children have had their constitutions 
cruelly injured through vaccination.” 
Sir Joseph W. Pease, Bart., M.D., M.P., says: “The Presi- 
dent of the Local Government Board cannot deny that children die 
under the operation of the Vaccination Acts in a wholesale way.”— 
House of Commons, 1878. 
Sir Thomas Watson, M. D., of London, Eng., says: “I can 
sympathize with, and even applaud, a father who, with the pre- 
sumed dread in his mind, is willing to submit to judicial penalties 
rather than expose his child to the risk of an infection so ghastly as 
vaccination.”—Parliamentary Committee, 1879. 
The Right Hon. Earl Percy, M. P., says: “Each (small-pox) 
epidemic since Jenner’s system has been more severe than the pre- 
ceding one.”—House of Commons, 1877. 
Alexander Von Humboldt says: “ I have clearly perceived the 
progressive and dangerous influence of vaccination in England, 
France and Germany.”—Letter to Hon. R. Gobden. 
Dr. Alfred R. Wallace, of England, the distinguished scientist and 
co-discoverer with Darwin, of the principle of natural selection, says : 
“ I stepped out on my special path to strike a blow at this wretched 
superstition as soon as I became thoroughly convinced of its errors, 
and of the cruelty and danger arising out of its compulsory enforce- 
ment.”—Letter to the Author. 
J. R. Newton, M.D., Boston, Mass., said in 1879 : Vaccination 
is a practice that causes a vast amount of disease and suffering. Its 
effects are far more terrible than the disease it is designed to prevent. 
Were I to relate a few of the cases that have fallen under my ob- 
servation of persons injured by this practice, it would fill the mind 
with horror. 32 
Dr. S. Swan, New York, maintains that vaccination is an unjusti- 
fiable poisoning of the system, and mentions—of twenty-three chil- 
dren who were vaccinated, that it “ produced terrible ulcers on the 
arms of some of them, two inches in diameter, the arms being in- 
flamed, swollen, and very painful, with large abscesses on other 
parts of the body, causing great suffering.”—Homoeopathic World, 
May, 1883. 
Dr. C. Spinzig, St. Louis, Mo., says : “Vaccination is tanta- 
mount to 4 inoculation ’ and constitutes septical poisoning—a criminal 
offence to human health and life—it is statistically proved to afford 
no protective or mitigation power over small-pox ; and scientifically, 
in the nature of the case, it cannot possess any.”—From Variola, 
its Causes, Nature, and Prophylaxis,” p. 7. St. Louis, 1878. 
The Fallacy of the Mitigation Dogma. 
Demonstrated by a comparison of the fatality of hospital small- 
pox cases in England before and since the adoption of vaccination, 
refuting the last claim of vaccinators, that if vaccination does not -pre- 
vent small-pox it mitigates an attack. Now, if vaccination neither 
prevents nor mitigates, then it is useless. 
After 40 to 90 Years of 
Vaccination 
Date. 
Authority. 
Cases. 
Y acci- 
nated. 
Deaths. 
Deaths 
per ct. 
1836-51 
Mr. Marson’s Hospital 
U ii 
5,652 
3.094 
1,129 
19.97 
1852-67 
7,929 
7,304 
810 
' 10.2 
1870-72 
Metropolitan Hospitals 
h( .t 
Homerton Hospital 
Metropolitan “ 
14,808 
11,174 
2,764 
18.66 
1876 
1871-77 
' 1,470 
5,479 
4,236 
11,412 
338 
1,065 
23.0 
19.43 
1876-80 
15,171 
2,677 
17.6 
1881 
Deptford “ 
3,185 
2,654 
552 
17.3 
1881 
Fulham “ 
1,752 
1,542 
1,956 
250 
14.26 
1876-80 
Dublin “ 
2,404 
523 
21.7 
1881-82 
Rochdale Medical Officer 
906 
745 
105 
11.59 
1883 
Gateshead “ “ 
177 
118 
30 
16.6 
1883 
Homerton Report 
Hew Cross “ 
325 
237 
47 
14.5 
1883 
145 
109 
27 
14.7 
1883 
Stockwell “ 
101 
85 
10 
10.0 
1884 
Metropolitan Asylums Hospitals. 
6,396 
4,872 
1,013 
15.8 
1884 
Birmingham Medical Officer 
1,591 
1,384 
102 
6.4 
1884 
Sheffield 
203 
154 
21 
10.3 
1884-85 
Monsall Hospital, Manchester. .. 
229 
190 
28 
12.2 
67,923 
51,266 
11,491 
16.9 33 
Before Vaccination. 
Date. 
Authority. 
Cases. 
• 
Vacci- 
nated. 
Deaths. 
Deaths 
per ct. 
1723 
Dr. Jurin,quoted by Dr. Duvillard 
18,066 
. Hone. 
2,986 
16.5 
1746-63 
London Small-pox Hospital 
6,456 
t( 
1,634 
25.3 
1763 
Lambert, quoted by Dr. Duvillard 
72 
U 
15 
20.8 
1779 
Rees’ Cyclopaedia 
400 
u 
72 
18.0 
24,994 
4,707 
18.8 
This table has two important healings : 
1. It shows that before the introduction of vaccination the per- 
centage of deaths from small-pox was no higher than it is at present. 
And, inasmuch as the deaths in the second division include a large 
majority of vaccinated persons, demonstration is afforded that vac- 
cination has had no effect in diminishing the mortality. 
2. That small-pox as treated now, and small-pox as treated by 
the medical men of the eighteenth century, is the same unmodified 
disease. That the infrequency of 'pitting from small-pox at the 
present day is entirely owing to our methods of prevention. 
It had its origin then, as now, in filth, it was nourished then, as 
now, by filth, it exacts the same ratio of victims to cases, runs the 
same course, and is as fatal now as then, and any division by marks, 
of patients suffering from an eruptive fever, which yields results dis- 
proved by the general result, is unscientific, misleadingand erroneous. 
The Simple Truth. 
The simple truth is, that all the protection we have against small- 
pox comes from our improved knowledge of hygiene and sanitation, 
and if one-quarter the money now spent in vaccination was applied 
to improving the conditions of life in localities where small-pox and 
other zymotic diseases originate, we would not only “ stamp out ” 
small-pox, but all other zymotic diseases. Of all the practical 
sciences, public hygiene is the one that of late years has taken the 
greatest strides. In the ages of faith, earthly matters were of little 
moment, and people lived and died in miserable homes close by the 34 
churches which enclosed all their hopes, and to which everything 
was sacrificed. In our days, love of health and of existence are in 
the ascendant. Medicine has its doubts, sanitation has none. It is 
hard to uproot old theories and beliefs. It is still harder to uproot 
popular fallacies ; but, that vaccination is doomed to follow into 
oblivion, inoculation, arm to arm vaccination, blood-letting, and 
many other discarded medical delusions, is absolutely certain. 
Cleanliness—Nature’s Protection. 
Cleanliness is the only scientific, because natural, protection 
against all diseases, and especially the contagion or infection of 
zymotic or filth diseases. All other so-called prophylactics or pro- 
tectives are empirical, unreliable, and worthless subterfuges. There 
is no other protection within the domain of nature, of science, or 
of art, which can compare with Cleanliness I—Nature’s antidote 
for Filth. 
Pure air, pure water, (inside and outside), plain, wholesome food, 
total abstinence from all intoxicants, plenty of exercise in the open 
air, these are natural health-producing and disease-repelling agents. 
If the people would only think ; if they would fairly examine all 
those arts, superstitions, and practices of artificial devices and un- 
natural and unsanitary (so-called) remedies which abound, each one 
of which has its influence in limiting the range of human life, they 
would discern how the natural tendency of such a practice as vac- 
cination is attended with perils of such magnitude that the remedy— 
vaccination—is seen to be an evil infinitely more portentous than 
the disease—small-pox. 
Anti-Vaccination. 
The agitation against vaccination is based on truth, justice and 
and liberty—a trinity which must prevail. When human slavery 
was a legal and sacred institution in the United States, anti-slavery 
men were stigmatized as incendiaries, infidels, disturbers of the 
peace, negro thieves and traitors ; they were hated, despised and 
ostracised by the church, the state and society at large. When 
slavery was abolished, every cowardly, weak-kneed opponent to the 
anti-slavery cause said “ they were always opposed to slavery, and 35 
recognized that it was doomed to fall.” In this experience of anti- 
slavery men we have prefigured what will happen in a very few 
years when vaccination is abolished—then every poodle in the pro- 
fession will wag his tongue in chorus with the so-called “leading 
minds” of the profession, in shouting that “they were always op- 
posed to vaccination, always knew it to. be a fallacy, and rejoice 
that it is abandoned.” 
The Medical Practice of To-day. 
The members of the medical profession are plesiomorphic—they 
act in herds—do no independent thinking or acting, but follow the 
“ books ” and obey the dictum of their moss-grcnvn leaders. 
The medical practice of to-day has no more foundation in science, 
philosophy, or common sense, than it had one hundred years ago. 
It is based on conjecture and improved by sad blunders, often hidden 
by death. A drug which forms the favorite remedy for many forms 
of disease at one period, will, in a short time, be discarded as inert 
and useless, and speedily replaced by some other, and that in its turn 
will soon fall into oblivion as some new medicine comes into fashion. 
Yes, there is fashion in medicines, and the theories on which they 
are adopted and administed are largely hypothetical. If the deplor- 
able consequences which frequently result from medical blunders, 
delusions and conjectures were visited upon the doctors themselves 
it would bo a righteous punishment, but unfortunately it is the peo- 
ple who suffer by medical fallacies ; the people, who, by custom and 
early education, have been taught to believe “ that the doctor Jcnoivs 
hest.” 
The Great Majority of Medical Men 
Pro-vaccinators insist that vaccination must be right because the 
great majority of medical men sustain it. 
The “great majority” of medical men opposed Harvey’s discov- 
ery of the circulation for forty years. The “ great majority” bled 
the people for a century, and slaughtered thousands in the quiet sick 
chamber. The “great majority” denied a cup of cold water to the 
patient consuming with fever. The “ great majority” gave the peo- 
ple calomel till their teeth dropped out, the flesh rolled off the bones, 36 
and the bones themselves crumbled into dust. The “ great majority ” 
have inoculated the people with syphilis, eczema, consumption and 
small-pox. The “ great majority” have bitterly opposed every real 
and scientific reform in the healing art; they have filled the world 
with incurable invalids, and given respectability to “quackery” by 
the outrageous quackery of the profession itself, disgusting all sensi- 
ble and thoughtful men by their fallacies and delusions, of which 
Jennerism is the greatest and most destructive. 
Toronto, October, 1888. THE 
SWEDISH 
SMALL-POX STATISTICS’ 
FRAUD: 
THE REAL TRUTH OF THE MATTER. 
BY 
MRS. HUME-ROTHERY. 
(Re-printed from the National Anti-Compulsory Vaccination 
Reporter, November i, 1882.) 
Price 3d. per doz.; 2s. per 100: or 3d. per doz., post free. 
CHELTENHAM : 
G. F. POOLE, BENNINGTON STREET. THE SWEDISH 
SMALL-POX STATISTICS’ FEAUD: 
2Tlic Mcul acrutii of the 
Dr. Oidtmann, one of our most energetic and indefatigable fellow- 
workers in Germany, delivered a public address at Frankfort on 
the Vaccination Question on the 28th of August last. The prin- 
cipal feature of this address was a long and able dissertation on, and 
exposure of, the fraud perpetrated on the whole of Europe by the 
pro-vaccination party in the matter of the famous Swedish statistics. 
This fraud—in its origin probably only a misapprehension to which 
the wish might well be father, but which through persistent reitera- 
tion has degenerated into a fraud—took shape, we regret to say, in 
the first instance, in our English Parliamentary Report on Vaccina- 
tion of 1857, issued under the direct responsibility of one whom we 
name with regret in such a connection—Mr. Simon, long head of the 
Board of Health and chief medical adviser of the Government. The 
table of Swedish statistics, published by him at pp. 185, 186 of the 
Blue Book in question, recording the small-pox mortality of Sweden, 
from 1749 to 1855, showed indeed as was desired to be shown, a 
a very great decrease in small-pox mortality from the beginning of 
the nineteenth century down to the year 1855, at which the table 
(then) inevitably closed ; but when a note by the Swedish Board of 
Health was appended to these tables stating that these documents 
“need no comment to prove beyond doubt the great influence of 
vaccination in Sweden as an invaluable though not absolute 'preventive 
against one of the most destructive diseases that ever afflicted man- 
lrind,”—when such a note as this, we say, was appended without 39 
comment on the glaringly false assumptions it parades, then we say 
that nothing but a preconceived blind faitli in vaccination could 
account, (in one whom we personally know to have been absolutely 
incapable of intentionally misleading the public mind) for such 
negligent reproduction of so glaring a fallacy by the compiler of this 
Report on Vaccination, who lay under the grave responsibility of 
furnishing the British Parliament with all the best light and in- 
formation obtainable on so important a question. But to assume 
that these tables should have again and again been handled by pro- 
vaccination statisticians without detection or suspicion of this negli- 
gence, and of the utter misdirection of public opinion to which it led, 
till the fraud, whether intentional or unintentional, was exposed by 
Anti-vaccinators, is to make a heavy draft on the charity of those 
against whom such a weapon has been employed. And yet we are 
ourselves inclined to accept the assumption. Even learned men of 
science are prone to follow their leader like sheep, (or geese?) 
especially if that leader be taking the direction in which they desire 
to follow. How utterly baseless and deceptive is the assertion above 
quoted that these Swedish statistics prove the value of vaccination, 
has now been publicly acknowledged by the pro-vaccination party in 
Germany; Professor Flinzer having openly stated at the Medical 
Congress at Eisenach in 1879, that “ if one looks over these tables 
(reprinted in Germany, from the English Blue Book, by Kiissmaul) 
one is convinced that the ebh-curve of small-pox mortality set in long 
before any results of vaccination were possible.” But as the English 
pro-vaccination party still unscrupulously parades these Swedish 
statistics, it will not be amiss to give the English public a little more 
information on the subject. Not very long since a writer in the 
Times (Sept. 7th) promulgated the amazing falsehood that “in 
Sweden the effect of authoritative vaccination had been to reduce an 
average of mortality for small-pox for 20 years from 12,000 to 11 * 
and doubtless thousands of unfortunate dupes swallowed the prepos- 
* The same inventive and intelligent writer reduces Prussian small-pox mortality on a 
similar average of 20 years from Hi to 1!—“ forgetful all ” that in the one year 187* there 
died of small-pox in Prussia 69,839 persons! It would take a long period to get an 
average ot one out of that! We may have something more to say about Prussian 
statistics on another occasion. 40 
terous assertion, any correction or refutation of which was, of course, 
refused insertion by the great mock Jupiter. Let us see how the 
facts, or at least the figures, really stand. We are not at all fond 
of inflicting dry figures on our readers, hut in this instance we must 
ask them to excuse our so doing, as it is impossible for us without 
this to lay the real truth of the matter before them. 
The figures in our table up to the year 1855 are the same as those 
of the Blue Book or Parliamentary Report so often referred to ; 
those up to 1876 have been supplied to us from the official records 
by Dr. P, A. Siljestrom, of Stockholm, an ex-Member of the Swe- 
dish Parliament. 
Official Statistics of Sviall-Pox Mortality in Sweden from 
1800 to 1876. 
Year. 
Small-pox 
Deaths. 
Year. 
Small-pox 
Deaths. 
Year. 
Small-pox 
Deaths. 
1800 
12,032 
1826 
625 
1852 
1,534 
1 
0,057 
27 
600 
53 
279 
2 
1,533 
28 
257 
54 
204 
3 
1,464 
29 
53 
55 
41 
4 
1,460 
30 
104 
56 
52 
5 
1,090 
31 
612 
57 
560 
6 
1,482 
32 
622 
58 
1,289 
7 
2,129 
33 
1,145 
59 
1,470 i 
8 
1,814 
34 
1,049 
60 
70S 
9 
2,404 
35 
445 
61 
193 
10 
824 
36 
138 
62 
148 
11 
698 
37 
361 
68 
307 
12 
404 
38 
1,805 
64 
741 
13 
547 
39 
1,934 
65 
1,336 
14 
308 
40 
650 
66 
1,217 
15 
472 
41 
237 
67 
1,061 
1816* 
690 
42 
58 
68 
1,492 
17 
242 
43 
9 
69 
1,474 
18 
305 
44 
6 
70 
764 
19 
161 
45 
6 
71 
329 
20 
143 
46 
2 
72 
346 
21 
37 
47 
13 
73 
1,122 
22 
11 
48 
71 
74 
4,063 
23 
39 
49 
341 
75 
2,019 
24 
618 
50 
1,376 
76 
604 
25 
1,243 
51 
2,488 
* In this year vaccination was made compulsory in Sweden 41 
It will be seen from a glance at the above table that though in one 
year (1800) a mortality of 12,032 deaths from small-pox isi’ecorded, 
yet within the ten years following it fell (1810) as low as 824 and 
in 1811 and 12 to 698 and 404 respectively. An average of 12,000 
for 20 years is therefore a simple absurdity.* It will further be seen 
that though in the year 1822 the mortality fell to 11, yet three years 
later in 1825 it rose again to 1,243 ! So much for the average of 11 
for 20 years ! This, however, in passing. It is not the ludicrous 
mistakes fallen into by an unknown writer to the Times with which 
we are chiefly concerned, but rather with the general question as to 
what may be learned of vaccination from these Swedish statistics. 
And we may observe that though we have not thought it worth 
while to print them at length, we have before us, and may make 
casual reference to, the similar tables from the middle of the last 
century beginning with the year 1749. Nor have we thought it 
worth while to trouble our readers with the figures of population 
steadily rising from 2,347,303 in 1800 to 4,429,713 in 1876. For, 
as will be seen, this in no way affects the question of the influence 
of vaccination on small-pox. Because we concede from the outset 
that there has been a great decrease in small-pox mortality in Swe- 
den, deaths in 1800 having amounted to 12,032, and in the last 
great epidemic year, 1874, only to 4,063, and in 1876 as may be 
seen only to 604 ; and if this reduction could he proved or even 
rationally supposed to result from vaccination, that reduction would 
be amply sufficient to establish the value of vaccination, without any 
multiplication by increase of population ; whereas if it he slwivn 
that such reduction is not and cannot he owing to vaccination, the 
amount of the reduction—due to other causes—is quite immaterial 
to our argument. We must first beg our readers’ attention to the 
fact that Compulsory or “ authoritative vaccination,” to quote the 
Times writer once more, was only decreed in Sweden in the year 
1816; (Dr. P. A. Siljestrbm on “The Vaccination Question,” p. 
22), and as the author remarks, “As it cannot be supposed that it 
was thoroughly introduced for a year or two after that, we shall 
* The highest average of small-pox deaths for even ten years recorded in Sweden, after 
the date when deaths from measles ceased to be reckoned as small-pox, that is, from 1779 
to 1788 is 5,179, and that for the following decade, 1789-98, is 3,810. 42 
probably be right if we reckon the general introduction of vaccina- 
tion as comprised within the decade 1819-28.” Now it will be at 
once seen that even in the year 1801 the small-pox mortality fell to 
6,057, almost one-half, and in the year 1802 to 1,533, scarcely more 
than one-eighth of that of the year 1800. Now as vaccination was 
only just beginning to be heard of in England about that time, it 
cannot rationally be supposed to have reached Sweden ; indeed, Dr. 
Siljestrom informs us that though vaccination was beginning between 
1809 and 1818 to be pretty generally practiced, even that decade 
must be regarded as a transition period, while all before was a pre- 
vaccinational era. It is clear then that vaccination (unless indeed 
as a coming event casting its shadow* before !) could have nothing 
whatever to do with this great decrease of seven-eighths of the small- 
pox mortality within two years. In the year 1814, two years prior 
to the introduction of Compulsory Vaccination, the small-pox mor- 
tality had even fallen to 308 ; but if it be suggested that the growing 
practice of vaccination, though still voluntary, might have to do with 
tin’s, we must inquire, why then this growing practice permitted the 
death-rate to rise in 1815 and 1816 to 472 and 690 respectively ? 
It is admitted that in the year 1822 the small-pox mortality fell to 
11, and this is of course assumed as a grand triumph of vaccination 
which had now been in full operation for some few years. But what 
then was Compulsory Vaccination about when only three years later, 
in 1815, the small-pox mortality rose to 1,243, four times that of 
1814 before vaccination was compulsory at all, and greater by about 
an eighth than that of the year 1805 before vaccination had begun 
to be practiced at all—viz., 1,090? Again, if Compulsory Vaccina- 
tion reduced small-pox mortality in 1829 to 53, why, while compul- 
sory vaccination bore sway as before, do we find that mortality 
rising in 1833 to 1,145, and in 1838, 1839, to 1,805 and 1,934? 
These same fluctuations continue throughout the table. If in 1843, 
’44, ’45, ’46, we find the small-pox mortality sinking to the ex- 
tremely low ebb of 9, 6, 6, and 2 for these years respectively, we 
again find it rising in 1850, ’sl, ’52, to 1,376, 2,488, and 1,534. 
In 1855 the Blue Book table closed very gratifyingly, no doubt, for 
believers in the vaccination superstition, with a small-pox mortality 
of only 41 ; but is it conceivable—we will rather say, would it, but 43 
for the known fact, have been conceivable—that men of common- 
sense, not to say science, should have confronted the flagrant fact 
that in the year 1851, after 35 years of compulsory vaccination, 
supposed to have been more perfectly carried out in Sweden than in 
perhaps any other country, the small-pox mortality of 2,488 more 
than doubled that (1,090) of the year 1805 when vaccination in 
Sweden was still a thing of the future ; and yet have promulgated 
these Swedish statistics as proof absolute of the value of vaccina- 
tion? The records of the last twenty years up to 1876 present the 
same extraordinary fluctuations in small-pox mortality (with a very 
considerable general rise however as compared with the previous 
twenty). In 1856 there were 52; in 1859, 1,470; in 1862 there 
■were 148 (the lowest figure subsequent to 1856) and in 1869, 
1,474 deaths from small-pox in Sweden; finally in 1871 there 
were only 329, while in 1874 there were 4,063, sinking again in 
1876 to 604, and in all probability the small-pox death-rate has 
sunk still lower in the succeeding years for which we have as yet no 
records. Now can any human being ever so little accustomed to 
rational and logical x-eflection, suppose for one moment that Com- 
pulsory Vaccination which has, since the year 1816, been what we 
may call a constant factor in the case—a foi'ce, that is, in continual 
operation—can possibly account for the changes in the small-pox 
death-rate, which presents such utterly irregular and contradictoi-y 
variations, such ups and downs as the above official tables record? 
If these tables pi’ove anything in the matter, they prove conclusively 
that Compulsory Vaccination most carefully and thoroughly carried 
on throughout a whole country, is absolutely unable to control small- 
pox or even to modify its effects. The number of deaths in the year 
1874 falls not vei-y much short of four times the number of deaths in 
1805, years before the introduction of vaccination. Nor will the 
increase of population from 2,427,408 in 1805, to 4,341,559 in 
1874 help pro-vaccination arguments here. The population had not 
doubled. The deaths had very considerably more than trebled ■ 
while in 1851 (the year in which the highest small-pox mortality 
had occurred previous to 1855 where the table published in our 
Blue Book closes) the population had risen from 2,427,408 to 
3,517,759, that is, not one-half, while the small-pox deaths as 44 
already pointed out had considerably more than doubled (viz., risen 
from 1,090 to 2,488). How then, it may well be asked, was it 
possible even in 1855 for pro-vaccinators to delude themselves, or to 
delude others into a belief that Swedish statistics argued in favor of 
compulsoi’y vaccination ? Would not a mere glance at the tables 
refute it? The question may well be asked and the answer is a 
painful one. It would hardly, we think, have been possible, even 
in an expert-ridden Legislature like our House of Commons, that is, 
if anyone ever read the Blue Book, or looked at its tables at all,— 
but for a falsification of the date of the introduction of vaccination 
into Sweden (which Dr. Oidtmann’s address above-mentioned has 
brought to our notice) in a colored plate inserted in the guilty Blue 
Book in question ;—not relegated to the appendix with the tables 
we have been examining, but placed “ in the forefront of the battle” 
at page 22 of the Report itself. This table is, we regret to find, 
colored so as to bring every year subsequent to 1801 under the sup- 
posed influence of the great enchanter, Vaccination ! thus hiding and 
giving the lie to the unwelcome fact, that by far the greatest and 
most rapid fall in small-pox mortality on record, viz., that from 
1800 to 1805 took place not only before the decree of Compulsory 
Vaccination in 1816, but before vaccination could well have been 
much heard of in Sweden, let alone begun to be voluntarily prac- 
ticed in 1808 or thereabouts. We do not say that even had the 
date assigned in this colored plate to the influence of vaccination 
been correct, there was not enough in the tabular record of small- 
pox mortality prior to 1800 to have roused the suspicions and en- 
lightened the minds of careful and impartial critics ; for here also 
we find the small-pox mortality, which in, for instance, 1763 
amounted to 11,662, suddenly falling in the very next year to 
4,562, while the most terrible mortality on record, that, namely, 
of 16,607 in 1778, fell in 1779 already to 5,102, and by 1781 had 
gone down to 1,485. Now if small-pox mortality could fall in this 
way without vaccination, before 1800, what ground could there be 
for supposing that a similar fall after 1800 was due to vaccination, 
even had this been in operation ? But clearly in those days careful 
and impartial critics were not forthcoming. 
But what are we to say of this unlucky colored plate, of which 45 
Dr. Oidtmann forcibly and truthfully says that the date thereon as- 
signed to the introduction of vaccination into Sweden is a lie? 
Incredible as it might seem, we can only infer that the compiler 
was in ignorance,—not perhaps of the date of the Compulsory Vac- 
cination decree in Sweden ; that we fear must have been left out of 
sight by a convenient suppressio veri, (though even such negligence 
as not having ascertained that, is conceivable to us who know some- 
thing of official proceedings directed to a specific object) but at any 
rate—of the date at which vaccination could reasonably have been 
supposed to become operative in Sweden. We who know what was 
the nature and rapidity, or rather slowness, of communication with 
foreign countries in the year 1800 and later on all through the great 
war, can see at a glance that a medical practice only just beginning 
at that time to be popular in England (it was only in 1802, and then 
only by a majority of 3, even under the pressure of royal influence, 
that Jenner got his first £IO,OOO voted by Parliament) must neces- 
sarily have taken some years to spread to and take such deep root 
in a distant country like Sweden as to have any appreciable influ- 
ence—if it did or could ever exercise any anywhere—upon small- 
pox mortality. But in the year 1857, when the only anxiety of the 
official compiler was to amass material to justify the tentative Com- 
pulsory Vaccination law passed in this country in 1853, to say 
nothing of more stringent ones looming in the future,-we can well 
suppose that no such reflections, no minute analysis of facts or dates 
troubled the official mind. There were the figures, and there was 
the deduction desired to be. drawn, nay, so temptingly drawn ready 
to hand by the Swedish Board of Health, and how could it but be 
made use of, and the table, without too much exactitude, colored to 
convenience at the very best year that could have been pitched on 
to suit the deduction? Vaccination might be supposed to be just 
heard of in Sweden in 1801 (at least there was a committee ap- 
pointed to inquire into vaccination in Denmark in that year—and 
that was near enough for those days)* and down goes the death- 
* Since writing the above we find in a recent publication by Prof. Yogt that in Nov., 
1881, vaccination had not been even heard of in Sweden, and that some vaccination ex- 
periments were, by royal command, tried in the hospital in Stockholm for the first time 
in January, 1802! No doubt these hospital experiments did the business. 46 
rate by one-half! A little more talk of it in 1802, and down goes 
the death-rate to about one-eighth of the fatal figures of 1800! 
And as there is almost nothing too preposterous for belief by those 
determined beforehand to believe, we can and do suppose that this 
sudden fall was really believed to be owing to vaccination, by the 
Mr. Haile who prepared this fatal colored plate, and by Mr. Simon 
who incorporated it in his Report; whence in later years this rec- 
orded triumph of vaccination was extracted by Kiissmaul and prob- 
ably other German pro-vaccinators, and made use of as a chief 
corner-stone for the edifice of Compulsory Vaccination in the Ger- 
man Empire. We need say no more. The one fact that under the 
highest possible pressure of Compulsory Vaccination, (for the terri- 
ble epidemics on the continent in 1871-2 alarmed Sweden into the 
most vehement furore of vaccination and re-vaccination in 1873) 
the small-pox mortality of Sweden in 1874 very greatly exceeded that 
of 1805 even in proportion to population, is sufficient to overthrow 
any allegations in favor of vaccination that could ever have been 
advanced on the ground of these statistics ; while the continuous 
fluctuations from one exti’eme to the other, which mark the whole 
period of the reign of vaccination, serve to render such allegations 
absolutely ridiculous ; for if Compulsory Vaccination could bring 
small-pox down to 2 in 1846, why did it not keep it down, instead 
of letting it run up again to 2,488 in 1851? Indeed, it would be 
quite as rational to affirm that vaccination raised the death-rate in 
the second, as that it lowered it in the first of these instances. It 
was equally in operation throughout the whole period, and may just 
as well be credited with one result as with the other. We trust, 
therefore,—not that we shall now have heard the last of these 
famous Swedish statistics in proof of the beneficent effect of the 
great Jennerian curse ; that would be too much to expect from the 
opponents we have to deal with, but—that we have proved con- 
clusively to eveiy rational and candid reader that whatever cause 
may have influenced the decrease of small~pox mortality in Sweden, 
vaccination can no more have been that cause, than the sun, moon, 
and stars which, like it, have looked down on the ever-recurring in- 
crease as well as decrease of that dreaded malady. 
It is quite true that, when all has been said and done, small-pox 47 
mortality is on the whole “considerably less in Sweden now as in 
other countries—taken on an average of any ten or twenty years— 
than it was during the last century but there are other factors in 
the case amply sufficient to account for this. In the first place, the 
discontinuance of inoculation, which, as now admitted, spread small- 
pox broadcast, will account for a vast diminution in the disease it 
so carefully disseminated ; in the second place, the well-known in- 
sane medical treatment of small-pox patients formerly practiced 
has been abandoned, and that was amply sufficient to kill three 
times as many patients as the disease itself carried off; while in 
the third place, a wide diffusion of sanitary knowledge and millions 
spent upon sanitation, especially in great towns, should surely have 
had some saving influence. And yet for all this while the 
highest small-pox death-rate per million recorded in Sweden, even 
in the last century (in 1779), was 7,196, the small-pox death- 
rate in Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, in 1874, amounted, 
says Dr. Siljestrom, to about “8,000 per million!”*—a fact 
which we beg most liberally to place at the disposal of the Times, 
Dr. Carpenter, Dr. Alfred Carpenter, and all pro-vaccination essa}’- 
ists, lecturers, and fanatics in the kingdom. 
MARY C. HUME-ROTHERY. 
The Pines, Cheltenham, Oct. 13th, 1882. 
♦Absolutely rather more, having been 1,206, out of a population of 150,446. NATIONAL 
3lnti-(Eompulso‘rg-facrimition Sfeap^. 
For Anti-Vaccination Literature, Posters, Pamphlets, 
Leaflets, Petition Sheets, &c.. &c., 
Apply to Mrs. Hume-Rothery, Hon. Sec., 
The Pines, Cheltenham j 
And Mr. Amos Booth, Assistant Secretary, 
60, Stanley Street, Leicester. Jlir Jpn piagfair’s Jpic. 
BY 
W. J. COLLINS, M.D., 8.5., B. Sc. (Bond.) 
UNIVERSITY SCHOLAR AND GOLD MEDALLIST, 
MEMBER OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF SURGEONS OF ENGLAND. 
“jßeprinted from the “ Vaccination Inquirer.” 
LONDON; 
E. W. Allen, 4 Aye Makia Lane. 
1883. SIE LYON PLAYFAIR’S LOGIC. 
To those who, like myself, looked to Sir Lyon Playfair for a 
scientific solution of the question of compulsory vaccination, his 
speech must have proved a bitter disappointment. It contained 
nothing novel to those acquainted with the subject: even the falla- 
cies that crept into it were not new ; and there was a lack of judicial 
impartiality from the beginning to the end. 
Facts favorable to vaccination were dwelt upon Avith emphasis and 
in detail; adverse facts were laughed at, ignored, or explained away, 
while the great sanitary and moral questions, more important than 
either, were thrust aside as quite insignificant. 
lam not concerned either to defend or oppose vaccination. But, 
so long as it is endowed and enforced by the State, it is fair to insist 
that its reputed virtues shall be demonstrated, conclusively, unmis- 
takably, and beyond all question. 
I offer the following criticisms in no hostile spirit, but with a sin- 
cere desire, by means of scientific inquiry and discussion, to arrive 
at logical conclusions, and with a just respect for the author of the 
speech in question. 
The first objection with which Sir Lyon Playfair dealt Avas the 
charge of the communicability of inoculable diseases by vaccination ; 
and he satisfied himself that he had disposed of it by a reference to 
the report of the Committee of 1871, and by stating that “they 
knew that, since 1853, 17,000,000 children had been vaccinated in 
this country, and it was very doubtful Avhether there Avere three or 
four specific cases Avhere this disease (syphilis) had eATer been pro- 
duced.” Now, in the first place, it does not betray scientific 
accuracy in being satisfied Avith information twelve years old, more 
especially as pathological research in this particular department of 
infective diseases, and their mode of transmission, has been greatly 
extended of late, and has completely revolutionized the antiquated 51 
opinions quoted, which were received, nevertheless, with approval 
and cheering by hon. members. As to the “ three or four specific 
cases,” suffice it to say that Mr. Jonathan Hutchinson, in a few 
years only, came across no less than twenty-four cases of vaccino- 
syphilis, and some of the facts respecting these twenty-four arg so 
striking and suggestive that I venture to quote them. Mr. Hutchin- 
son, be it understood, is a “ firm advocate of compulsory vaccina- 
tion,” so that his evidence is the more unassailable ; yet he opines— 
“ there can be no doubt that the danger of transmitting syphilis is a 
real and very important one.” His first series of cases he summa- 
rizes thus : 
“ Twelve persons, mostly young adults, vaccinated from a healthy- 
looking child. Satisfactory progress of the vaccination in all. In- 
durated chancres on the arms of ten of the vaccinated in the eighth 
week. Treatment by mercury in all. Rapid disappearance of the 
primary sores ; constitutional symptoms in four of the patients five 
months afterwards, the vaccinifer showing condylomata at the age 
of six months.” 
These cases, Mr. Hutchinson states, were brought to the notice 
of the medical officers of the Privy Council, and Dr. Seaton re- 
quested that he should investigate them. I call attention to this to 
disprove a widely current inaccuracy, an example of which I extract 
from Mr. Ernest Hart’s “ Truth,” to the effect that “ No case of 
syphilis caused by vaccination has ever been discovered by the Med- 
ical Department of the State during the twenty years that it has 
supervised the vaccination of the kingdom.”* 
Mr. Hutchinson’s second series is not less instructive. The cases 
are thus summarized : “ Unquestionable symptoms of constitutional 
syphilis in nine children who had been vaccinated from the same 
patient, suspicious symptoms in six others, and entire escape of a 
certain number ; vaccinifer a fine healthy-looking child, but with 
slight local symptoms indicative of inherited syphilis.” And respect- 
ing the vaccination of these he adds : “ Nothing had occurred to 
excite the vaccinator’s suspicions, not a single one of this series 
having been taken back to him on account of the unhealthy condition 
* “ The Truth about Vaccination/’ by Ernest Hart. 1880. 52 
of the arm. On making inquiries at the houses of the patients, 
however, we found that no fewer than nine had chancres on the 
arms, and that six were suffering from well-marked and copious 
syphilitic rashes.” 
Sir Charles Dilke, in a somewhat casual reference to vaccino- 
syphilis, intimated that it was only when blood was admixed with 
lymph that syphilitic infection was possible. Here again, official 
information is strangely out of date, and the medical authorities 
of the Local Government Board would do well to endeavor to keep 
abreast of pathological research, especially in the matter of inocula- 
ble disease. In 1877 Mr. J. Hutchinson wrote: “Next, we may 
ask, is it absolutely necessary that blood should be used in vaccina- 
tion in order to convey syphilis? It seems highly probable that it is 
not. At any rate, there is not the least evidence in three of the 
series of cases which I have recorded that the lymph used was visi- 
bly contaminated with blood.”* 
From these premisses respecting vaccino-syphilis I draw the follow- 
ing conclusions : First, that the danger of transmitting syphilis by 
vaccination is real and important, and cases of the kind not very 
uncommon ;f second, that inasmuch as a syphilitic vaccinifer may 
betray no sign of the disease, and that admixture of blood is not 
essential to infection, we as yet know of no safeguard against arm- 
to-arm infection ; third, that is possible for wholesale syphilisa- 
tion by vaccination to go on “ without even exciting a vaccinator’s 
suspicions ”—a fact which somewhat detracts from the value of the 
* Illustrations of Clinical Surgery, Fasc. VI. pp 
130. 
t Lancereaux has published the following cases of Yaccino-Syphilis— 
By Ceriola 40 
By Lecoq 
“ Galligo.... 
.... 2 
By Chassaignac.. 
“ Herard 
. 1 
“ Tassani 46 
... 14 
. 1 
“ Surgeon B 10 
At Rivalts ... 
... 46 
“ Adelasio 
. 2 
“ Hiibner 8 
By Trousseau 
“ Maronni... 
... 1 
“ Monell 
. 1 
“ Marcolini 40 
... 34 
— 
“ Yiani 2 
“ Devergie... 
.... 1 
Total 
. 258 
To these may he added the following published cases— 
By Hutchinson..., 24 
“ T. Smith 1 
At Lebus 
... 18 
By Fuqua 
“ Cullimore.... 
. 52 
By Depaul 
“ Sebastian... 
... 59 
. 1 
“ Hulke 1 
. .. 1 
In Algiers 
. 58 
“ Oldham 3 
“ Collins 
. ... 2 
Total 
. 478 53 
assurance of public vaccinators, who have vaccinated thousands and 
never seen a bad result, and who, as a rule, lose sight of their pa- 
tients after the eighth day. 
Respecting the accusation that diseases of the skin and erysipelas 
follow and are caused by vaccination, the learned doctor imagined 
he answered it by a story about a policeman who attributed a recent 
eruption to seven years’ antecedent vaccination, by asserting such 
cases were instances of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, and by 
denying that erysipelas was increasing or had any relation to the 
question before them. And Sir C. Dilke followed in the same strain 
when he said : “ The one disease which has been put forward as 
being distinctly caused by vaccination is erysipelas, and yet there 
has been a distinct decrease in the mortality from that disease.” 
Now, such statements as these are both unfair and misleading, and 
quite unworthy of any scientific inquirer. As it happens, deaths 
from erysipelas resulting from vaccination are classified separately 
from erysipelas arising from other causes, and, while it may be true 
that the latter are decreasing, Sir Lyon Playfair and Sir Charles 
Dilke would, if they had taken the trouble, have found it equally 
true that the former are rapidly increasing. I extract the following 
from the yearly returns of the Registrar-General; 
Deaths from “Erysipelas after Vaccination.” 
1859.. 
5 
1870 ■ 
... 20 
I860.. 
3 
1871 
.. . 24 
1861.. 
2 
1872 
. .. 16 
1862 
3 
1873 
. , . 19 
1863 . 
11 
1874 
... 29 
1864.. 
13 
1875 
,. . 37 
1865.. 
10 
1876 
. . . 21 
1866.. 
10 
1877 
. .. 29 
1867.. 
4 
1878 
.., 35 
1868 
9 
1879 
... 32 
1869.. 
19 
1880 
... 39 
Total in 22 years 
... 390 
The table shows these deaths have increased nearly eightfold in 
thirty years, and, when it is borne in mind that all such cases are 
not returned as such, in order, according to Mr. May, M. R. C. S., 
“ to save vaccination from reproach,” that not one of the cases at 
Gainsborough and only one of the cases at Norwich were certified 54 
thus, it will be seen that these figures only represent a portion of the 
whole truth. In my review of the Norwich inquiry* I have shown, 
contrary to the opinion of Sir Lyon Playfair, and in strict accord 
with the views of the immortal author of vaccination, that a very 
close relation indeed does subsist between vaccination and erysipelas 
—in fact, that vaccine lymph is a septic fluid containing micrococci, 
and, as such, is capable, per se, of causing erysipelas by inoculation, 
and that the normal vaccine areola is simply a local and mild ery- 
sipelas. 
Sir Lyon was absolutely incorrect when he asserted that scrofula 
was decreasing, as the following table, which gives the average 
yearly deaths under one year of age per 1,000,000 births from six 
diseases which have been asserted to be communicable or caused by 
vaccination, clearly shows. The figures are given for three periods, 
in accordance with the changes that have been made in the Vac- 
cination Acts, whereby more general vaccination has been secured: 
England. 
Scrofula 
Voluntary Vac- 
cination, 1847 
to 1853. 
351 
Obligatory Vac- 
cination, 1853 
to 1867. 
611 
Enforced Vac- 
cination, 1867 
to 1878. 
908 
Syphilis 
564 
1,206 
1,738 
Erysipelas 
817 
781 
834 
Skin diseases 
183 
253 
343 
Pyaemia (not distinguished 
before 1862) 
(155) 
180 
Mesenteric disease 
2,981 
3,371 
4,373 
Sir Charles Dilke truly remarked: “There has been on the 
whole a steady diminution in the death-rate of the country, from 
22.4 in 1840-50 to 21.4 in 1870-80, and 19.3 in 1881-82.” 
Surely the learned President must see that the onus then lies with 
him to show why it is that, with diminishing general mortality, we 
have a steady increase of certain inoculable diseases, especially 
those which it has from the first been asserted were peculiarly com- 
municable by vaccination. Surely this points to some inoculable 
cause at work, and it is for the oracle of the Local Government 
Board to indicate what that cause is, in order that it may be speed- 
ily removed. 
*“A Review of the Norwich Vaccination Inquiry,” by W. J. C. Upon the slender premisses which I have indicated above, Sir 
Lyon Playfair founded an argument which, for faulty analogy, it 
would be difficult to equal. He asked: “Were they to dispense 
with a remedy which was efficacious over the whole community be- 
cause a few very rare cases of injury might occur, any more than 
they were to prohibit the use of anaesthetics because a patient occa- 
sionally died under them, or prohibit drinking water because people 
sometimes got typhoid from using polluted water?” I must candidly 
confess that any analogy between the prohibition of certain articles 
which individuals use at their own risk, and the abolition of the 
compulsory enforcement of that whose very claim is to render volun- 
tary acceptance of it indifferent to the action of others, may be more 
apparent to the legal than to the medical mind. And again, to in- 
voke the name of logic to justify a comparison between the assertion 
that, because certain diseases have in individual cases been proved 
to be conveyed by vaccination, an increase in collective cases, as 
shown by statistics, points to a casual relationship, and a fanciful 
connection between small-pox and Fenianism in Ireland, is an 
assumption of the scientific method which is only conspicuous by 
its absence. 
In dealing with the question of the protective influence of vaccin- 
ation against attack and death by small-pox, Sir Lyon Playfair 
began by commenting on the mildness of small-pox subsequent to 
vaccination ; but what says Dr. Seaton concerning the epidemic of 
1871-74: “In every country attacked, so far as our information 
extends, the peculiar intensity of this epidemic was manifested by 
the extreme diffusiveness of the disease, by its attacking in unusual 
proportions persons who were regarded as protected against the 
disease, whether by previous small-pox or by vaccination, and by 
the occurrence with quite remarkable frequency of cases of malig- 
nant and haemorrhagic type, and a consequent unusually high ratio 
of deaths to attacks.”* And, again, of 24,994 cases of small-pox 
occurring before the year 1780, and therefore all unvaccinated, 
4,707 died, or 18.83 percent. ;f while of 48,248 cases of small- 
* “ Public Health Reports,” New Series, No. 10, p. 51. 
| Jurin, Duvillard, and Rees’ Cyclopaedia. 56 
pox occurring between the years 1836 and 1880, of whom 34,423 
were vaccinated, 8,926 died, or 18.5 per cent.* Either the diluent 
effect of vaccination was nil, or, on the other hand, if it made the 
disease milder for the vaccinated, it (or some cause associated with 
it) made it also more severe for the unvaccinated, for the mortality 
remained at precisely the same rate per cent, as before. 
The facts respecting small-pox this century and last may be told 
in a few words. Early last century and in the latter half of the 
seventeenth century—therefore prior to inoculation—small-pox was 
a considerable item in London mortality; from 1660 to 1700 it 
caused about 56 out of every 1,000 deaths. Inoculation, introduced 
in 1721, and practised till the end of the century, pushed up the 
death-rate from small-pox to 108 per 1,000 deaths in 1760-70. 
After this, -prior to vaccination, and in spite of inoculation, and 
pari passu with a like decline in fever, and, therefore, owing to 
some great radical change at work, the small-pox death-rate steadily 
declined. As Dr. Farr observes: “Small-pox attained its maxi- 
mum after inoculation was introduced ; this disease began to grow 
less fatal before vaccination was discovered; indicating, together 
with the diminution in fever, the general improvement in health 
then taking place.” f 
The figures for the last fifty years of the eighteenth century 
are : 
Small-pox deaths per 
1,000 deaths. 
1750-1760 
100 
1760-1770 
108 
1770-1780 
98 
1780-1790 
87 
1790-1800 
88 
Now, if small-pox could decline while inoculation was in full swing, 
disseminating contagion far and wide, how much the more should 
we expect it to decline when inoculation received a check by the 
introduction of vaccination at the beginning of the century? And, 
again, when the former practice was made penal in 1840? Vaccin- 
ation may or may not have caused the decline ; but what I complain 
* Collected from various Hospital Reports, by A. Wheeler, 
t McCulloch’s “ British Empire.”—Art.: Vital Statistics. 57 
of in Sir Lyon Playfair’s argument is that he has entirely ignored 
all other explanations which leave vaccination out of the count. 
If the decennial periods be continued, the figures are as follows : 
1800-1810 
Small-pox deaths per 
1,000 deaths. 
64 
1810-1820 
42 
1820-1830 
32 
1830-1840 
23 
1840-1850 
18 
Vaccination was introduced when small-pox was a diminishing 
quantity, and by its introduction checked a fertile source of its prop- 
agation. Has Sir Lyon Playfair estimated the value of these two 
factors, and, after allowing for them, what difference does he find 
with which vaccination, and vaccination only, can be credited? 
Mr. Marson, when asked before the Committee of 1871: “Do 
you not think that the lesser prevalence of small-pox in the first 
quarter of the present century may have been due, to a great extent, 
to the discontinuance of inoculation, rather than to the practice 
of vaccination!” replied: “ Very likely it was” ; * and Mr. Mar- 
son was probably not far wrong. 
I next come to the remarkable figures which Sir Lyon Playfair 
quoted from the forty-third Report of the Registrar-General, as 
follows : 
Mean Annual Death-rates 
Sub-periods. 
from Small-pox 
per Million laving. 
1847-53. 
205 
1854-71 
1872-80 
156 
I need not point out the inequality of the periods compared—seven 
years with eighteen years, with nine years—but I must complain 
that the periods chosen are not those which are coeval with the most 
important improvements in the Vaccination Acts. It was by the 
Vaccination Act of 1867 that vaccination was first made really and 
truly compulsory in England, but this does not correspond to the com- 
* Report of Select Committee, May 23, 1871. Quest. 4,648. 58 
mencement of a period in the table ; and again, the Actof 1871 would 
seem to have had but small effect on the rate per cent, of successful 
vaccinations to births, for in 1872 (the first year of Sir Lyon Play- 
fair’s last period) this was 82.6, whereas in the previous year it was 
87.4 ; so that the improvement in the Act did not tend in the direction 
of increase of the rate per cent, of vaccinations to births. 
Hence, to draw a line between 1871 and 1872 in respect of im- 
proved vaccination is to make a division where none exists. 
Now, the progressive diminution shown in the table is a result 
of a mere statistical trick, unworthy of a scientist like Sir Lyon 
Playfair. And, if the year 1871 be taken with the last period 
instead of the second, we get a strangely different result, thus : 
Mean Annual Death-rates 
Sub-periods. 
from Small-pox 
per Million Living. 
1847 53 
1854-70 
171* 
1871-80 
235* 
In order to make this clear, and exhibit the whole thing at a 
glance, I add the deaths from small-pox per million living for each 
year from 1847 to 1880 : 
1847 
246 
1864 
373 
1848 
398 
1865 
309 
1849 
264| 
1866 
144 
1850 
263 j 
1867 
118 
1851 
396 
1868 
96 
1852 
409 
1869 
72 
1853 
174 
1870 
118 
1854 
153 
1871 
1,022 
1855 
136 
1872 
831 
185(5 
121 
1873 
102 
1857 
206 i 
1874 
92 
1858 
335 ' 
40 
1859 
197 
1876 
99 
1860 
140 
!1877 
174 
1861 
66 
1878 
74 
1862 
81 
1879 
21 
1863 
293 
1880 
* These figures are calculated according to the Registrar-General’s own formula, 
which he kindly explained to me. It consists in calculating the rate per million of the 
average annual small pox deaths upon the estimated population of the middle year 
of each period. 59 
“These great reductions in the rate of small-pox mortality I be- 
lieve to be due wholly to vaccination,” says Sir Lyon. Sanitation 
is not the cause, he says, for it would “ diminish all other diseases” ; 
but these have only diminished 6 per cent., whereas small-pox has 
diminished 80 per cent, in children under five. Six per cent, only 
of the reduction can be ascribed to sanitation ! 
Now, if the whole decline be really due to vaccination, it is as 
magnanimous as inconsistent of the learned doctor to allow 6 per 
cent, to be due to sanitation ; but even he would probably not be pre- 
pared to seriously maintain what he hastily asserted, that all diseases 
other than small-pox are likely to be affected by sanitary measures. 
Take, for instance, fractures, premature births, suicides, drowning, 
old age, and teething, which constitute not an inconsiderable item 
in national mortality.* To compare small-pox with all diseases 
other than small-pox is to compare things totally incomparable. Let 
a comparison be instituted between small-pox and that great class 
of diseases closely allied to it, and grouped together under the name 
of fever —viz., typhus, typhoid, and simple continued fever, and let 
Sir Lyon Playfair’s own periods be taken (with the exception of the 
years 1847-49, for which the Registrar-General does not give the 
figures for fever) and see what is the result: 
Deaths per Million Living. 
Small-pox 
Fever. 
(986) 
1854-71 
223 
940 
1871-80 
473 
Now, if the ratio of the first to the last period of small-pox death- 
rate be compared with that of the fever death-rate, it will be found 
that the latter shows a decline 2 per cent, greater than the former ; 
and the difference left to be accounted for by vaccination, therefore, 
on this reckoning, becomes a minus quantity. Curiously enough this 
same concomitant decline of fever and smali-pox, was noted by Dr. 
Farr as having occurred at the beginning of the century at a time 
when small-pox was said to be flying before the advent of vaccination. 
Dr. F arr says : “ Fever has progressively declined since 1771 ; fever 
*ln ISSI no less than 55,238 deaths in England were ascribed to the above-named 
causes, or one-ninth of the total deaths. 60 
has declined in nearly the same proportion as small-pox,’1’ * and the 
figures he gives are these ; 
Deaths per 10,000 
Living. 
1771-80 
1801-10 
1831-35 
Fever 
621 
264 
111 
Small-pox 
502 
204 
83 
One more piece of statistical information respecting England 
and Wales, vv'hich Sir Lyon Playfair did not give, I will furnish : 
the deaths from small-pox in the first ten years after compulsory 
vaccination was enacted, 1854-1863, were 33,515; during the 
second ten years, 1864-1873, there were 70,458. I cite this simply 
to show how, by dividing the periods differently, a very different 
complexion is put upon the statistics of the question.! 
In regard to Scotland, Sir Lyon Playfair speaks with authority, 
for on July 6, 1870, he said: “There could not be the slightest 
doubt that compulsory laws—where properly applied, as in Scotland 
and Ireland—were perfectly equal to stamp out small-pox in a 
country.” 
And figures seemed to support his assertion, for in that year only 
114 small-pox deaths were registered in the country. On June 19, 
1883, the same authority declared, “ Scotland in 1872-73 had a 
most serious epidemic of small-pox. This time he certainly was cor- 
rect; for within that period 3,572 persons died of small-pox in 
Scotland. But then, the explanation is forthcoming. “Stamping 
out is not keeping out; ” stamped out in 1870, epidemic in 1871 ! 
And Sir Lyon Playfair thinks “ his phrase ‘ stamped out’ was justi- 
fied by fact! ” 
The statement that “ the whole case of the anti-vaccinators de- 
pends on epidemic years” reminds one of Dr, Ballard’s undertaking 
country,” 
fied by fact! ” 
* McCulloch’s “ Statistics of the British Empire.” 
f The following figures from the 41th Annual Report of the Registrar-General just 
published are instructive: 
Deaths from Small-pox. 
Death-rate from Small-pox 
per 100,000. 
1841 50 (6 years) 
1861 (50 
1861 70 
1871-80 
England. 
42,071 
London. 
8,416 
7,150 
8,347 
15,539 
England. 
39 
23 
16 
34 
Loudon. 
40 
38 
38 
46 61 
that he could make the whole case plain if he might be allowed to 
leave the epidemic years out of consideration ; and the declaration 
that when epidemics come “ they first engulf the unvaccinated ” is 
disproved by fact wherever evidence on the subject can be obtained. 
Thus, in the Cologne epidemic of 18 70, 173 vaccinated persons 
were attacked before the first unvaccinated one.* In Liegnitz, in 
1871, the first unvaccinated to suffer was 225 th on the list and in 
Bonn, in 1870, the first unvaccinated victim was the forty-second 
attacked. 
Sir Lyon Playfair dealt cautiously with the London statistics. The 
Registrar-General puts the whole matter tersely in his report for 
1880, when he says : “ The decennium which closed with the year 
1880 was one of lower mortality in London than any of the preced- 
ing decennial periods These facts are strong evidence 
that the sanitary efforts of recent years have not been unfruitful. 
.. . . The evidence in support of this position is rendered 
still stronger, if, instead of fixing our attention upon the total mor- 
tality, we take into consideration its causes. For it will be found 
that the saving of life was almost entirely due to diminished mortal- 
ity from causes whose destructive activity is especially amenable to 
sanitary interference—namely, the so-called zymotic diseases. . . . 
The death-rate from fever fell nearly 50 per cent that 
of scarlatina and diphtheria fell 33 per cent. . . . One disease 
alone in this class shoived exceptionally a rise, and no inconsiderable 
one. This was small-pox, which owing to two great outbreaks of 
1871-72 and 1877-78, gave a death-rate nearly 50 per cent, above 
its previous average.” That is to say, the only disease against which 
a special prophylactic is invoked has increased, while those fought 
on common, rational, sanitary grounds have decreased. Is it that 
vaccination has blinded us to the real cause of small-pox, and that 
the fashionable fiction that “ sanitary measures have no influence on 
small-pox,” is bearing its pernicious fruit? 
One great fact goes behind all Sir Lyon Playfair’s statistics, and 
falsifies them; he has omitted to prove his major premiss—he has 
not shown that less small-pox means fewer deaths, and he cannot 
*Dr. de Pietra Santra—Letfre a Messieurs de la Chambre cles Ddputds, Feb. 16, 1881. 
t Quoted from petition to the Reichstag in A. C. Y. Reporter, June Ist, 1881. 62 
show it. As long as zymotic disease exists, it continues a quantity, 
composed of varying proportions of the same elements ; one epidemic 
predominates for a time, but it is at the expense of others, and it 
scarcely affects the total death-rate at all. The test of improvement 
is the decline, not of one zymotic, but of the total class death-rate. 
Dr. Farr puts the same thing thus :* “It is by no means proved 
that the general mortality, under unfavorable sanitary conditions, is 
much reduced by rendering a person insusceptible of one type, while 
he remains exposed to all other types of zymotic disease.” And 
again: “To operate, on mortality, protection against every one of 
the fatal zymotic diseases is required, otherwise the' suppression of 
one disease element opens the way to others.” If statistical proof be 
desired, it is at hand. In Prague, from 1796-1802, the general 
mortality was 1 in 32, at a time when the small-pox mortality was 
1 in 896§; but in 1832-55, when the small-pox mortality was only 
lin the general mortality was still 1 in 32g-.| Again, in 
India, the same fact comes out: in a recent Blue-Book it is stated 
“the vaccination returns in India show that the number of vaccina- 
tions does not bear a ratio to the small-pox deaths. Small-pox in 
India is related to season, and also to epidemic prevalence. It is 
not a disease, therefore, that can be controlled by vaccination, in the 
sense that vaccation is a specific against it. As an endemic and epi- 
demic disease, it must be dealt with by sanitary measures, and if 
these are neglected small-pox is certain to increase during epidemic 
times. Vaccination has no power, apparently over epidemic small- 
pox, It would scarcely answer, in the face of these facts, to go on 
vaccinating the people to protect them from small-pox, while leaving 
them surrounded by such disease causes as the reports would show to 
exist in all the villages affected.”J So that it would seem to be a 
just conclusion from the foregoing that vaccination is inoperative in 
the absence of sanitation and superfluous in its presence ; that if you 
could put out one zymotic disease by vaccination, people would die at 
the same rate as before, unless you abolish all by universal sanita- 
tion. 
* Letter to Registrar General, 30th Annual Report, 1869, p. 213. 
t Papers relating to Vaccination. Simon, 1857. 
t “ Report on Sanitary Measures in India, 1879-80.” Vol. XIII. 1881. 63 
I must next refer to the figures giving the small-pox mortality 
respectively among vaccinated and uuvaccinated children in London. 
These, according to Sir Lyon Playfair, give a ratio of the latter to 
the former equal to 44 to 1. 
Now, in order that statistics of this kind may have any value, it is 
necessary to ascertain the ratio of vaccinated to unvaccinated persons 
in the general population of London ; and, secondly, to be sure that 
the two classes compared are in all respects other than vaccination 
practically on a par. Now, it is safe to assert we have no means at 
our disposal to gauge accurately the extent to which Londoners are 
vaccinated. Sir Lyon Playfair pretends only 2or 3 per cent, are un- 
vaccinated—i. e., 98 or 97 per cent, vaccinated ; the higher the fig- 
ure, of course, the better, for his argument. Now for years past 6 
to 8 per cent., and more, of London children have remained unac- 
counted for as regards vaccination, and these, figures only relate to 
the registered births. Some two years ago an examination of a num- 
ber of children was made in Bethnal Green, one of the better vaccin- 
ated parishes, and then 13.8 per cent, of them were found to be un- 
vaccinated. Now 98-|-13.8 does not equal 100. So that Sir Lyon 
Playfair’s unvaccinated class is much too restricted. Again, in 30 
per cent, of small-pox deaths,* there is no information respecting 
vaccination, and how are we to know whether the desire “ to save 
vaccination from reproach” was stronger than the hesitation to wit- 
ness to transgression of the Vaccination Acts, which has been drily 
suggested as an explanation of “the not stated cases”? Then, with 
regard to the comparability of the two classes ; are they identical in 
other respects? Sir Lyon says they are (his argument would be 
worthless were it otherwise). “ They were living,” he says, “ un- 
der the same conditions ; they were living in the same houses, they 
were eating the same food, they were breathing the same epidemic 
air.” Dr. Buchanan, Avith greater assurance, declares: “No one 
suggests that the vaccinated and unvaccinated classes live under con- 
ditions differing from each other in their influence on small-pox, un- 
less it be this one condition of vaccination.” But in the British 
Medical Journal, Oct. 23, 1880, Ave read: “ The high death-rate in 
* Buchanan: “Small-pox in London in 1881.” Report to the Local Government 
Board. 64 
the unvaccinated must not be compared with the lower rate in the 
vaccinated, nor'with the general mortality from small-pox before the 
discovery of vaccination, without a fair consideration of all the facts 
which may help to arrive at a just conclusion. It is probable that a 
large proportion of unvaccinated persons is to be found among the 
ignorant, dirty and wretched inhabitants of the slums of London, and 
very few, indeed, among the educated and better-fed members of so- 
ciety. The disease is much intensified by over-crowding.” Dr. 
Bakewell, who gave evidence before the committee of 1871, observes : 
“ It must not be forgotten that in all European countries the unvac- 
cinated are taken from the poorest and most neglected classes of the 
community, and may fairly be expected to be bad subjects for any dis- 
ease like variola. This should be borne in mind in estimating the 
mortality of vaccinated and unvaccinated.” 
I do not say that this will explain the whole of the disparity be- 
tween the two death-rates, but I do say that Sir Lyon Playfair, by 
not only not allowing for this, but even denying any difference other 
than vaccination, has proved himself a better special pleader than an 
impartial investigator. 
Let us turn for a moment to the incidence of small-pox attacks, not 
small-pox deaths, for this is the all-important point in the plea for 
compulsion. 
If vaccination only mitigates small-pox when it comes, and does 
not lessen liability to attack, the last shred of argument for compul- 
sion is torn away ; for mild small-pox, all authorities agree, is as 
contagious as the most severe ; hence there is no more danger to 
others from a malignant unvaccinated case than from a discrete vac- 
cinated one. Now, in the epidemic of 1871, 91.5 per cent, of the 
cases admitted to the Highgate Hospital were vaccinated, and at the 
same place in 1881, of 491 cases only twenty-one were not vaccin- 
ated, and this at a time when certainly not more than 90 per cent, 
of Londoners were “protected;” and, indeed, in an outbreak at 
Bromley, comprising forty-three cases, every one of the victims had 
been vaccinated and three re-vaccinated,* so that it would seem, as 
regards the relative incidence of small-pox, vaccination has very little 
effect. If 1 wished to improve the occasion, after Sir Lyon Play- 
* Lancet, April 27, 1881. 65 
fair’s example, I might quote Dr. Browning, who gives particulars 
of 469 cases of post-vaccinal small-pox, of whom ninety-nine died, or 
21.108 per cent, of whom he says, “ many of these sufferers showed 
good vaccine marks of the kind that would be deemed worthy of an 
extra grant from the government inspector, and yet they took small- 
pox—some within six days, Some within six months, and some within 
six years of their vaccination date.” 
Sir Lyon Playfair found fault with Mr. Taylor for having said that 
150 years ago inoculation was in full practice, and Mr. Taylor may 
have been thirty years out in his reckoning, but Sir Lyon was not 
much more than a century wrong when he informed the House that 
the black death (1348-49) followed in the wake of the Wars of the 
Roses (1455) ! 
The whole of the argument about the relative amount of small-pox 
in the French and German armies hinges on the point which it seems 
impossible to arrive at—viz., the condition of the French army in re- 
spect of vaccination and re-vaccination. But of what avail is an ar- 
gument that, because unre-vaccinated French soldiers, destitute, de- 
feated, and dejected, suffered severely from small-pox, therefore vac- 
cination should be compulsory all over England, and in parts where 
small-pox is unknown? The 23,469 deaths from small-pox in the 
French army, though cited in St. Petersburg .and Berlin, twice pub- 
lished in the British Medical Journal, approved by Dr. Carpenter, 
proclaimed by Sir Lyon Playfair, and declared by Sir Charles Dilke 
to be simply “ crushing,” have been proved, nevertheless, to be a pure 
fabrication, there being no statistical data of the Franco-German War 
worthy of the name. The one certain fact about the matter seems 
to be that 263 well re-vaccinated German soldiers died of small-pox. 
Diseases are specific, said Sir Lyon, and vaccination can convey no 
disease but itself—theoretically true, practically an absurdity. If it 
were possible to filter off the vaccine germs from vaccine lymph and 
use these alone, it might be possible to avoid all other taint; but vac- 
cine virus, what is it? It is the serum of blood, containing also 
blood-cells in small numbers along with the vaccinal germs, and the 
constituents derived from the blood may naturally carry with them 
any poison contained in the blood. Vaccine lymph can, therefore, 66 
convey any disease whose cause can reside in the blood, and there- 
fore in the lymph of a vaccine vescicle. 
Respecting the oft-told tale of diminished pock-marked faces, it is 
curious and instructive to quote the following extracts, the one from 
the National Vaccine Establishment’s Report, for 1825, the other 
from the Lancet, June 29, 1872. The former asks : “ What argu- 
ment more powerful can be urged in favor of vaccination than the 
daily remark which the least observant must make, that in our 
churches, our theatres, and in every large assemblage of the people to 
see a young person bearing the marks of small-pox is now of ex- 
tremely rare occurrence?” 
That is to say, twenty-five years before vaccination was made com- 
pulsory, pock-marked faces were all but banished ; whereas, nineteen 
years after the introduction of compulsion, the Lancet laments “ the 
growing frequency with which we meet persons in the street disfig- 
ured for life with the pitting of small-pox. Young men, and still 
worse, young women, are to be seen daily whose comeliness is quite 
compromised by this dreadful disease.” Both statements are worth- 
less as evidence to one who has acquainted himself with statistics. 
It is true pock-marked faces are rarer than they used to be, because 
small-pox is rarer and better treated than it used to be ; but so, also, 
is fever, and the decline of fever is simply not so markedly observed 
because people do not carry “the stamped receipt” of fever about 
them on their persons. It is true, and no one can deny it, that small- 
pox in London declined at the end of the last century and the begin- 
ning of this, in a remarkable way, and in nearly the same ratio as 
fever ; but it is equally true that for the last thirty years (under com- 
pulsory vaccination) the number of deaths by small-pox in London 
has increased, and it is not surprising that pock-marked faces have 
multiplied accordingly. Here are the figures : 
1851-60 
7,150 
1861-70 
8,347 
1871-80 
15,539 
The foregoing are the criticisms which suggested themselves to me 
while listening to Sir Lyon Playfair’s speech. If I have put the oppo- 
site side of the case more strongly than fairly—and I do not think I 67 
have—it is in order to show that this well-nigh interminable question is 
not to be summarily dismissed as undebatable and one-sided. Of 
course the public prints which are not scientific in their way have ac- 
cepted with unquestioning faith Sir Lyon Playfair’s “ semi-scientific ” 
exposition, and the following piece of concentrated ignorance and in- 
accuracy I quote from the Globe of June 20 : 
“In fine, every fact, every circumstance, every experience sup- 
ports the conclusion that, were the law to be altered in accordance 
with Mr. Peter Taylor’s views, the immediate result would be to very 
largely increase the rate of mortality.” 
I might rewrite it thus :—No fact, no circumstance, no experience 
supports the conclusion that were vaccination able to abolish small- 
pox, the death-rate would be lowered in the least, so long as insanitary 
conditions prevail. And, in fine, if sanitation prevailed, the very rai- 
son d’etre for vaccination, to say nothing of compulsion, would be 
everlastingly destroyed. NOW READY 
In Two Volumes, Royal Bvo., over 1,100 pp. Price 361. 
HISTORY AND PATHOLOGY 
OF 
VAC CIN AT IO N 
YOL. I.—A CRITICAL INQUIRY 
VOL. lI.—SELECTED ESSAYS 
BY 
EDITED BY 
EDGAR M. CROOKSHANK, M. B, 
PROFESSOR OF COMPARATIVE PATHOLOGY AND BACTERIOLOGY IN, AND 
FELLOW OF, KING’S COLLEGE, LONDON. 
AUTHOR OF PAPKRS ON THE ETIOLOGY OF SCARLET FEVER; ANTHRAX IN SWINE; 
TUBERCULOSIS AND THE PUBLIC MILK SUPPLY; THE HISTORY AND PATHOL- 
OGY OF ACTINOMYCOSIS; IN REPORTS OP THE AGRICULTURAL DEPART- 
MENT OF THE PRIVY COUNCIL. 
AUTHOR OF “ A MANUAL OF BACTERIOLOGY,” ETC. 
ILLUSTRATED 
WITH 
TWENTY-TWO COLOURED PLATES 
INCLUDING REPRODUCTIONS OF THE PLATES ILLUSTRATING JENNER’S “ INQUIRY AND OF 
SELECTED PLATES FROM THE WORKS OF CEELY AND OTHERS, 
AND WITH 
A REDUCED FACSIMILE of an ENGRAVING of Mr. JESTY. 
A FACSIMILE of the FIRST FOLIO of the MS. of JENNER’S ORIGINAL 
PAPER. 
A FACSIMILE of an UNPUBLISHED LETTER from JENNER to Mr. HEAD. 
LONDON: H. K. LEWIS, 136 GOWER STREET, W. C. EXTRACTS 
FROM THE 
AUTHOR’S PREFACE. 
In this preface I have thought it necessary to lay before the pro- 
fession the circumstances which have led to the production of these 
volumes. 
I had devoted myself for some time to pathological researches in 
connection with the communicable diseases of man and the lower 
animals, when the discovery of an outbreak of Cow Pox, in 1887, 
led me to investigate the history and pathology of this affection. At 
that time I accepted and taught the doctrines, in reference to this dis- 
ease, which are commonly held by the profession and are described 
in the text-books of medicine. 
In endeavouring to discover the origin of this outbreak, it was 
proved beyond question that the cows had not been infected by milk- 
ers suffering from Small Pox. This fact, together with the clinical 
characters of the disease in the cows, and in milkers infected from 
the cows, and the certainty that I had to deal “ not with an infec- 
tious disease like cattle-plague or pleuro-pneumonia, but with a dis- 
ease which is communicated solely by contact,” convinced me that 
the commonly accepted descriptions of the nature and origin of Cow 
Pox were purely theoretical. As the natural Cow Pox had not been 
investigated in this country for nearly half a century, it was obvi- 
ous that a much neglected field of comparative pathology had been 
opened up for further inquiry. 
While attending at the National Vaccine Establishment of the 
Local Government Board I was unable to obtain any exact details, 
clinical or pathological, of the source of the lymph which was em- 
ployed there. From my experience of this and other vaccination 
stations I found that both official and unofficial vaccinators were com- 71 
pletely occupied with the technique of vaccination, to the exclusion 
of any precise knowledge of the history and pathology of the dis- 
eases from which their lymph stocks had been obtained. Thus, at 
this early stage of my investigation, I felt that what Ceely said, in 
1840, was still true : “ The imperfect knowledge which we at pres- 
ent possess on many points connected with the natural history of the 
variolce vaccina, and the numerous and formidable impediments to 
the improvement and extension of that knowledge, demand the con- 
tinuance of vigilant, patient, and diligent inquiry.” 
In January, 1888, while I was studying the literature of the sub- 
ject at the Library of the Royal College of Surgeons, Mr. Baily, the 
librarian, to whom I am indebted for much courteous assistance, was 
engaged in re-cataloguing the Library. He found a parcel of MSS., 
which he thought might prove of interest to me. It contained let- 
ters from Hunter to Jenner and a manuscript which was thought to 
be the MS. of Jenner’s Inquiry. On carefully perusing it I discov- 
ered that.it differed in many respects from the published Inquiry ; it 
was, in fact, Jenner’s Communication to the Royal Society. 1 was 
so struck by the contents of this paper, and the small amount of 
evidence upon which Jenner had first ventured to propose the substi- 
tution of Cow Pox inoculation or vaccination for the old system of 
Small Pox inoculation or variolation, that I was induced to carefully 
look into the life of Jenner and the early history of vaccination, as 
contained in Baron’s Biography, and in the correspondence and arti- 
cles on the subject in contemporary medical and scientific periodi- 
cals. 
I gradually became so deeply impressed with the small amount of 
knowledge possessed by practitioners concerning Cow Pox and other 
sources of vaccine lymph, and with the conflicting teachings and 
opinions of leading authorities in both the medical and veterinary 
professions, that I determined to investigate the subject for myself. 
From antiquarian booksellers in Paris, Berlin, and in this country, 
I succeeded in a very short time in obtaining a large number of works 
dealing with the early history of vaccination. 
They at the same time forwarded many works on Small Pox inoc- 
ulation, and thus my interest was aroused in this subject also, and 72 
its bearing upon the history and pathology of vaccination was soon 
apparent. 
In February, 1888, I resolved to consult the leading authorities in 
France, and to obtain, if possible, the history of the Bordeaux 
Lymph, and of the outbreaks of Cow Pox which had been met with 
in that country during the time that the disease was supposed to be 
extinct in this. 
For reference to some works, copies of which I have not hitherto 
succeeded in obtaining, I have availed myself of the British Museum 
and our medical libraries. 
The difficulty in gaining access to these works is no doubt the rea- 
son why the originals have been so little read. It would hardly be 
possible for the practitioner with but little time at his disposal, and, 
if in the country, without access to many medical libraries, to under- 
take such an inquiry; but I trust that the system which has 
been followed in this work of giving copious extracts will induce 
others to study the original authorities. 
Edgar M. Crookshank. WANTED! WANTED! WANTED! 
Members of Parliament, Noblemen, Government Officers, 
Judges, Lawyers, Parsons, Councillors, etc., 
whose moral characters ARE GOOD ! 
BEAD THE FOLLOWING EXTRACTS. 
Christian World, January, 1888. 
“Twenty-Five Times Fined.” 
Sir,—The wide circulation of your paper, and the respect in 
which I know it to be held, prompts me to ask powerful support in 
an appeal I desire to make to every liberty-loving Englishman, 
wherever he may be found. A cruel persecution is being carried on 
by the East Ashford Guardians, towards a parishioner named Charles 
Hayward, whose only offence is that he declines to have his child vac- 
cinated, believing, as I do, that to inoculate a healthy child with 
poisonous matter, from sources unknown because unknowable, is it- 
self a crime. Hayward is a mechanic in the employ of a railway 
company, and at the instigation of these so-called Guardians, after 
having been summoned and fined twenty-five times, between May, 
1885, and the 19th of last month, the fines amounting to £4O 55., 
has now been again served with two summonses. Now, Sir, whether 
vaccination be right or wrong, it never was the intention of the 
Legislature that an Englishman should be thus persecuted because he 
will not do violence to his own conscience. My sympathy with 
Hayward has been intensified this week by my own personal experi- 
ence. I have myself been summoned before the magistrates for the 
second time for a similar cause, but by the intervention of my solici- 
tor, I am relieved of all personal inconvenience, the fines imposed 74 
being a matter of indifference to me. In the ordinary course of af- 
fairs. one does not covet the distinction of figuring in a public court; 
but the only sense of shame. I am conscious of in the present instance 
arises from ray neglect of so vital a question as vaccination, until it 
was forcibly brought under my notice by a dear sister of mine nearly 
losing her life by this dangerous operation, since when I have studied 
this question deeply, and am convinced that as certainly as inocula- 
tion was proved to have propagated small-pox, so surely will vacci- 
nation be proved to propagate syphilis and other diseases. But I 
maintain, Sir, supposing that vaccination does all that Jenner ever 
claimed for it, that is, renders the patient operated upon proof against 
small-pox, it follows that if my neighbour vaccinate his children, 
they cannot take small-pox from mine ; and hence, I submit, no ra- 
tional man can argue that the State has a right to compel me, as a 
father to jeopardise the health and lives of my children in the name 
of the public weal.—l am, Sir, your obedient servant, 
John Lewis. 
Spedan Tower, West Heath, 
Hampstead, N. W., Jan. 2. 
Fkom the Anti-Vaccinator, September 26,1809. 
“ Vaccination Viewed Politically.” 
LETTER FROM PROFESSOR NEWMAN. 
Dear Mr. Pitman,—You call ray attention to an article in the 
Lancet, commenting on a private letter of mine to you, which you 
have thought fit to publish. You kindly desire to print some reply 
from me. I really think I may claim that you or other anti-vaccina- 
tors will make the reply, which is not at all difficult. I have no 
taste for detailed controversy, especially with an anonymous oppo- 
nent, and with a medical man on a medical topic. But I regard the 
political side of the question as the primary. It is not developed in 
that letter—which I never intended for the public; but I will now 
enter upon it somewhat more fully. 75 
It does not rest with Parliament to enact how a disease shall be 
treated. If a Bill were proposed to enforce that every one who is 
seized with apoplexy shall be bled, the Lancet would probably be 
foremost in outcry. I should expect it to propound that Parliament 
is no authority in medicine ; that to protect us from dangerous treat- 
ment by ignorant pretenders, Parliament enacts medical degrees as 
mere tests of knowledge, but it must not dictate to those who have 
displayed their knowledge by gaining the degree. 
Nor is it to the purpose to say that Parliament took advice of 
physicians before it legislated. Some 30 or 40 years ago, when 
homceopaths first disused bleeding for apoplexy and fever, the dis- 
approval of their conduct by the orthodox medical faculty was so 
universal and so vehement, that Parliament might easily have got 
medical warrant to enforce bleeding. Nay, 100 years ago, physicians 
were zealous for inoculation. My father was with difficulty saved 
from it by the sturdy refusal of his mother, who said (as she told me) 
—“lf God send small-pox on my child, I must bear it; but never 
will I consent to give it to him on purpose ; how can anyone know 
what would come of it?” 
At that time Parliament might have been advised by educated and 
learned physicians to make inoculation compulsory ; and I make no 
doubt those physicians spoke as dogmatically to my grandmother in 
favour of it as any can now speak of vaccination : yet, by the advice 
of physicians, inoculation is now made penal. It is certainly possi- 
ble that by the advice of physicians vaccination also will hereafter be 
made penal. Medicine is a changing and (let us hope) progressive 
Art; it has no pretension to be Science, or to have any fixedness at 
all. The Editor of the Lancet has probably read the article in the 
Quarterly Review of April, 1860, entitled “The Aims of Modern 
Medicine.” It is a storehouse of detailed fact for those who are too 
young to remember what it narrates of unanimous medical error, 
pernicious on the hugest scale. Medicine cannot improve, unless 
the younger and fresher minds among physicians are left perfectly free 
to deviate from the routine of their elders. Nothing can justify Par- 
liament in enacting a medical creed, or enforcing any special medical 
procedures. 76 
But if physicians must have hands unfettered, have patients no 
right to choose their physician ?—no right to repudiate treatment 
which they think quackery? We all ought to be re-vaccinated peri- 
odically, according to the Lancet. Does then Parliament dare to 
enact such a thing? It does not; else I might be taken by force and 
vaccinated to-morrow. And if I understand the argument for com- 
pulsory vaccination, it cannot rightly stop short of this. I may be 
told that extreme dangers require extreme remedies. Well—l will 
put really extreme cases. In an age and country of barbarism, I 
am seized with the plague, or with a highly-infectious leprosy. If 
I have the plague I am to be shot dead with arrows, and mould is 
to be heaped over me where I lie. If I have the leprosy lamto be 
hunted into solitude, and there live, if I can. 
The law is hard, yet I might accept my fate without murmuring. 
One who is dangerous to society, whether from contagion or from 
mania, cannot retain ordinary social rights. Better for me to die 
outright than to infect my kind nurses, for the miserable chance of 
lingering. To put me to death for plague is sharp law, no doubt; 
but the legislature would at least know that a pestilential body, once 
well covered with earth, does no further harm, so that the despotism 
effects its end :—at least it stops contagion. I should feel that I died 
for my country’s good. But if he enacted that I should be bled, or 
should have the sore places cut out, or that poison should be infused 
into my veins, he could never be sure that the public gained any 
benefit from his cruelties. A far more overwhelming proof is needed 
by the legislator than so very shifting a thing as medical advice. And 
here it is advice from one country only in all the world, and that where 
men peculiarly experienced in vaccination condemn it. 
One who carries disease with him is ostensibly dangerous. This 
—and this only—justifies legislation against him. But when a man 
or child is ostensibly healthy, no case is made out for legislation at 
all. To enact that a healthy person shall have a disease lest hereafter 
he get a worse disease, is a form of depotism hard to parallel ; and 
what is peculiarly disgraceful, it is directed against innocent infants 
alone, because, they are helpless : it does not dare to attack us adults. 
This fact justly arouses parents to indignation. Let Parliament enact 
that every M. P. shall be at once vaccinated, and that it shall be done 77 
from arm to arm among them, every four or five years, as the doctors 
may pi'efer, if they will enact such things concerning children. The 
law now says to a parent—“We are alarmed to see that your child 
has no disease. Cow-pox (for the public good) it must have, with 
the cl\p,nce of other hideous diseases : submit, or else make yourself a 
criminal, have your hair cropped, and dress in prison garb.” 
Such legislation implies that Parliament is a Medical Pope, and 
would justify no end of monstrous violations of sacred personal right. 
The Lancet “ begs respectfully to tell me ” that in the matter of “ vac- 
cine lymph,” “the State( ! )and private practitioners take great care.” 
Is this very comforting—very reassuring—to one who has read 
Ira Connell’s frightful case ? I have a paper before me—reprinted 
from the Lancet of Nov. 16, 1861—which contains a detailed account 
of 46 children in Piedmont being infected with loathsome disease— 
soon fatal to some of them—from receiving the lymph (called vaccine) 
out of the arm of one child called (and supposed to be) healthy. As 
a surgeon cannot be omniscient, he cannot know the diseases hidden 
in a particular child ; he is not to blame for not knowing ; but this is 
precisely the reason why Parliament ought much rather to forbid than 
to enforce the vaccinating of one child from another. It makes the 
enforcements so indefensible, that one is unwilling to affix the right 
epithet. 
But even if cows would kindly get cow-pox for our convenience, so 
that each child might have the disease direct from the cow, even so it 
would be blind tyranny for the law to say to a parent—“ You shall 
not keep your child in perfect health; that is too dangerous a course.” 
When to this the parent replies by defiance of the law, and is treated 
as a criminal, the law-makers are (in my opinion) the real criminals 
before God and man. Parents who become martyrs by resisting the 
law, deserve a sympathy akin to those who are martyrs of religion. 
Truly yours, F. W. Newman. 
Pkom the Anti- Vaccinator, September 25, 1869. 
In the Anti- Vaccinator for to-day I observe a series of propositions 
upon the “ Hygeian System of Medicine.” This leads me to pen a 
few remarks on blood-poisoning. 
“Blood-Poisoning.” 78 
“ The blood is the life.” Then what feeds it feeds the life. Now, 
human life is propagated, like animal life, as to successive subjects 
of it ; and the orderly condition for the propagations of human subjects 
of life is—marriage of one male and one female. The life of these 
two, by cohabitation, becomes bodily one. But if the blood <9f the 
female be the receptacle of the propagations of several males, the 
result is the well-known venereal disease. 
Now, what is the use of beating about the bush in this matter, 
when the results of the corrupt human poison thus generated are so 
patent to all? The truth is, all deadly poison to human blood, and 
all diseases of the kind called “ pox” originate in this wicked violation 
of the law of creation by debased mankind \ and the corrupt mat- 
ter engendered in the female system by this death-and-disease-origina- 
ting sin is the all-potent human blood-poison all the world over. Small- 
pox, and all other kindred diseases, are the result of the Creator’s 
laws operating in the human system to rid that system of this circu- 
lating death, and the corrupt substance thereof, which is traversing 
the frame in all its blood vessels. 
Talk about the origin of diseases, and say “All disease is caused 
by the introduction or retention of foreign and impure substances.” 
What substance is so impure, so corrupt, as that matter which is the 
result of the wicked co-mixture of several kinds of human seed 
in one female system? Death and rottenness only can result. This 
is proved to all the world. It is no secret. Yet physicians, vaccin- 
nators aye, and anti-vaccinators are willing to talk and write 
about anything, rather than about this emperor of diseases, his birth- 
place, and his parents. 
Now, the great mischief of vaccination is, that it introduces the 
poisonous spawn of this monarch of diseases from one infant system 
to another ; and it may well be discerned that, just as the natural in- 
firmities of any individual are more easily borne, and less hurtful 
than blows and wounds and bruises from outside sources so the 
corrupt or otherwise impure substances generated and retained in any 
one’s own blood, are less hurtful to the health of the individual, and 
more easily rejected than substances introduced from a foreign source. 
Hence the great evil of vaccination ; and hence the almost uniform 
result of good health to those who recover from small-pox naturally 79 
gone through ; because the blood is thereby purged of the inherited 
poison, and has none introduced from any other source. 
Only let the above-named fruitful source of small-pox be removed, 
and the disease will disappear; but neither vaccination nor anti- 
vaccination will ever rid the world of it so long as men and women 
persist in this deadly sin against G-od, against their own souls and 
bodies, against humanity and especially the humanity of yet un- 
born generations. T. R. 
Newton Heath. 
FapM the Anti-Vaccinator, October 2, 1869. 
“ Compulsory Vaccination and the Contagious Diseases 
Act the Fruits of Medical Tyranny and Fatuity.” 
LETTER FROM PROFESSOR NEWMAN. 
Dr. Nicholson’s Pamphlet—Compulsory Vaccination and the Conta- 
gious Diseases Act—lnsidious Medical Tyranny—The Privy 
Council a Despotism—Vaccination makes work for the Doctors 
They ask for more Hospitals, Medicine, and Money—Brutal 
Treatment of Women—A Standing Army and Barrack Life 
Demoralising—Shuttle Drink Shops—The Doctors would make 
things pleasant for Adulterers, instead of removing the Causes of 
Disease—They take for granted that Men are to he vicious, and 
Women the Victims— Vaccination opposed to God’s law. 
Dear Mr. Pitman,—You request me to write some critique on the 
vaccination pamphlet of Dr. H. A. Nicholson. That gentleman is 
son to an intimate friend of mine, and is known to me from early 
boyhood. I respect my young friend’s science and talents, and many 
amiable qualities too much to covet the task of opposing him person- 
ally. He claims that the existing agreement of medical men in ap- 
proval of vaccination constitutes the collective sense of the medical 
profession ; that “ the collective sense of the medical profession is the 
collective sense of the nation ” (p. 37) ; and that “ it strikes at the 
very roots of government and law ” if “ an individual, relying upon 
his own wisdom, refuse obedience to a law which has been passed 
for the general weal.” He is also pleased to call agitation against 80 
the law “ unreasoning agitation.” Facts and events will show him 
that he expects too much submission from us. 
I thought I had sufficiently burdened the pages of the Anti- Vacci- 
nator already ; but a new packet of tracts sent to me from a differ- 
ent quarter, shows me that dangers are more imminent than I had 
been aware of, and that you are fighting a battle not against vacci- 
nation only, but against insidious medical tyranny, which is as con- 
ceited and fatuous as it is immoral. I carefully consider every epi- 
thet which I here use. I count them five ; and I find every one to 
be just, to be specifically appropriate, and necessary to be uttered. 
The bill for extending the Contagious Diseases Act passed the Com- 
mons, and was barely stopped in the Lords ; whilst the newspapers 
kept such silence that the nation did not know what was going on. 
Is not this insidious? Certain physicians have the ear of the Privy 
Council, and indoctrinate it. The Privy Council moves the ministry 
—if it be not quite the same body ; and the whispers of the Ministry 
carry the doctors’ bill through Parliament. The newspapers (I con- 
jecture) think the subject too disgusting to argue, and therefore are 
silent. Thus we are under an insidious despotism. But I proceed 
to the facts, of which I had no previous knowledge. There is a well 
known vice, ruinous alike to body and soul, to industry and to prop- 
erty, to family life and to national Avelfare. The doctors propose 
measures which are certain to multiply this vice double or threefold ; 
and then fancy that by their clever treatment they will be able to ex- 
tirpate the disease which it naturally causes. This I call fatuous 
and conceited. Of course, they are to have an immense increase in 
the number of hospitals —at least one in every town to treat this 
single class of diseases. (The hospital at Plymouth alone has al- 
ready cost above £20,000.) When they fail in removing disease, 
they will with truth say there have not been enough hospitals, enough 
nurses, enough medical treatment, or enough money. But further— 
their mode of stopping disease is to seize on women (only women, not 
men !) suspected of having it, and violently submit them to a disgust- 
ing surgical operation, in order to ascertain whether or not they have 
it! The examination is to be once a month ; whether on 20,000 or 
100,000 women, no one can tell. It ought to be once a day, to be 
effectual. A woman who refuses submission may be sent to prison 81 
with hard labor for three months, and if she still refuse, the punish- 
ment may be repeated ; and so on, for her whole life. Of course, it 
is calculated that so awful a threat will constrain immediate sub- 
mission. I should be right to call this medical bill tyrannical even 
if this were all, but those who x’ead the details and the comments by 
Mr. Thomas Worth (a surgeon of Nottingham) will see that I have 
not said half that is needed, or half exhibited the detestable cruelty 
and stupidity of the bill. The whisper of a policeman, or the opinion 
of a tipsy soldier, or the spite of a brothel-keeper against a woman 
whom she has failed to seduce, may subject any ill-protected woman 
to the frightful process of this bill, and may impart to her the disease 
for which they are searching. The immorality pervading the bill is 
appalling. According to morality and religion, vice is worse than 
disease, sin than pain ; virtue is a higher good than ease and com- 
fort; but according to this bill, the doctors are to be allowed to try 
their hand at stopping disease by a process which they fanc}T is to 
make vice comfortable and safe a wholesale process itself likely to 
demoralise a whole neighbourhood, as well as tyrannical on individ- 
uals. 
Now, I ought, perhaps, to apologise for obtruding this disagree- 
able topic on your pages ; but I wish to point out to your readers that 
if we do not fight the battle against the Faculty on the vaccination 
tyranny, we shall certainly have to fight it afterwards. We have 
the calamity of an over-occupied Parliament, and of a ministry still 
more over-occupied. Hence they cannot bring fresh minds to a 
quarter of the topics which beset them. I think it manifest that to 
the medical profession immense knowledge of detail often over- 
weights their good sense. They believe too much in art and clever- 
ness. Disease or vice, when on any great scale—when it can be 
calculated on and predicted arises from bad or defective national 
institutions. No one consults physicians how to improve these ; yet 
to remove the causes is the only mode of removing evil effects. When 
a military barrack that scourge of maid-servants causes a con- 
flux of dissolute women, and presently saps the health of the soldiers, 
no physician dares to name the only remedies that can be effectual. 
To prohibit drink shops within five miles of the barracks would cut 
off a large part of the evil. The doctors might at least urge this ; 82 
but, “collectively,” they are for the drink. Farther, unless you do 
away with martial law in time of peace or limit its operations to 
the minutes during which a soldier is handling deadly weapons—you 
cannot prevent a standing army from being a demoralising institu- 
tion. Barrack life is as unnatural as it is wearisome, and needs to 
be brought to a minimum, and all martinet discipline to be made im- 
possible. Of course, no physician opens his lips on such topics. He 
takes for granted that men are to be vicious, that women are to he the 
victims ; and then considers how his beloved art may best counteract 
God’s law that disease shall follow vice. So, in vaccination, he 
does not consider how parents may be able to keep themselves and 
children in perfect health the natural state. But as in the former 
case vice, regulated by art, is to evade disease, so here disease 
regulated by art, is to supercede health. lam not sure that 
a registered medical man, who persuades a youth to vice by tell- 
ing him that it is the road to health, ought to be unpunishable by 
law ; but certainly physicians, when their advice that we will accept 
a disease is rejected, must not be allowed to take us by the throat, 
and stab us with a poisoned lancet neither us nor our children. 
Dr. H. A. Nicholson should consider that one who says—“ You 
will do better to accept my proofs, for if you do not, we shall operate 
on you against your will ” virtually bids us to regard his argument 
as superfluous. F. W. Newman. 
From the Anti- Vaccinator, October 2, 1809. 
“What We Owe the ‘Faculty.’” 
Let us not forget that we are dealing with national questions. It 
is not with the crochet of this anonymous writer or that —be he 
faithful or unfaithful that we have to deal, in the matter of Anti- 
Compulsory Vaccination : it is with the liberty of Englishmen to obey 
the laws of God, if they choose, that we are concerned. And no 
tarring or feathering of any class of men, or faculty or profession, 
must be allowed to blink out of sight this foremost object to be at- 
tained. This premised, let us consider for a moment the question— 
What do we owe the Faculty of Medicine? 83 
As a nation, we owe them much ; for the great bulk of the people 
are ready to put faith in doctors, faith in pills, faith in brandy, rum, 
and gin, faith in tobacco, faith in beef steaks and plum puddings, 
faith in stock-jobbers, faith in joint-stock company directors; in 
short, faith in any imaginable “ faculty ” on earth, rather than faith 
in God. For faith in God implies, in reference to the “ laws of 
health,” a willingness to trust in the power of God to preserve in 
health and soundness the living mechanism of the human body, 
Avhich He only has formed, and which He only can form. And who 
is so capable of keeping a steam engine in working order as the man 
who puts it together, and knows exactly the relation of each part to 
the whole ? Let those who have to pay the piper bear testimony to 
the endless blunders and expense resulting from the common practice 
of sending one man to put up a steam engine, and then sending other 
less skilled hands to adjust it, when the racket of wear and tear has 
thrown it out of gear. But seeing that, as a nation, we have lost 
faith in the ability of the Divine Mechanist, and do not believe that 
He is present to drive and tend the machines He makes, therefore 
we must needs have a Faculty of human machine-menders, who 
stand to us in the relation of policemen, to clear the way for God to 
do His work in us : and we, as well as many of them, have so far 
forgot their true function, as to regard them as veritable physicians 
of life, rather than the livery servants of the One only true Healer. 
Still, we owe them much ; for the great bulk of us are so careless to 
study and obey the laws of health which are expanding before the 
mental eyes of every grown man, and give him, by pain and pros- 
tration of powers, daily admonition when he transgresses the laws of 
God in his bodily life ;—I say we are such obstinate, self-willed de- 
fiancers of these laws, or such idle and blind loungers and gropers 
along the road of life, that we fall into all kinds of worse than beastly 
habits of drunkenness, debaucherj', gluttony, and pride ; and when 
our bodies revolt, and will obey their tyrants no longer, we are all 
ready enough to call in the “ Faculty,” in the person of some favor- 
ite doctor, whom we believe to be either an experienced bodily police- 
man or a bona-fide doctor of health. 
Now, granted that the “Faculty” has very little faculty—what 
of that? It is because our cases and general states require so little. 84 
Very few, comparatively, are the cases in which the doctor has need 
to exercise much medical knowledge. All he has got to do, as a 
general rule, is to keep us from laying violent hands on ourselves for 
a while. It may be that he is as great a professional blockhead as 
we are non-professional ones, and then, in Ids blind self-importance, 
he will go on drugging at a venture, and benumbing our friendly 
pains to please our cowardly whims ; and thus put us so far out of 
gear that neither he nor ourselves can tell whether we mend or get 
worse ; and the diseased frame will go on reeling to and fro like a 
drunken man, till, falling at last into the ditch of suffocation, the life 
departs. Professional manslaughter is committed in many cases like 
the one we have described. But when this happens, it frequently 
only prevents suicide ; for we are so determined to disregard the laws 
of health, or so woefully and willfully ignorant of them, that if the 
doctor does not kill us, and for a time can keep us from killing our- 
selves, wre go on striking blow after blow till the fatal one falls at 
last. Think of the wagon-loads of pills which are taken, and any 
of which might contain deadly poison for ought the consumer knows ; 
and if they do not, it is owing to the “ Faculty ” and not to the gor- 
mandising consumers. Now, since there must needs be so much 
manslaughter, while we are such a nation of barbarians miscalled 
“civilized”—is it not better that we should have some authorized 
method of doing it? Maybe, after all, less of it is done than would 
be if we had not. I remember a very clever old surgeon in New- 
tonheath (Dr. William Pegg) a very eccentric man, but one who 
worked hard (and his wife, too, as a midwife) during a long life, 
chiefly among poor people for little pay. He used to come to our 
house when I was a boy, and my grandfather and he were often chat- 
ting together. One time he said— “ Robert, the difference between 
you and me is this : if you kill a man they’ll hang you for it; but, 
you see, I have a license to kill people.” Yet this man probably 
saved the lives of hundreds of people, humanly speaking ; and not 
seldom by preventing less skilled practitioners from killing their 
patients through ignorance. 
Again I say, we owe the “ Faculty ” much, speaking nationally ; 
and if they have stolen a march upon the nation in getting compul- 
sory vaccination made the law of the land, and sought their own 85 
interest in doing so, this is only what kings, queens, lords, commons, 
and people have been doing from time immemorial, when they could 
get the chance. What anti-compulsory vaccinationists have now got 
to do, therefore, is not to throw stones at the doctors, but to vindi- 
cate and agitate for the liberty of every English citizen to obey God 
rather than man, when it is clear that the liberty to do so is so mani- 
festly wrenched from them. Let those continue vaccination who are 
still blindly wedded to its charms ; but let those have the liberty 
to discard it who see it to be a daring innovation of the sacred pre- 
cincts of divine Healership. T. Robinson. 
Newton-heath. 
From the Anti-Vaccinator, October 16, 1869. 
“A Woman’s Protest against the Proposed Extension of 
the Contagious Diseases Act.” 
I have just been reading, with feelings of horror and indignation 
which I scarcely know how to express, the statements in Mr. F. W. 
Newman’s noble letter, in your issue of October 2, relative to a cer- 
tain “ Contagious Diseases Bill,” and some proposed extension of it, 
which (it seems) actually passed the House of Lords, and was with 
difficulty stopped in the Commons. I, for one, tender my thanks to 
every member who voted against it. 
I am well aware that many people will cry shame upon a woman 
for writing on such a subject: let them. If we, the happy and pro- 
tected members of our sex, blessed with the shelter of married homes, 
whose sanctity no medical ruffian dare invade, do not raise a voice 
in behalf of our less-favored, our wretched trampled-on sisters—the 
victims of man’s vicious self-indulgence and brutality—who can be 
expected to do so? I use advisedly the term “ medical ruffian.” 
That any treatment could be more ruffianly, or a more complete and 
dire outrage on all feelings of decency and humanity (if humanity 
includes women at all), than that to which, it appears, this Bill pro- 
posed to subject defenceless women, I deny, and am ready to main- 
tain, let who will strive to extenuate it. No man whose moral 
sense had not been blunted by the complacent assumption underlying 
the prevalent relations between man and woman—that men have a 86 
right to sin with impunity, and that their sin must be visited upon 
their female victims could ever have conceived the idea of legislation 
so monstrous, or have assisted in framing and passing the Bill in 
question. Truly it is time we should have women in Parliament, if 
it contains a majority of men capable of such brutal use of their leg- 
islative functions—capable of so far forgetting any spark of respect 
towards the sex to which their mothers belonged, that they stick at 
no outrage upon the most miserable and most-to-be-pitied members 
of that sex, which they blindly hope may enable their own sex to sin 
with impunity. 
I have long held strong opinions as to the bad and immoral ten- 
dencies fostered among medical men by the indecent custom which 
sanctions their presence, even as mere boys, in the sacred precincts 
of the chamber where a new immortal is ushered into the world. 
How utterly this, among other evils, must have corrupted their better 
and manlier feelings, the Bill alluded to (emanating, of course, from 
the medical profession) sufficiently proves. Not that I would class 
the whole medical profession as one under this deserved censure. For 
many of its members 1 have a profound respect as excellent and 
philanthropic men ; and God forbid that any such should have soiled 
their souls by participation in such a measure ! But, as Mr. Newman 
truly says, the nation knew nothing of such proposed atrocities. Now 
I say let us know all about them : let us know what House of Com- 
mons passed this Bill, and what members voted for it both in Commons 
and Lords, and let us cry shame on every one of them ! Truly I could 
not have believed that there were Englishmen fallen so low as this. 
With respect to the grievous social evil this Bill seems to have been 
designed to foster into comfortable security for the chief sinners, at 
the expense of their miserable victims, what is to be done then? 
There is nothing to be done ; there is no help in heaven or on earth, 
unless men will cease to sin, and learn to live pure lives of wholesome 
self-restraint and self-denial. Then, and then only, will God cease 
to punish their sin, because then only could relief from the punish- 
ment be anything but cruelty to the sinners. I am, of course, writ- 
ing on the assumption that Mr. Newman’s statements are correct; 
but from his well known high character and principles I cannot enter- 
tain any doubt of their being so. Mary C. Hume-Rothery. 
3 Richmond Terrace, Middleton, 
Manchester, October 2. 87 
From the Anti-Vaccinator, November 20, 1869. 
“Medical Public Advisers.” 
LETTER FROM PROFESSOR NEWMAN. 
Dear Mr. Pitman,—Mrs. Hume-Rothery lias counted too much 
on my accuracy. I was but half-informed : and I underrated the 
progress which had been made by certain detestable Acts. At the 
very end of last session the third Bill was made an Act—multiplying 
nine-fold the area around each town to which the Act of 1866 limited 
the powers of the police against women whom they do but suspect to 
be unchaste, besides adding new towns. By such stealthy strides do 
our despotic materialists proceed. 
Perhaps I must apologize for intruding this loathsome subject 
again into the Anti- Vaccinator; yet, while the daily papers suppress 
it, it deserves a corner in every periodical. Besides, it has this in 
common wtth vaccination—that we must charitably suppose the legis- 
lators to be ignorant of the facts, while allowing official doctors to 
think for them. I frankly confess how recent is my own enlighten- 
ment. I was vaccinated from the cow, and had one small mark in 
my arm which I regarded as a mere nothing. A few months ago I 
had not the slightest idea that what they now call Vaccination is no 
such thing, but is taken from the blood of a child, and often covers 
unhappy children with sores from head to foot. May not a majority 
of M. P.’s be alike ignorant? 
You know that I prefer to treat the question of Gomptdsory Vac- 
cination solely on its legal side—as a question of jurisprudence. I 
deny that Parliament can be justified (1) in commanding any medi- 
cal process at all; (2) in legislating at all against the body of one 
who is confessedly free from contagion. I add (borrowing a phrase 
from Dr. Pearce) that it is a “ crime against nature ” to compel the 
infusion of disease into one who is healthy ; and that when fatal re- 
sults follow, it is an infamous and foul murder. But the topics are 
not exhausted. 
First. If Parliament chooses to rest its legislation upon medical 
advice, it is irrational and reprehensible to shut its eyes either to the 
enormous differences of opinion among medical men of the same 88 
school, or to the existence of rival—l may say hostile—schools. 
Packed medical evidence is an utter abomination. No physicians os- 
tensibly are so trustworthy as those who are accounted Heretics—i. e., 
those who show us that they think for themselves. When Dr. Col- 
lins, after near twenty-five years of vaccination, declares against it, his 
testimony is ostensibly worth a hundred votes given by men of routine in 
favor of it. There is a close similarity between the training of young 
divines and of young physicians. The youth learns from books 
and from his elders. If he breaks loose from both, it is hard to get 
into practice ; established physicians cannot act with him, and he 
must make his own connection as he best may. Just so, the young 
divine has no promotion unless he go in routine ; else he must gather 
a congregation for himself. In each case the Heretic suffers a great 
pecuniary fine ; this is, to us outsiders, a valuable guarantee of his 
earnestness beyond what we have in the case of the others ; and if we 
see him to be a man of well-balanced faculties as well as of erudition, 
we regard him as on a higher plane of honor from the fact of his mar- 
tyrdom. But he who gets into routine is in a groove from which it 
is hard to extricate himself—especially if he be in large practice, or 
be a high Church dignitary. For elder and successful men it is 
doubly difficult to see realities with fresh eye, or follow truth when 
seen. These topics are notorious to all. I infer that Parliament, in 
all sanitary legislation, should adopt only that in which able physi- 
cians of every school concur. That alone has any ostensible cer- 
tainty—any pi’obable fixedness ; and common sense is sure to back up 
what physicians even of opposite schools approve. 
Further. The public has a right to claim, that if the' Privy Coun- 
cil or any central board has medical officers, these shall be taken 
from different schools. In Allopathy, Homoeopathy, Hydropathy, 
Herbalism, Hygiene, we find educated practitioners bearing the 
Queen’s diploma. Within Allopathy itself there are as many opposed 
sects as among the Established clergy. An outcry is made in the 
Colonies against the “ establishment ” of Episcopalians only ; and in 
England, against appointing bishops all from one side of Episcopalian- 
ism. Each outcry is justified by our public men. When so large a 
part of the educated and the aristocracy practically show their vehe- 
ment distrust of the school which lately bled, blistered and purged, ad 89 
infinitum, and now so largely relies on brandy and other fierce poi- 
sons, it surely is a public hardship, unfairness and mischief, that the 
officers whose advice is necessarily so weighty, should be taken from 
one school. 
You have plenty of able writers who will deal with that favorite 
and much abused argument of medical men—statistics. To me it 
seems clear that physicians, like divines, too often are quite unaware 
what sort of things cannot possibly be proved—things opposed to first 
pi'inciples. Here, also, they labor in vain. First—by confession of 
all medical men of every school, many diseases (and those dreadful 
ones, entef the blood. Even tobacco-smoking notoriously poisons the 
blood. They all tell us the same of scrofula, and “ syphilis,” and (I 
believe) of cancer. This being a fact, to infuse diseased blood into 
healthy blood is an impiety—a deadly fanaticism ; and they know it; 
yet they cannot know that a particular child’s blood is not thus dis- 
eased. Hence, what they call Vaccination (but is not) has no stand- 
ing place at all. Next—All physicians of every school agree that the 
stronger the vitality within, the greater the power of resisting conta- 
gion from without. Hence it is madness to impart disease in order 
to inci’ease the power of averting disease. This suffices to disprove 
inoculation from a diseased cow or horse. Thirdly—Jenner, by his 
own account, had no a priori scientific ground for believing that cow- 
pox was a defence against small-pox ; he believed it, simply because 
a country lass so told him. He had absolutely no means whatever of 
verifying her theory. If I inoculated myself with erysipelas to es- 
cape scarlet fever because a rustic girl told me it would be effective, 
what a consummate fool all doctors and all men of common sense 
would judge me ! Yet, as far as I can see or learn, Mr. Jenner had 
absolutely no better reason for believing the girl than I might have.— 
Sincerely yours, 
F. W. Newman. 
From the Anti-Vaccinator, December 25,1869. 
“The Social Evil.” 
Dear Mr. Pitman,—I just write a few lines in confirmation of 
Mrs. Hume-Rothery’s able and pithy notice of Professor Newman’s 90 
pamphlet upon “ The Cure of the Great Social Evil,” etc, [Anti- 
Vaccinator, No. 16.] I have just read the copy you kindly sent 
me, and since then this nobly outspoken feminine estimate and sum- 
mary of it. This has precluded the remarks I had determined to 
make to a great extent. They are already made by a more suitable, 
because female, reviewer. And I need only add that this is a 
pamphlet which every man and woman in the nation laying any 
claim to virtue and good citizenship—religion apart—ought to lose 
no time in getting to see. And, once in hand, they will peruse it, 
or with but few exceptions, I think. There are times when the most 
bashful lay aside their blushes, and with true human courage set 
about the important work of the moment. That time, on this mat- 
ter, seems more nearly at hand than with reference to “compulsory 
vaccination.” 
To the future of Europe it matters comparatively little to what 
conclusions the Pope’s Grand Council come, when put in the balances 
against the results of that mighty struggle which is here impending. 
The sin, the vice, the disease comprehended under the designation— 
“ The Great Social Evil”—is the vanguard of the devastating army 
of the prince of the nether regions ; and now the trumpet sounds for 
battle. Unless the God of Heaven and purity can bring to bear a 
sufficient army of faithful soldiers (male and female) to repel the 
desolating hellish force, an awful future awaits the so-called Chris- 
tian nations of Europe. Depopulation, devastation, utter desolation, 
stand at the doors. All the warlike weapons of byegone days are 
powerless here. Learned doctors and lawyers and their subordinates, 
renowned statesmen and their partisans, Church dignitaries and their 
long line of inferior clergy, and all the multiplied institutions for in- 
creasing this literary army of defence, are but as chaff before the 
winds in this vital struggle of life or death to the human race in 
Christendom. It would greatly promote the desirable object of a 
national perusal of this important pamphlet if an edition were 
printed to sell at about one-third the price. I should like this to be 
considered by the author or publisher; no abridgement would do 
much good. T. R. 
Newton Heath, Dec. 13. 91 
From the Christian World, May 24, 1888. 
“ Disgracing the Empire.” 
The acts of the Government of India are not calculated to make 
one proud of the name of Englishman. The civil government is 
everywhere forcing upon unwilling localities licensed Stills and public 
houses for the sake of revenue. We found India sober; we are 
making her drunken. The military authorities are doing even 
worse. Out of the office of the Quarter-Master General at Simla, 
by the instructions of General Sir Frederick Roberts, Commander- 
in-Chief of the British Forces in India, there has been sent to the 
general officers commanding divisions and districts a “ circular mem- 
orandum ” horrible beyond conception in its cool and callous immor- 
ality. This precious document, which is dated 17th June, 1886, de- 
liberately encourages the practice of vice in every military canton- 
ment. It not only “regulates,” but it declares the necessity, and en- 
joins the proper housing, of the unhappy creatures who are to be 
sacrificed to their own destruction and the destruction of the soldiers. 
It is vain to say that it is only desired to localize an evil already ex- 
isting. The memorandum, in conjunction with previous instruc- 
tion of the same kind, explicitly and strongly recommends the in- 
crease of the number of victims and rewards the miserable agents of 
the traffic. Mr, Alfred S. Dyer has made a sketch of the canton- 
ment at Bareilly, which, as exhibited on a large canvas at Exeter 
Hall on Friday evening, flanked by other two plans, made the ears of 
all who beheld it tingle with shame that such things should be. On 
one side of a public road is the encampment of the East Kent Regi- 
ment. On the other side of the road is the encampment—in sixteen 
Government tents—of the officially-encouraged and officially-re- 
warded degraded women. And this minor encampment is placed in 
immediate proximity to the native church ! In seventy-four other 
cantonments in every part of India the same thing is to be seen. 
Another sketch showed the Lock Hospital at Madras, and the con- 
nected house—where licenses for the practice of vice are issued—in- 
sultingly set down between the Wesleyan Chapel and a Church of 
England place of worship, and within a short distance of nine other 
churches, chapels and schools ! 92 
A thousand ladies at St. James’s Hall on Friday afternoon, and a 
crowded audience at Exeter Hall in the evening, demanded the total 
and immediate repeal of this almost incredible system. It is a pity 
that Lord Cross and Sir John Gorst were not present on behalf of 
the India Office. The officials have been forced to admit the authen- 
ticity of the disgraceful memorandum ; but Sir John Gorst, in the 
Hojise of Commons, has made replies to pressing questions by Pro- 
fessor Stuart, which, to say the least, were equivocating, and which 
Professor Stuart and other speakers on Friday denounced as deliber- 
ate falsehoods, intended to deceive, not on the part of Sir John, but 
on the part of those in India and at home who have furnished him 
with his information. Papers on the subject were promised, and 
they have been sent to the printers ; but Professor Stuart, who has 
seen these papers, declared that all those of an incriminating nature 
have been omitted, and are silently passed over in the remarks of 
the military authorities. No wonder that these impudent attempts 
to hoodwink Parliament and the people have aroused a sense of 
burning indignation against all concerned in the shameful business. 
Mrs. Josephine Butler, described by Dr. Clifford as the “ God- 
given Deborah of this movement,” who has been for twenty years 
working for the uplifting of the down-trodden of her sex, though 
suffering severely from bronchitis, spoke with great emotion on the 
subject. The insult offered to the women of India, she said, was an 
insult offered to the whole sex ; and the iniquity would never be re- 
moved unless women kept well to the front. Mrs. Richardson, a 
Quaker lady of York, and Mrs. M. Baxter spoke in the same sense. 
Professor Stuart stated that a resolution would be moved in the 
House of Commons on the 7th of June; and Dr. Clifford said every 
chapel, church, and school in the country should make its voice on 
the question heard before that day. No one looking back on the 
history of the nations of the earth, he asserted, can, if this system 
be continued, forecast anything less for our Empire in India than 
first of all shame, next weakness and decay, and thirdly ultimate 
ruin. He was fully prepared to adopt the phrase, “ Perish India ! ” 
rather than that these iniquities should be perpetrated in our name. 
Rev. Hugh Price Hughes, Mr. J. B. Wookey, the Bishop of 
Waiapu (New Zealand), Mr. F. W. Crossley (Chairman), and 93 
Rev. Sir Erasmus Phillips also strongly denounced the system. A 
very plainly worded resolution was adopted and telegraphed to Lord 
Cross and Sir John Gorst, and it was further resolved that a verba- 
tim report of the meeting should be sent to every minister of the 
Gospel in the United Kingdom, and that Mr. Dyer should be 
thanked in the name of the meeting for his great services in gather- 
ing information in India. Stormy days are in store for the Govern- 
ment. The agitation which has been commenced with such enthusi- 
asm will spread. The country will not permit the name of English- 
men to be degraded as it is being degraded in India by its repre- 
sentatives. * THE TWO TENNERS: 
THE MYTHICAL AND THE ACTUAL. 
{Reprinted from “Daylight Norwich, March jsi, iSqo.) 
Some men have greatness thrust upon them.—Shakespeare. 
Myths and legends, which, in the popular mind, are things almost 
exclusively associated with the heroes and demigods of remote and 
more romantic ages, still arise and survive in these latter more en- 
lightened days of scientific enquiry and of matter-of-fact materialism. 
Mankind are, in essence, ever the same. Credulity now, as of old, 
forms a prominent part of the human mental equipment ; the thing 
remains through the form of its manifestation changes. The illu- 
sions and delusions of past generations are learnedly explained away 
or scoffingly derided, while at the same time the scoffers, in their 
turn, greedily swallow equally great absurdities. Let but two or 
three specialist celebrities pronounce any new thing to be “ scientific,” 
and lo ! the innumerable Johnsonian public will, as it were, at once 
grovel in the dust before this mushroom dogma of this Priesthood of 
C 5 o 
Science. And what is worse, even when one of these modern crazes 
is laid bare and exposed as being pernicious to the nation, vested 
interests, personal and pecuniary interests, with professional pride 
and similar unworthy motives, may, as in the case of vaccination, 
long retard deliverance therefrom. 
Perhaps no more conspicuous instance could be given in modern 
times of an undeserved reputation, of a mistaken hero-worship, than 
is afforded by the case of Jenner, the mis-called discoverer or inven- 
tor of vaccination. He has been ignordntly called “ the immortal.” 
Monuments have been erected to his memory, and Parliament in- 
fluenced mainly by his powerful personal friends among fashionable 
and political society, granted him £30,000 as a reward. For nearly 95 
a century a succession of official pedants of the Simonian type, who 
on their own showing, under the recent searching cross-examination 
of a Royal Commission, are absolutely ignorant of the root of the 
matter, have never tired of sounding the praises of this Prince of 
Humbugs—this Cagliostro-Dulcamara of the nineteenth century— 
and in terms as hyperbolic and high-falutin as they are false. Not 
until well into the present decade and almost within the present year, 
have the public at large been in a position to learn in full detail all 
about Jenner, and to distinguish the mythical from the actual Jen- 
ner. Thanks, however, to Mr. William White’s admirably com- 
pi-ehensive Story of a Great Delusion, to Dr. Charles Creighton’s 
work on Cow-pox and Vaccinal Syphilis, and his Jenner and Vac- 
cination, and to Professor Crookshank’s still more recent work on 
the History of Vaccination, the Jennerian legend is now at last in a 
fair way of becoming generally exploded, and its complete exposure 
will necessarily imply the downfall of compulsory vaccination. 
With regard to the Mythical Jenner, perhaps the man of liveliest 
imagination, and who has done more than any other living man to 
popularize the Jenner of his teeming, fancy, and to fasten compulsory 
vaccination on to the nation, has been Sir John Simon, formerly, 
though happily no longer, chief medical adviser to the Government. 
Following meekly and blindly the nonsensical rhetorical outbursts of 
Jenner’s friend and critical biographer, Dr. Baron, Simon thus 
officially writes : 
“Among the dairy folks of Gloustershire wras a curious tradition 
. . . . that persons who had suffered from this cow-pox, as it 
was called, were by it rendered insusceptible of small-pox. Words 
to that effect were once spoken in the hearing of Edward Jenner, 
then a village doctor’s apprentice in the neighbourhood of Bristol. 
They were never afterwards absent from his mind. Thirty years 
elapsed before their fruit was borne to the public ; but incessantly he 
thought, and watched, and experimented on the subject; and the 
work on which he at length recorded the incompai’able result of his 
labour may well have commanded the confidence of reflecting per- 
sons.” 
By the way, the pith of this “ work,” a few pages of letter press, 
was that horse-grease was the origin of the cow-pox and of the true 
and genuine life preserving fluid ! Again Simon gushingly writes : 96 
“ Little would ever be heard of objections to vaccination if all 
who undertake the responsibility of its performance, and all who feel 
disposed to resist its adoption, would but thoroughly study that mas- 
terpiece of medical induction and imitate the patience and caution 
and modesty with which Jenner laid the foundation of every state- 
ment he advanced.” 
To properly estimate the Simonian type of intellect it is only needful 
to state that, despite the then long-existing and overwhelming evidence 
that many well-vaccinated people had subsequently taken small-pox, 
and that serious injuries were then as now caused by vaccination, 
yet this romancing and sand-blind “ scientist” vehemently denied 
both points. And indeed it is very doubtful whether he ever made 
any original inquiries whatever to justify his bold assumptions and 
stupendous allegations. Creighton, who, like Crookshank, is a vera- 
cious historian and an experienced pathologist, has made original in- 
vestigations into the Jennerian legend, thus sneers at Simon’s 
laudation of this “ masterpiece! ” He says that after studying Jen- 
ner’s three essays on the subject of vaccination, he seemed to find 
himself; 
“ Dealing with reasonings which were anything but masterly, and 
with a writer who was never precise when he could be vague, and 
was never straightforward when he could be secretive.” 
And he speaks of Jenner’s artful and “ trumped up ” invention of 
the term variolce vaccinoe (or small-pox of the cow) as a “ master- 
stroke of boldness and cunning” and “ diplomacy,” as it successfully 
humbugged both the lay and the medical public. And again Creigh- 
ton writes : 
“The apologetics of vaccination began in the mind of Jenner be- 
fore his project was given to the world. The years of patient observ- 
ing and proving, which have been the subject of so much rhetorical 
nonsense on the part of so many otherwise sane persons, were really 
a few years of indolent casting about by Jenner for the means of 
meeting the obvious objections to the scientific white-washing and 
professional adoption, which he intended for the vulgar cow-pox 
legend.” 
Still more plainly does the same author speak of Jenner when the 
latter became fashionable. He writes, re one of Jenner’s pamph- 
lets : 
“ It would be charitable to assume that vanity had turned his head 97 
and made him untruthful. At all events the piece is a tissue of 
lies.” 
And in another place he refers to : 
“ The many sly and impudent tales that Jenner told to the medical 
profession.” 
Crook shank and Creighton agree with their fellow-historian, 
White, as to Jenner’s intellectual dishonesty. The typical incident 
of Jenner’s falsification of Cline’s letter, is retold by both. Cline, 
who was a famous London surgeon, had been supplied by Jenner 
with lymph, and the former wrote, in reply, saying, inter alia, that 
the ulcer produced by it: 
“ Was not large enough to contain a pea, therefore I have not con- 
verted it into an issue as I intended.” 
The young boy, it seems, for whom the lymph was required, was 
suffering from hip disease, and Cline desired by Vaccination thus to 
obtain a pea issue over the hip. Some time after, when Jenner pub- 
lished this letter, he coolly omitted the paragraph beginning “ The 
ulcer was not large enough,” and inserted instead the words “ There 
were no eruptions ” ! ! This, it must be confessed was a striking in- 
stance of the (Simonian) “patience and caution, and modesty”! 
Again, with regard to Jenner’s earliest vaccinations. He was about 
forty-one when he made his first vaccination (in 1796). Two years 
elapsed and a couple of other casual vaccinations followed and he 
then at once precipitated his “ masterpiece of medical induction ”—re 
Simon—upon the world. More “ caution and modesty,” gentle 
readers ! True, he had most successfully vaccinated his first child a 
few years earlier with swine-pox—not necessarily from a pig—but 
this does not count. 
It is instructive to note how both Crookshank and Creighton (as 
experts) expose the trickery of Jenner with regard to his second 
recorded case of vaccination (in 1798), or as it should more properly 
be termed, indirect equination :or horse-grease vaccination. Their 
researches point to the highly probable conclusion that this case (John 
Baker) died, a victim to the operation. Jenner’s own scattered refer- 
ences to the case are artful and misleading. This, however, was 
but in keeping with Jenner’s ordinary practice. From his first adop- 
tion of the horse-grease theory up to the day of his death, he was 98 
constantly mystifying and minimising, explaining away and generally 
humbugging. One has to follow his disingenuous and tortuous course 
as to his many poxes, “ spurious ” when needful, and “ true” when 
useful, to do justice to this consummate self-deceiver or this most 
crafty of charlatans. In 1807, pressed by the College of Physicians 
to explain what he meant by “ spurious” cow-pox, he had to own 
up that all he meant was it did not act as lie expected ! All the 
varieties of cow-pox thus simultaneously and instantaneously disap- 
peared, to be cautiously resurrected by him as occasion might require. 
His vast (Simonian) experience at once also vanished, pro tern., into 
thin air. 
The propagators of the Jennerian legend are dumb as to the actual 
Jenner’s arrogant truculence to all independent critics, and even to 
candid friends, honourable men such as Drs. Pearson and Woodville, 
and yet as will be presently shown, Jenner’s own scientific attain- 
ments and professional standing were very low. 
“He was” says Creighton, “vain, petulant, crafty and greedy, 
and he had more of grandiloquence and bounce than of solid attain- 
ments. ” 
He even had the incredible meanness and folly to insinuate that 
Jesty, his precursor in the practice of Vaccination, was a myth in- 
vented by Pearson ! While in reply to Dr. Watts of Glasgow, whose 
thoughtful and scholarly writings on Glasgow mortality are still 
admired, and still valuable, Jenner violently attacked him as having 
some malevolent object in view. Those writings were, he said, 
“ shocking,” and of “ evil tendency ! ” It is doubtful however if the 
poor creature had sufficient mental power to grasp Watt’s thesis. At 
any rate he carefully avoided grappling with it. As to his profes- 
sional knowledge, it is enough to say that in 1792 he applied to the 
University of St. Andrews for the degree of Doctor of Physic. The 
inference is that it was granted, as White contemptuously says : “it 
cost £l5 and nothing more.” In fact, it was a purely commercial 
-transaction, very much like buying a pound of cheese. Creighton 
remarks : 
“It was only after several applications that the University of 
Oxford gave him (Jenner) the honorary degree of Doctor of Medi- 
cine in 1813,” (only ten years before his death) “ while the College 99 
of Physicians refused to the last, even when he brought his Oxford 
diploma with him as a passport, to admit him to its fellowship on the 
same terms.” 
In other words this (Simonian) heaven descended and super-subtle 
genius was unable to undergo the then not very severe examination 
for that degree, though he would gladly have obtained it on the some- 
thing for nothing principle. Creighton truly and philosophically 
remarks, with a suggestive picturesqueness, that the whole course of 
events had helped to place this Old Man of the Sea upon the backs 
of the medical profession. Much space will not be required to sum 
up Jenner’s scientific acquirements and to further exemplify the 
“ patience and caution and modesty ” of the Simonian and Mythical 
Jenner. We read of an absurd and wondrous “paper” on the 
National History of Cuckoo, contributed by him to the Royal Society, 
and of a few meagre observations on the temperature of hedgehogs, 
with some fragmentary conclusions about the action of blood and 
other organic manures upon young plants. This latter in a letter to 
Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society. These were his 
earlier achievements : his later were equally unimportant and incom- 
plete. His old friend and teacher, John Hunter, sounded Sir Joseph 
Banks on the subject of Jenner’s admission as a fellow to the Royal 
Society and through this friendly influence he was elected. 
“It says,” says Creighton, caustically, “ one of the evils of mak- 
ing a man a Fellow of the Royal Society that people will be apt not 
to recognize any subsequent nonsense that he may write in the name 
of science, for what it really is.” 
We shall presently further illustrate this truly sagacious remark. 
There is no evidence whatever that “ incessantly he thought and 
watched and experimented” on the subject of vaccination, (re Simon). 
On the contrary we have good reason to infer from Fosbroke, and 
others, that Jenner only kept the subject causually in his mind. 
When, thanks far more to Pearson and Woodville’s energy and 
watchfulness than to his own, vaccination was reinstated after its 
virtual collapse in his own hands, Jenner, as it were, pushed into 
notoriety. His meanness to all independent thinkers, even to friendly 
helpers and hearty co-workers, even such men as Pearson and 
Woodville, with his i-eadiness to appropriate their results, and equal 100 
readiness to reproach them ; his scoldings, bullyings, and spiteful 
jealousies, are they not all (innocently) written at large in Baron’s 
biography. 
As to his vast experience ! Pearson says that the whole of Jen- 
ner’s experience then extended to only seven or eight vaccinations, of 
which only four were from human subject to subject, and that not until 
Woodville and himself (Pearson) had published several hundreds of 
vaccinations performed by them had Jenner any experiments to set 
alongside theirs. White says that they had to-find out for themselves 
how to do everything which differentiates a suggestion from an art. So 
much for Jenner’s “ incessant experiments ” (re Simon).. In a letter 
written by Jenner only a few days before his death (1823), to his 
friend Gardner we find him bewailing that never had he been involved 
in so many difficulties! Vaccination was even then being found out. 
His boasted prophylactic has been successfully attacked from all 
sides; but true to his career, he just at that time placed on record 
his unalterable faith in it. Such are the contradictions in human 
nature ! 
Our readers can now plainly see that there were two Jenners, the 
mythical and the actual. Disciples of this arch-impostor, such as 
Simon, have from a few disjointed facts, and musty vulgar traditions, 
constructed an ideal Jenner, upon whom they have thrust greatness. 
These imaginative enthusiasts resemble in their action minus the 
complemental knowledge, those able naturalists or paleontologists, 
who from a single bone of an extinct and unknown animal will con- 
struct a perfect skeleton. The errors and frauds of Jenner would be 
to the mass of mankind of no importance were it not that they had 
been endorsed by those who should know better, with the result that 
the question is brought by means of compulsory vaccination into 
every home in the land. And how some of these successors of Jen- 
ner support his teaching we propose to show in the closing para- 
graphs of the present article. 
We have already quoted Creighton as to the nonsense that a man 
may safely write after becoming a member of that mutual admiration 
body, termed the Royal Society ; and we will now, as a practical 
lesson, and as a warning to our numerous readers not to be gulled 
by high sounding names and titles, proceed to quote a few choice 101 
specimens and recent crucial instances of Royal Society Science and 
Royal Society Logic. 
Referring to a proposal to abolish repeated penalties for non-vac- 
cination (a punishment by the way not provided by Parliament but 
the result of “ judge-made-law ”), President Spottiswoode, who 
would seem to be a lineal descendant of the famous Professor Pud- 
dinghead, immortalized by Washington Irving, publicly said that the 
proposal appeared to “ trench closely upon a scientific principle ! ” 
Prodigious! When interrogated upon his esoteric and mystical 
utterance, which in a common person would have termed simple 
stupidity, this Royal Society’s “ head” remarked that the “princi- 
ple ”he referred to was vaccination ! To parody the divine William, 
if the Society be brained like this, it totters. 
Another specimen of this portentous dillettantism, which dwells in 
a serener atmosphere far above the vulgar herd has within the last 
week or two been afforded the public by a sample of that sweetness 
and light which is so exclusively the attribute of these men of light 
and leading. Professor Tyndall has publicly stigmatized Mr. Glad- 
stone as “ the wickedest man of his generation.” The matter has 
no direct connection with the present question (except that Tyndall 
has written nonsense about vaccination equal to Huxley’s), but it 
serves to show what poor things some of these big pots are when 
you can really see them. They should remember the adage about 
the cobbler and his last. By forgetting this, nescience and pre- 
sumption seem at times their Alpha and Omega. 
But yet another Jennerian champion and apologist remains to be 
noticed; one by the way who is always ready to dogmatically settle 
any disputed question from the Mosaic Cosmogony to the last delira- 
tion of political metaphysics. Professor Huxley (another Royal Society 
President), who, as he recently stated, has “ an ingrained habit of 
scientific grovelling among facts ! ” has, needless to say, repeatedly 
delivered his soul as a true Jennerian, and with a cheap and unbe- 
coming scorn of the common people—the “ loblolly boys ” of the 
community to quote his own felicitous expression, who of course are 
born only to endure and pay and to serve as the raw material for the 
manipulation of “ scientists ” and “ philosophers.” Strange as it 
may seem, we are not overwhelmed by Huxley’s attainments as a 102 
pathologist or as a statistician. As a mere assistant surgeon in the 
Navy, his professional attainments were probably about the needful 
average, and his opinions on vital statistics and pathology were prob- 
ably worth about as much and no more than those of Mr. Surgeon 
A. B. round the nearest corner. But he has successfully and per- 
sistently exerted himself in other fields of inquiry, and like most 
pushing people, has been accepted pretty much at his own valuation. 
It is to his discredit that he actively everted himself a few years 
ago to prevent the repeal of the judge-made law enforcing repeated 
penalties on vaccination recusants. On one occasion, with a logic 
and pathos worthy of Puddinghead himself, this sapient philosopher 
wrote : “If my neighbour is to let his children go unvaccinated, he 
might as well be allowed to leave strychnine lozenges in the way 
of mine.” A remark proving that a lower type of intellect may be 
found among the Fellows and Presidents of the Royal Society than 
among Hottentots and Patagonians. Then again, writing two years 
or so ago, he says, referring to vaccination : 
“Two centuries ago England was devastated by the plague; 
cleanliness and common sense were enough to free us from its rav- 
ages. One century since small-pox was about as great a scourge; 
science though working empirically, and almost in the dark has re- 
duced that evil to relative insignificance.” 
Considering that in London in the eighteenth century in no year 
did the small-pox deaths reach a total of four thousand, and that one 
year in the seventeenth century sixty-eight thousand deaths were 
caused there by the plague, we can simply term Huxley’s statement 
as blatant and vulgar clap-trap, and quite oblivious of the action of 
certain foreign governments, such as Spain, Hungary and Germany, 
which in one degree or other have recently prohibited animal or hu- 
man inoculations, he chants the praises of Pasteur and looks forward 
to the time when inoculations will obtain for various other human 
diseases ! This is logically, his catechism. 
Q. “ Centuries ago the sweating sickness killed thousands. 
What caused it to disappear?” 
A. u Natural causes and not vaccination.” 
Q. “The black death and the plague killed myriads, What 
caused their disappearance? ” 103 
A. “ Natural causes and not vaccination.” 
Q. “ Leprosy, Scurvy and fever were terribly fatal in old days, 
What caused their disappearance? ” 
A. “ Natural causes and not vaccination.” 
Q. “ When diseases die out or become milder What is the 
cause ? ” 
A. “ Natural causes and not vaccination.” 
Q. “ When small-pox declines What is the cause of that?” 
A. “ Vaccination, nothing but vaccination ! ” 
A cripple in the right way is safer than a racer in the wrong, and 
the unsophisticated common-sense and ample experience of the “ lob- 
lolly boys ” of the nation are safer guides in this matter than the 
Royal Society, past and present Presidents included. Those who 
support charlatans and quacks and in so doing expose their own nes- 
cience, while at the same time they despotically encroach on parental 
rights, and on the elementary freedom of the subject, must not com- 
plain if they meet with rough, downright and plain speaking criti- 
cism. 
“The exact diligence of theology, pursuing the scientific ramifica- 
tions of its mysterious doctrine to four times the length of the Atha- 
nasian Creed, must command the respect even of unbelievers, the 
more so as it is a Church maxim that salvation does not lie in dia- 
lectics. But what shall we say of pathology, which has not the 
candour even to recognize the juxtaposition of incompatible notions, 
which can show no better front to the world than a thin tissue of 
rhetoric or metaphor made to do duty as scientific authority, which 
shelters itself whenever it can, behind the establishment by law, of 
its own doctrine deliberately left undefined and unformulated? ” 
We commend these weighty words of Creighton’s to Royal Socie- 
tarians and to all and sundry. THE ROYAL COMMISSION ON 
VACCINATION. 
The Government has appointed the following Gentlemen Members 
of a Royal Commission, to inquire into, and report upon the subject 
of Vaccination, and the result of its enforcement by Acts of Parlia- 
ment during the past 36 years : 
Lord Herschell, Chairman. 
Sir James Paget, Bart., F. R. S. 
Sir Charles Dalrymple, Bart., M. P. 
Sir W. Guyer Hunter, K. C. M. G., M. P. 
Sir Edwin H. Galsworthy. 
Mr. W. S. Savory, Pres., R. C. S., F. R. S. 
Mr. Charles Bradlaugh, M, P. 
Dr. J. S. Bristoe. 
Dr. W. J. Collins, M. S., F. R. C. 8. 
Mr. J. S. Dugdale, Q. C., M. P. 
Prof. Michael Foster, M. D., F. R. S. 
Mr. Jonathan Hutchinson, F. R. C. S. 
Mr. J. A. Picton, M. A., M. P. 
Mr. S. Whitbread, M. P. 
Mr. F. Meadows White, Q. C. 
The terms of the reference are officially stated as follows : 
1. —The effect of Vaccination in reducing the prevalence of, 
and mortality from small-pox. 
2. —What means, other than Vaccination, can be used for 
diminishing the prevalence of small-pox, and how far such means 
could be relied on in place of Vaccination. 
3. The objections made to Vaccination on the ground of in- 
jurious effects alleged to result therefrom, and the nature and 
extent of any injurious effects which do, in fact, so result. 
4. Whether any, and if so, what means should be adopted 
for preventing or lessening the ill effects, if any, resulting from 
Vaccination, and whether, and if so, by what means, Vaccina- 
tion Avith animal vaccine should be further facilitated as a part 
of public Vaccination. 
5. —Whether any alteration should be made in the arrange- 
ments and proceedings for securing the performance of Vaccina- 
tion and in particular in the provisions of the Vaccination 
Acts with respect to prosecutions for non-compliance with the 
law. 105 
You will thus see that some of the fundamental points in our agita- 
tion for the repeal of the Vaccination Acts are included in the scope 
of the Inquiry, viz. :—The failure of Vaccination as a protection ; its 
injurious consequences on the health of those who are submitted to 
the operation, the substitution of sanitation as a means of preventing 
small-pox, and the injustice of prosecuting and convicting conscien- 
tious parents for non-vaccination. This inquiry was suggested by the 
Right Hon. James Stansfeld, when President of the Local Govern- 
ment Board, to a deputation of opponents of Compulsory Vaccination 
in April, 1886, as the most speedy and effective means of promoting 
a satisfactory settlement of the question, and it is the opinion of the 
leading friends of our cause in all parts of the country that Parlia- 
ment would not be induced to repeal the Vaccination Laws without 
some such inquiry. 
It is unnecessary here to refer to the unspeakable injustice, cruelty, 
and misery caused by the Vaccination Law of 1853, and subse- 
quent Acts of Parliament and their utter failure for any good what- 
ever, and it is because I realize this that I am anxious that the facts 
showing this mischief and failure shall be clearly demonstrated by 
competent witnesses in this important inquisition. I venture, there- 
fore, to make the following suggestions as to what is needed at this 
juncture : 
In all towns and villages where Anti-Vaccination Leagues exist, 
meetings should be immediately convened, and, where no Leagues 
exist, special meetings of opponents of the law should be organized to 
co-operate in ascertaining : 
I.—The full particulars of local fatal Vaccination cases, or 
cases in which serious injury has resulted from Vaccination, and 
the names and addresses of witnesses who can give an intelligent 
and coherent narrative of the circumstances connected with each 
particular case. 
2.—The name and address of the medical man who vaccinated 
in such cases, and of medical or other witnesses; a copy of the 
death certificate, and whether the cause of death assigned in such 
certificate is correct. 
3.—The addresses of medical men who are known to be averse 
to Compulsory Vaccination, or who have had cases of injury 
and death from Vaccination within their own experience. 106 
During the past five years, censuses of householders have been 
instituted in over 70 towns, villages, and districts in England, dis- 
closing a large number of cases of injury and death. The census- 
papers then sent in should be carefully re-examined, and those par- 
ents who have certified to such cases should be invited to attend the 
meetings before mentioned and furnish their evidence in detail, sc as 
to see which are most suitable to go before the Commission. 
In addition to the evidence relating to fatal Vaccination cases, the 
medical, statistical, historical, and sanitary features of the question 
will be dealt with by able and experienced witnesses, also proofs of 
the failure during more than a quarter of a century of compulsion to 
prevent or mitigate variolous outbreaks. 
Children recently vaccinated, or of vaccinable age, should be kept 
under close observation, in order that should the Vaccination result 
in injury or disease, the facts may be at once brought forward, before 
the evidences are lost by lapse of time. 
Witnesses should be instructed to confine their evidence to facts 
within their own personal knowledge, and to avoid extravagant 
statements ; as any deviation from this course would be likely to 
prejudice the cause they are desirous of serving. Fortunately, those 
Members of the Commission who are opposed to compulsion will see 
that our witnesses are allowed fair play, and the ability and imparti- 
ality of the Chairman—Lord Herschell, who is called upon to 
preside over this important inquiry— are well known. 
I have to earnestly request early intimation of your intention to co- 
operate with the Committee, which please direct to our Organizing 
Secretary, Mr. J. H. Lynn, Clova Road, Forest Gate, Essex. 
On behalf of the Special (Royal Commission) Committee, 
William Tebb, 
Chairman. 
London, J'uly sth, 1889. From the "Echo,” London, October 16th, 1888. 
LEICESTER SMALL-POX AND VACCINATION. 
TO THE EDITOR OF THE “ ECHO.” 
Sir,—If evidence were wanting to illustrate the gigantic experi- 
ment being carried out by Leicester in its almost entire rejection of 
Jenner’s prescription for the prevention of small-pox—called vaccin- 
ation—it is furnished by the elaborate returns presented to the 
Leicester Board of Guardians at their meeting, September 11th, 
for the years 1373 to 1887 inclusive. While in 1873 no less than 
3,730 successful vaccinations Avere registered out of 4,446 births, 
and, after deaths and other allowances, only fifteen were left un- 
accounted for, Ave find that last year the successful vaccinations had 
dAvindled to 322 out of 4,693 births, and the enormous proportion of 
3,732 are left unaccounted for. It thus appears that only one 
out of every fourteen or fifteen children born in Leicester are sub- 
mitted to the vaccine rite. We are therefore justified in concluding 
that the objection to the practice deeply permeates every class of the 
community. A careful examination of the vital statistics of the 
borough, contained in the following tables, which refer to the last 
two decades, will slioav that Ave have not far to seek for the causes 
of this general defection from State regulated vaccination. 
The small-pox mortality given in these tables includes the deaths 
at the small-pox hospital, which, although outside the borough, is 
always included in our statistics. The charge sometimes made that 
we exclude it, and thus apparently reduce our mortality, is untrue. 
The last column, headed “Other Zymotic Deaths,” includes the 
other six principal zymotic diseases, viz., measles, scarlet fever, 
diphtheria, Avhooping cough, fever, and diarrhoea: 108 
FIRST DECADE 
1868-1877, 
Total 
mmmmmmk-mmm 
GoooaiODOoaDCOGooooo 
•'l —4 —4 —4 -4 -4 05 05 
-405 0i^WK)HOC0G0 
Year. 
41,713 
4_ zooozo oo 
I4 Irlo 1* oo'c^'lr'b* 
Of 05 Cl M c a GO 
005 05 01C5 05 0000 
Births. 
32,555 
OZ 00 00 00 OO K) jo to 
'll 'bi ll 'cO 'll 
OCnocOCOtOOCOCO~4 
OOOOOOh-COCO-4 
Success- 
fully 
Vacci- 
nated. 
Died 
GC 
CO 
CO CD 
-4 CO K) o: OI o Cl to -4 w 
before 
Vaccina- 
tion. 
Remain- 
CO 
0 
01 
05G0-4t0C0M 
co^rfxtOh-co:ai^co 
inq 
UN VACCI- 
NATED. 
CO 
o 
-I 
co 
H-4 
ooootootooo^ 
Small-Pox 
Deaths. 
5,343 
cooioicod^a»ci^0i 
o'-4DDCo:^-ao'(y) 
tOfcCitf^GOOOCOCJtCOCO^ 
Other 
Zymotic 
Deaths. 
SECOND DECADE, 1878-1887, 
1878 
4,777 
3,260 
707 
810 
1 
477 
1879 
4,695 
3,086 
722 
887 
0 
358 
1880 
4,860 
3,010 
816 
1,034 
0 
779 
1881 
4,712 
2,948 
687 
1,077 
2 
546 
1882 
4,855 
2,660 
720 
1,475 
5 
403 
1883 
4,819 
1,732 
612 
2,475 
3 
329 
1884 
4,849 
1,700 
818 
2,331 
0 
557 
1885 
4,690 
1,376 
421 
2,893 
0 
453 
1880 
4,874 
598 
691 
3,585 
0 
293 
1887 
4,693 
322 
553 
3,818 
0 
438 
Total 
47,824 
20,692 
6,747 
20,385 
11 
4,733 
In the first ten years, 1868-1877, we have 32,555 successful vac- 
cinations out of 41,713 births, only 3,305 being left unvaccinated or 
unaccounted for. The same period gives us 367 small-pox deaths. 
There was very little falling off in vaccinations during this decade ; 
and it will be observed that the high death-rate from small-pox was 
almost concurrent with the highest period of vaccination. 
* Tills column includes those registered as insusceptible, postponed by medical certifi. 
cate, and removals. After deducting these, there were left unaccounted for only 15 in 
1873, but 3,732 in 1887. 109 
The last ten years, 1878-1887, gives only 20,692 successful vac- 
cinations out of 47,824 births, and we have the startling number of 
20,385 left unvaccinated, hut only eleven small-pox deaths. Now, 
if protection from small-pox increases in geometrical ratio to the 
amount of vaccination, and vice versa, as we are sometimes taught, 
what does Leicester experience teach? That in the vaccinated 
decade the small-pox deaths were about 360 per million, but in the 
partially vaccinated decade there were only about eight per million ! ! ! 
Had the same small-pox death-rate prevailed throughout the whole 
period we should have lost during the last ten years no fewer than 
460 by small-pox instead of only eleven. 
But if the incidence of small-pox mortality is fatal, according to 
the number left unvaccinated, the deaths from small-pox should have 
been increased sixfold, and reached the appalling number of about 
2,200, instead of only eleven. Opportunities for an epidemic have 
not been wanting, as nearly thirty known importations of small-pox 
have occurred during the last ten years. When we consider that an 
official estimate places the unprotected (that is, not vaccinated within 
the last ten years) population of Leicester at nearly 125,000 out of 
upwards of 140,000, we can well understand that the “Leicester 
experiment” is a hard nut for the advocates of vaccination to crack. 
Especially is this so when, after all that has been said of the terrors 
of small-pox to an unvaccinated community, out of a total of 10,459 
deaths from the seven principal zymotic diseases during twenty years 
in Leicester, small-pox is only accountable for the insignificant num- 
ber of 378. 
Perplexed and mortified by the ruthless fashion in which these 
facts, as “ chiels that winna ding,” have pulverized the specious fal- 
lacies of the faculty as to the boasted protection afforded by vac- 
cination, the Lancet and British Medical Journal, followed by a host 
of copyists, have repeatedly asserted that vaccination still preserves 
Leicester from small-pox. Dr. Drysdale has recently revived this 
exploded fallacy in a letter to the Echo. 
How Dr. Drysdale can claim that “in Leicester even it is vac- 
cination which preserves the poor unvaccinated children from the 
disease,” is difficult to account for, excepting on the hypothesis that, 110 
like the Bourbon, his mind has become fossilized. “He learns 
nothing, and forgets nothing.” 
When Dr. Drysdale visited our hospital after investigation of the 
Leicester method of treating small-pox, he declared in my presence 
that “if you can deal with small-pox in this way, it is twenty times 
better than compulsory vaccination.” If he supposes that eight or 
ten vaccinated or revaccinated hospital nurses and officials save the 
140,000 people in Leicester from the ravages of small-pox, he must 
admit that double that number ought to have saved Sheffield, 
especially as it was already well protected without their additional 
protecting influence being exercised. Let the Doctor tell us why 
Leicester, which ought to suffer from small-pox, is free from it, 
while Sheffield, which ought not to suffer from small-pox, is devas- 
tated by it. This will be a far more practical exercise for the 
worthy Doctor’s mind than raking up a few mythical relics of 
antiquity. 
J. T. Biggs, 
Member of the Board of Guardians. 
Leicester, Oct. 9, 1888 
P. s.—The Local Government Board, in a recent memorandum to Boards of Guardians, 
and representing, we suppose, the consensus of medical opinion, says that the protective 
power of primary vaccination lasts about ten or twelve years, and that a second vac- 
cination protects for a similar period—possibly longer—but of this no man can be certain. 
Some think the protection lasts only five years, and even less than that. Taking the 
Local Government Board standard of ten years, we have only to ascertain the number of 
vaccinations or revaccinations during the past ten years to know how many, in their 
estimation, are now protected by vaccination in this borough. By this officially and 
medically-approved process we arrive at the following result: 
The Registrar-General estimated the population of Leicester in the mid- 
143,153 
(Births 1878-188“ inclusive, 47,820), 
Of these successfully vaccinated, about 
20,800 
Estimated deaths after vaccination, about 
3,000 
Leaving children vaccinated within ten years 
Add for revaccination the liberal estimate of 100 per annum (probably 
17,800 
double the actual number) 
1,000 
Total number supposed to be protected 
— 
18.&00 
Leaving so-called unprotected 
124,353 CITIZENS’ EIGHTS TO HEALTH. 
In the last volume of the last edition of the Encyclopaedia Britan- 
nica is an article on vaccination, by Dr. Creighton, A. M., M. D., 
whose own views lately changed from pro to con “ as the outcome of 
an independent and laborious research,” and who explodes the notion 
that vaccination is either a necessity as a State protective measure 
or useful to the individual—giving a careful digest of statistical data 
from many countries. 
[The British Weekly says of his Encyclopaedia article: “We hazard 
little in saying that this is the death knell to compulsory vaccination. 
Doctors can have their way almost entirely with the people if they are 
unanimous. Whenever the unanimity is broken the authority goes.” 
This important work—the Encyclopaedia, now nearly completed, will for 
a long time be looked upon as authority on hundreds of important ques- 
tions, and there can be no doubt that Dr. Creighton’s conversion, aS pub- 
lished in the last volume, will have a great effect in the way of dispelling 
one great delusion of the nineteenth century.] 
The matter of personal rights and liberty last considered, is 
the most important issue involved in such legislation ; and assuming 
that there is something more than Buncombe in our talk about indi- 
vidual liberty and home rule, the right to life, liberty and pursuit of 
happiness (involving preservation of health), the purity of our homes, 
I STAND FOR THE BIGHT OF EVERY CITIZEN, RICH OR POOR, HIGH OR 
LOW, BLACK OR WHITE, MALE OR FEMALE—THE INDIVIDUAL’S RIGHT 
ABOVE ALL OTHERS—TO MAINTAIN THE PURITY AND INTEGRITY OF HIS 
PERSON AS AGAINST ALL THEORY OB PRACTICE OF UNSETTLED AND UN- 
SOUGHT DEFILEMENT—HIS RIGHT TO RESIST EVEN STATE AUTHORIZED 
INVASION OF THE FOUNTAIN OF LIFE TO THE DEBASEMENT OF THE 
current coin of its realm, and if there is any substantiality in the 
right of the citizen to be protected against invasion without a war- 
rant, it is fair to ask the promoters of this bill to show the State’s 
warrant for invasive compulsory vaccination. 112 
It is claimed by the promoters of this bill that Health Boards 
are already endowed with arbitrary powers, and that precedents sanc- 
tion this compulsory vaccination law. I remind you that arbitrary 
powers should always be carefully guarded and their domains en- 
larged only in case of real necessity and where positive proofs can be 
offered that the end justifies the means ; but whatever justification 
may be argued in favor of laws to compel or enforce universally com- 
mended measures for protection of life and health, certainly cannot be 
made to apply to a debatable expedient involving a certainty of some 
impairment of health for the doubtful boon of an undetermined and im- 
determinable protection against possible disease. Whatever right the 
State has to compel the citizen to adopt means for preservation of 
health, who so bold as to argue that there is any basis for the 
assumption of the right of the State to compel a citizen to acquire a 
disease, or inflict on himself a poison (virus) of any kind ! 
There’s Money In It. 
One consideration that legislators should not lose sight of in forming 
opinions about the justice, expediency or propriety of the compulsory 
vaccination bill is the fact that those who plead for it, and spend time 
engineering its progress, have something to gain in so doing, whereas 
those who oppose do so at there own expense and with no motive 
other than their desire to protect themselves, their friends and the 
public from unjust invasion. There is money in such measures for 
the doctors generally who practice vaccination, as it would drive 
thousands of people into private offices who would fear to trust the 
virus offered free by Health Boards, and the bill would make 
room for more doctors as health officials and inspectors, increase 
works and make a plea for higher salaries. It means the disburse- 
ment of hundreds of thousands of the State’s dollars under the direc- 
tion of health board officials, as well as much new business for 
doctor’s private offices. It means fat contracts for favorite vaccine 
farms. 
Evidently there are many persons, professional men and others, who 
would find it to their interest to spend time in pushing this bill, while 
the thousands of the general public who would oppose such interfer- 113 
ence with their personal affairs, know nothing of the bill, or, if they 
know, do not take time and trouble to fight it, and hope to save them- 
selves should it become a law, by buying immunity or practicing 
deception. 
“If an offence come out of the truth, better it is that the offence come than 
the truth be concealed.” 
TELLING UNPOPULAR TRUTH. 
Telling unpopular truth to the public is not pleasant, still unpop- 
ular truth should be told ; for good may follow, though one cannot 
tell how or when. It may be contradicted, or it may find here and 
there a disciple ; or the author of it may be reviled, persecuted, im- 
prisoned, or held up to the scorn and ridicule of the public. In one 
or other of these ways attention may be drawn to the subject, and a 
spirit of inquiry excited which may result in the overthrow of the 
existing error. 
FILTH AND DISEASE. 
In March, 1885, my attention was called to a report that several 
cases of small-pox existed in the east end of Montreal. Knowing 
something of the filthy condition of certain localities, I made a care- 
ful sanitary survey of all that part of the city east of St. Lawrence 
Street, and southwest of McGill and St. Antoine streets. What I 
saw I will attempt to describe what I smelt cannot be described ! 
I found ten thousand seven hundred cess-pits reeking with rottenness 
and unmentionable filth many of these pest-holes had not been 
emptied for years the accumulated filth was left to poison the air 
of the city and make it the seed-bed for the germs of zymotic diseases. 
Further, I found the courts, alleys and lanes in as bad a condition 
as they possibly could be decaying animal and vegetable matter 
abounded on all sides. Everywhere unsightly and offensive objects 
met the eye, and abominable smells proved the existence of disease- 
engendering matter, which supplied the very conditions necessary for 
the incubation, nourishment and growth of small-pox. 
Knowing well the fearful consequences that would result from the 
presence of such a mass of filth in a densely populated part of the 114 
city, I gave the widest publicity to the subject, hoping thereby to 
rouse the municipal authorities to a proper appreciation of the danger 
that menaced the health of the city. But I was called an alarmist; 
my advice went unheeded, and the filth remained as a nest for the 
nourishment of small-pox, which grew in strength and virulence 
rapidly, until it swept into untimely graves, from the very localities 
I have mentioned, thirty-four hundred persons !—victims of municipal 
neglect. Instead of removing the filth and putting the city in a 
thoroughly clean defensive condition by the enforcement of wise san- 
itary regulations and the adoption of a rigid system of isolation of 
small-pox patients, the authorities were led by the medical profession 
to set up the fetish of vaccination and proclaim its protective virtues, 
through the columns of an ignorant, tyrannical and time-serving 
press. Day after day the glaring, snaring head-lines of “ Vaccin- 
ate, vaccinate,” “ Alarm, alarm,” appeared in morning and evening 
papers. A panic of cowardice and madness followed, and tens of 
thousands of people were driven (like sheep to the shambles of the 
butcher) to the vaccinators, who reaped a rich but unrighteous har- 
vest. 
The truth of my predictions was amply and sadly verified, by the 
sickening and mournful fact, that thirty-four hundred persons, mostly 
children under twelve years of age, died from small-pox in the very 
localities I pointed out as abounding in filth. While in the West 
End, west of Bleury and north of Dorchester streets, where cleanli- 
ness prevailed, there were only a few cases, and these sporadic. I 
do not hesitate to declare it as my solemn opinion, founded upon ex- 
perience acquired during the epidemic, that there would have been 
no small-pox epidemic in Montreal, if the authorities had discarded 
vaccination, and placed the city in a thoroughly clean and defensive 
condition, when 1 called upon them to do their duty. 
CRUSADE AGAINST VACCINATION. 
During my crusade against vaccination in Montreal, I had to con- 
tend against a powerful and solidly united medical profession, sup- 
ported actively or passively by every clergyman and every newspaper 
in the country, aided by the auxiliaries of ignorance, bigotry, coward- 115 
ice, prejudice and indifference of the people. The seed I have sown 
lias already taken firm root. Thousands of intelligent people who 
never questioned the virtue of vaccination before I began my war- 
fare against it, are now opposed to it. Each of these converts will 
disseminate their views in the circle in which they move, and in a 
few years an intelligent public opinion will be arrayed against the 
absurd and filthy rite of vaccination, which will compel the profes- 
sion to abandon it, as they have already abandoned other fallacies, 
such as bleeding, mercury and arm to arm inoculation. Medical fal- 
lacies die hard, and this fallacy of vaccination being a munificent 
patron, will be no exception to the rule. When I began my crusade 
against vaccination I expected obloquy, slander, lies and persecution. 
I expected the lineal descendants of Ananias, Sapphira and Judas 
would unite their efforts to crush me,— I have not been disappointed. 
I have sacrificed money, peace, and many friendships in this cause, 
and still I think the case worthy the sacrifice. 
WHAT I TAUGHT THE PEOPLE. 
(1) That epidemic diseases are the creation of municipal and 
personal neglect of cleanliness. That any medical theory which sets 
aside the laws of health, and teaches that the spread of natural or 
artificial disease can be advantageous to the community, is mislead- 
ing and opposed to science and common sense. 
(2) That exemption from small-pox, cholera, and other filth dis- 
eases, is not to be found in vaccination, but in the enforcement and 
extension of wise sanitary regulations, such as better habitations for 
the people, perfect drainage, pure water in abundance (and free to 
the poor), wholesome food, and inculcating amongst all classes of the 
community habits of personal and domestic cleanliness. 
VACCINATION AND COMMON-SENSE. 
Sir,—It is often contended that the vaccination question is a 
medical question, and that persons who do not belong to the medical 
profession ought to defer on this matter to the great majority of those 
To the Editor. 116 
who do. The monstrous nature of this assumption when used to 
justify compulsion has often been exposed ; but I am not now refer- 
ring simply to compulsion. I would go further, and would confidently 
maintain that the vaccine operation, as ordinarily performed and as 
defined in medical works, is one upon which a person of average 
common-sense is perfectly competent to form an opinion. I under- 
stand one who knows the difference between health and disease, but 
who does not necessarily understand the diagnosis of small-pox, 
typhus, typhoid, measles, etc., and who may be quite unable to say 
whether these names do or do not indicate different forms or develop- 
ments.of the same disease. He will not, therefore, be able to judge 
whether vaccination be or be not a protection against small-pox. For 
anything he knows to the contrary, it may be a perfect protection 
against small-pox, and yet be the greatest curse that ever afflicted 
humanity. A vaccination that killed straight off would, of course, 
protect from small-pox. A vaccination that inflicted an incurable 
disease might well be conceived to do so. Nor, again, will common- 
sense tell us that vaccination will work perceptible mischief in every 
case, for without medical knowledge we cannot tell how soon or under 
what conditions the effect may pass away. But we do know that 
vaccination, when effectively performed, induces disease, for that is 
part, and the only intelligible part, of its definition ; and we do know 
that the tendency of disease is to destroy and not to maintain health. 
I contend, then, that we, who know nothing of medical technicalities, 
are entitled to presume that vaccination must, so far as it is effective, 
be mischievous. 
lo this it may be replied that drugs and particular diseases are 
beneficial in some cases. Why, then, should we regard the case 
against vaccination as so conclusive on a priori grounds ? As re- 
gards drugs, their utility is beginning to be disputed ; but, independ- 
ently of this, there is an enormous difference between treating a person 
already diseased with a view to his cure, and diseasing a healthy per- 
son. If a person is in a diseased state, an attack of small-pox, with 
an eruption, may restore his health. The beneficial effect of non- 
fatal small-pox is recognised by the Vaccination Acts ; how far cor- 
rectly, I express no opinion. Thus any disease which expels peccant 
matter from the body by eruption or otherwise may be the means of 117 
restoring health. But how can this apply to the case of a healthy 
child who has no peccant matter to expel? And it is just healthy 
children who are considered as proper subjects for vaccination ; if a 
child be diseased, a certificate postponing vaccination would probably 
be obtained without difficulty. 
Again, as we cannot tell how innocuous any particular vaccination 
may be, neither can we, on the other hand, tell how much mischief 
it may pass away without doing good or harm, or it may communi- 
cate some of the most horrible diseases that flesh is heir to. Neither 
the vaccinating doctor nor anyone else can assert with any confidence 
how it will turn out in any given case. 
I am, yours faithfully, 
H. N. Mozley, 
Senior Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and Barrister of Lincoln's Inn. 
LONDON SMALL-POX AND OFFICIAL STATISTICAL 
MALPRACTICE. 
To the Editor. 
Sir :—ln giving out the official returns to the public, the whole 
four millions of our metropolitan population—rich and poor, old and 
young—are massed together for the purpose of yielding an average 
death rate ; and medical official experts, whose salaries depend on 
the maintenance of this superstition in the public mind, are constantly 
on the alert to raise small-pox panics, pressing the authorities to 
spend money in inducing the ignorant to get “ protected ” by re-vac- 
cination. 
In the Medical Officer’s (L. G-. B.) Report for 1884 all reference 
to small-pox mortality in the metropolis is made in the aggregate. 
No mention is made of the particulars undermentioned. In like man- 
ner the Registrar-General’s quarterly return ending June 30th, 1885, 
speaks only of the small-pox death rate as specified for England and 
Wales, and for the twenty-eight great towns as 170 and 210 per mil- 
lion, respectively. Those, however, who take the pains (alas, how 
few !) to eliminate the figures from the detailed returns, may find that 118 
in the following areas and districts the proportion of small-pox deaths 
per million of population (annual rate) during that quarter was: 
Nine districts of London (excluding the remaining twenty), 
some having a few sporadic cases only. 
430 
One of which (Hackney) yielded 
1,544 
Another (Greenwich) 
_ 2,621 
West Ham, sub-district, just outside, but a continuation 
of East London in the neighborhood of the Lea 10,133 
Hartford (ditto), Kent 38,122 
(i. e., four times more than the highest district (Grimsby) in the 
worst epidemic (1871) of the century).. 
In the summer of that year such a panic was raised, but without 
the smallest excuse ; for in the nine months ended September, 1884, 
the deaths from small-pox were seventy-four under the average of the 
previous ten years (during none of which was any severe epidemic 
experienced) ; moreover, forty-four per cent, of this mortality oc- 
curred in one only of the twenty-nine large districts into which Lon- 
don, for registration purposes, is divided. Nevertheless, during that 
summer large sums were expended by local authorities, instigated by 
the medical department, to induce the populace to hasten to the vac- 
cination stations to save themselves from threatened destruction. The 
effect of this panic was the same as almost all such panics have pro- 
duced. In the fourth quarter of 1884 the small-pox deaths in, or 
from, London were 340 above the average for the corresponding quar- 
ter during the decade (chiefly in poor hospitals). In the first quar- 
ter of 1885 the deaths were 271 above, and in the second quarter the 
deaths from small-pox exceeded the average by 302, i. e., 573 for 
the six months, about 900 having died in pauper small-pox hospitals. 
Thus ignorance and fear are acted upon by superstition for its bene- 
fit, whilst thousands are struck down by every form of innoculable 
disease, and millions suffer a lingering existence, wrecks of humanity. 
Kingscote, Wokingham. 
Thomas Baker, 119 
“PURE VACCINE LYMPH’’-WHAT IS IT? 
To the Editor. 
Sir,—Before any rational decision as to the advantages ox disad- 
vantages of vaccination can possibly be arrived at, another question 
must be answered without dissimulation, evasion or deceit—namely, 
“ What is vaccination ? ” This question may be answered by the 
impudent assertion that “ everybody knows that,” or, by an en- 
deavor to raise some side issue so as to leave the questioner without any 
satisfactory reply. We may be referred back to the days of Jenner, 
and regaled with the interesting story of his conversation with a milk- 
maid, and his notions about horse-grease, swine-pox, ass-pox, and 
the like. But the question now is this—lf I am desirous of being 
vaccinated with the best vaccine lymph, what is the nature and source 
of the animal virus which will probably be provided for me? I may, 
of course, shut my eyes and open my mouth, as is sometimes said to 
children when sweetmeats are offered to them ; but vaccine “ lymph” 
is not a sweetmeat, neither is it a “ natural secretion like milk and 
butter,” as was once said by a quondam president of the British 
Medical Association. It is something which, Sir James Paget assures 
us, is very “ beneficial,” although it produces “ a permanent morbid 
condition of the blood.” According to my conception of the proper 
usage of words, what is called “ vaccine lymph ” is not lymph at all, 
but a fluid excreted from a sore produced by an animal virus, whose 
exact nature is the subject of much controversy amongst leading 
members of the medical profession, and which must continue to be the 
subject of controversy so long as it is derived from sources altogether 
different from one another. 
Dr. Jenner stated in his largest work that the infection employed 
by him came in the first instance from the horse, originating in a 
complaint called “ the grease,” which is attended by an oosing of 
thin matter from the heels of the animal; and this, according to Mr. 
Seaton’s evidence before the Parliamentary Committee in 1871, con- 
stitutes the principal supply for the United Kingdom. As the results 
of using this “ lymph ” have been severely criticised on all sides, and 
public confidence in its efficacy begins to wane, it has been foreseen 
by the advocates of the Compulsory Vaccination Acts, that unless 120 
some substitute could be found out in which the public could still be- 
lieve, the entire repeal of those Acts, with all their emoluments, 
would follow as a matter of course. 
Edward Hadghton, M. D. 
Spring Grove, 
Upper Norwood, Surrey. 
The acceptance as an established fact that apparently pure vac- 
cine lymph from an infant inheriting syphilis, can communicate 
syphilis through Vaccination, naturally gives rise to some very grave 
problems.— Lancet, January 30th, 1886. 
In addition to the fact that people are ill after Vaccination, it is 
important to remember that people die after the operation, if not 
from the disease itself, at least from its sequelae, notably erysipelas. 
—British Medical Journal, 1877. 
The Registrar-General’s Returns Shew That : 
In the first 15 years after the passing of the Compulsory 
Vaccination Act, 1854-68, there died of small-pox in 1*54,700 
England and Wales J 
In the second 15 years, 1869-83, under a more stringent'j 
law, ensuring the vaccination of 95 per cent, of all chil- )■ 66,4 47 
dren born, the deaths rose to J 
Total for 30 years 121,147 
Will you vote for the repeal of a law whose failure is so con- 
clusively demonstrated? VACCINE DISASTERS IN ST. PANCRAS, 
From the Weekly Dispatch. 
The inquest held by Dr. Danford Thomas on the 16th of Novem- 
ber, 1888, on the bodies of Adela and Ethel Packer, whose deaths, 
according to the verdict of the jury, were “ accelerated by vaccina- 
tion,” is not calculated to restore public confidence in this form of 
State medicine. Nor are these the only victims to the rite in St. 
Pancras as the following will show : 
1. The unfortunate infant Ada Lilian Williams was vaccinated 
in 1883, six days after birth, by Dr. Dunlop, at the St. 
Pancras workhouse. The verdict at the inquest, “ Died 
of suppurating meningitis supervening on ulceration of the 
vaccine vesicle,” was followed by the three days’ trial 
of the vaccinator, Dr. Dunlop, for manslaughter, and 
produced a painful and widespread interest throughout 
the parish. 
2. Mabel Emma Allen, vaccinated in 1883 with calf lymph by 
Dr. Renner, producing “a deep-seated ulcerous inflamma- 
tion,” which caused the thighs and legs to swell to twice 
their usual size. This case terminated fatally after six 
weeks’ acute suffering. The coroner declined to give 
the father time to procure either legal or medical assist- 
ance, and a verdict, “ Died from septicaemia, resulting 
from an abscess due to natural causes,” was returned. 
3. A few weeks later, George Andrews was vaccinated in five 
punctures by Dr. Claremont, which generated a large 
suppurating sore. Verdict by the jury : “ Died from 
the natural constitutional irritation following vaccina- 
tion. 122 
4. Then followed the inquest held on the 18th and 26th of May 
upon Herbert Walsh, born in the St. Pancras Workhouse 
and vaccinated six days after birth by Dr. Dunlop, 
resulting, according to the medical evidence, in “ chronic 
blood-poisoning.” The mother of the miserable infant 
was also vaccinated by Dr. Dunlop, without her consent, 
the day after her confinement. 
5. On May 2nd, 1884, Dr. Danford Thomas held an inquest in 
the same district on the son of Mr. H. Fullerton. Pro- 
fessor Pepper, F. R. C. S., made the post-mortem, and 
found that the child had been vaccinated in five places, 
producing ulceration and a series of abscesses. Under 
the instructions of the coroner a verdict was recorded of 
“ Death following the absorption of pus from vaccine 
sores, the result of some septic influence, and not aris- 
ing from the vaccine lymph!” 
6. In the October following, the child of Mrs. Hagan of Edward 
Square, Calendonian Road, was vaccinated in five places, 
which, according to the North-Western Gazette, caused 
untold agony, and ultimate death by invaccinated syphilis. 
7. On Nov. 4th, 1884, Richard Wheatley, of Hampden Road, 
Upper Holloway, died from erysipelas in the arm nine 
days after vaccination. “ The inflammation extended 
from the ear to the toes.” No mention was made in the 
medical certificate as to the primary and real cause of 
death. 
Similar fatal vaccination cases are known in every part of London, 
and with a view of eliciting the truth I have again and again urged 
the press to institute, in the interest of the suffering poor, a house-to- 
house inquiry in some populous metropolitan district. An able scien- 
tific exposition of vaccination and its results in the new volume of 
the “ Encyclopaedia Britannica ” will enlighten those who desire to 
know the true facts on this momentous question. 
I am, Sir, yours, etc., 
William Tebb. 
Devonshire Club, St. James’s, London, Nov. 20th, 1888. VICTIMS OF VACCINATION. 
Mrs. Emma Packer, of 5 Brailsford Road, Brixton, sends to us 
the following letter describing a mother’s experience of vaccination : 
“ Since the inquest held by the coroner, Dr. Danford Thomas, on 
November 16th, on my two children, I have been asked for a few 
particulars of my terrible experience. Adela, aged two and a-half 
years, and Ethel, aged fifteen months, were each vaccinated in three 
or four places on the 9th inst. by the doctor at St. Pancras Work- 
house, where, owing to painful circumstances, I was obliged to take 
them. They were lovely children, and in perfect health, but in a 
few days their arms became inflamed, the punctures in Ethel’s arm 
running into one large ulcer, and presenting a truly shocking appear- 
ance. Their eyes became very sore; their faces, particularly the 
youngest, were much disfigured with an eruption, and, after suffer- 
ings too painful to describe, they both died. My earnest request that 
I might take my darling little Ethel with me, or that I might be 
allowed to stay and nurse my dying child, was unfeelingly refused. 
The children were vaccinated without my consent, and I am told 
that this is the law, and that there is no redress. If so, is it not 
time the law was altered?”—Pall Mall Gazette, November 24th, 
1888. \From the Boston Globe.] 
POISON’S WORK. 
Death Caused by Vaccine Virus. 
HORRIBLE SUFFERINGS OF DR. WARREN STOKES, 
OF THE 
COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS. 
HIS FATE FORESEEN IN VISIONS BY FRIENDS. 
A Weird and Thrilling Tale of Occultism. 
STOKES.—In this city, June 18, Warren S. Stokes, M. D. Funeral from the 
Harvard Street Baptist Church, Friday, June 22, at 2.30 o’clock. Rela- 
tives and friends invited to attend without further notice. 
This was one of a score of death notices that appeared in yester- 
day morning’s papers. It looks commonplace enough and yet there 
lies behind it a chain of circumstances into which were woven by 
unseen powers elements so marvellous, so cruel and unpitying, so 
pathetic, that their narration in the simplest possible form will seem 
like the creation of a hallucinated brain. And yet confirmation of 
the facts related in this article will be a comparatively easy matter 
for those who desire further proofs. Here was a man of brilliant 
promise, of robust health, whose life seemed to be just beginning, 
but whose death was vividly seen in visions by his friends three 
weeks before it occurred, only they did not foresee all its attendant 
horrors. 
Dr. Warren S. Stokes was born in Vermont about thirty-two 
years ago. He graduated from the College of Physicians and Sur- 
geons, 34 Essex Street, in 1882. Since then he has been connected 
with the faculty of the institution and during the past year has been 
lecturer on medical chemistry and instructor in pathology. His gen- 125 
erous soul, his affable ways and his intellectual endowments endeared 
him to hundreds of friends in the city. Running over as his heart 
was with enthusiasm for his profession, he was deeply interested in 
all its phases, and devoted much time to the investigation of physical 
and psychical science. 
One afternoon in the latter part of May he called on a lady friend 
who lives on Beacon street, and who has known him for years. As 
Dr. Stokes entered her parlor door and advanced to greet her she 
saw with perfect distinctness directly in front of him an apparently 
luminous and semi-transparent form. It was his “ double,” his 
Doppelgaenger, as the Germans call it, or his “ spiritual body,” as 
Buddhists would say. It was his exact counterpart, except that it 
appeared 
CLOTHED IN WHITE, 
whereas the doctor was dressed in black. When he had gone, the 
lady said to her husband : “Dr. Stokes had on his burial clothes, I 
know it, lam sure of it.” The awful words proved true. 
Two or three days after this premonitory incident there was a 
meeting of a secret brotherhood to which Dr. Stokes belonged, and 
which has for its object the study of occultism. He was present, 
with five or six others, including the lady above-mentioned and two 
well-known Boston physicians. It is not amiss to state that one of 
the aims of this brotherhood is the development of clairvoyant powers 
in its members by means of thoiight localization. They concentrate 
their minds and eyes upon some object—a glass crystal, or prism, or 
sphere—raised on a pedestal in the centre of the room, and see what 
will there be revealed. The ghastly revelations on that night boded 
no earthly welfare to one of the loved members of that brotherhood, 
and showed how fixed and sure is every man’s destiny. When the 
moment of localization was past Dr. Stokes was the first to speak. 
“ Why, I saw nothing,” he said ; “ the crystal seemed to dissolve 
into mist.” 
“I saw a man on a bed of sickness,” said another; “ he leaped 
from his couch, and I saw his bushy, brown hair.” 
“ I saw a coffin,” said the third who spoke. 
“ And I saw the letter S,” said the fourth. 126 
“ That must be our friend, Dr. ,” said Dr. Stokes, mention- 
ing an aged physician whose name begins with S. “I heard that he 
is in feeble health.” 
But the other members of the company knew that Dr. Stokes him- 
self was 
THE FATED ONE. 
There was an astrologer present, and he was asked to look at the 
doctor’s horoscope. On referring to his books and getting the year, 
month, day, and hour of the doctor’s birth, he said to him : 
“The month of June will be a dangerous one for you ; beware of 
infectious diseases.” 
Dr. Stokes scouted the idea, and turning to a physician who was 
present he said, laughing : 
“ Well, now, doctor, that’s too stupid if it means me. Just feel of 
my muscles. lam perfectly healthy and was never sick a day in my 
life. If you were the one meant I should perhaps be inclined to think 
it reasonable.” 
Dr. Stokes may have been skeptical and possibly regarded the 
warnings with indifference, but their subterraneous workings in his 
mind were soon made apparent by an act, and here begins the melan- 
choly, piteous portion of his life’s last chapter. Perhaps that very 
night, darkly projected upon the secret mirror of his dreams, he 
saw in clear outlines the shadow of the dread sufferings of the com- 
ing days and determined to avert them. 
He was engaged a great deal at the North End, being at the dis- 
pensary on Charter Street every day. Thrown almost continually 
into contact with infectious diseases, and not having been vaccinated 
since his early childhood, he determined to make himself doubly sure 
against danger. He talked it over with Dr. Wallace, and the latter, 
on Saturday, June 2, vaccinated him, using the virus in the dispen- 
sary. Dr. Wallace not only scraped off the skin on the left arm, as 
is customary in vaccination, but he also took his lancet and made 
two deep gashes crossing each other. “ I’ll give you enough,” he 
said to Dr. Stokes, as he inserted double the usual quantity of virus. 
Dr. Stokes lived at 44 Edgewood Street, Highlands, in the house 
of Dr. L. M. Tilton, a female physician and a fellow graduate of his 
at the College of Physicians and Surgeons. He had formerly been 127 
associated with her on Dartmouth Street. On the Monday following 
his vaccination Dr. Stokes suffered terribly from nausea and other 
Though feeling very ill he managed to keep on his feet and attend 
to his duties until Friday. On Wednesday he called on his Beacon 
Street friends. The lady was engaged at the time and could not see 
him. There must have come over the doctor then a sudden premoni- 
tion of his approaching end, for he said to the lady’s husband: 
“ Bid your wife a farewell from me. She is a true and noble 
woman.” 
On Friday Dr. Stokes was so ill that he was forced to take his bed. 
Dr. Tilton, his hostess and friend, summoned Dr. Wallace and Dr. 
A. F. Pattee. They attended the case until last Saturday, when Dr. 
Stokes was removed to the City Hospital. The treatment of the sick 
man by his three friends, Drs. Tilton, Wallace and Pattee, is ques- 
tioned by Dr. Stokes’s other friends, including his brother, a promi- 
nent physician of St. Johnsbury, Yt., and his sister, Mrs. Davis, of 
Linden. It is said that the deceased had numerous friends in the 
city, all of whom had heard of his illness, and many of whom called 
at the house in Edgewood Street to see him were given to understand 
first that Dr. Stokes was suffering only from typhoid fever, then 
from slow fever, and finally malarial fever, with symptoms of erysipe- 
las. Certain it is, however, that a week ago last Monday Dr. Stokes 
became raving insane. He had lucid intervals up to Thursday, and 
was able to recognize his friends at times. He exhibited all the 
symptoms of hydrophobia, frothing at the mouth, snapping his teeth, 
and biting his hands and arms. His family think the virus with 
which he had been vaccinated was obtained from an animal suffering 
from developed or 
SYMPTOMS OF POISONING. 
It was not until Dr. Stokes had gone mad that his sister was noti- 
fied of his illness. Her anguish was not mitigated by the assurances 
of the attending physicians that her brother’s sufferings were not due 
to the effects of vaccination. There is no doubt that they fully be- 
lieved that the virus was not the cause of the symptoms, and possibly 
they had their own theory of the case and were bound to prove it cor- 
INCIPIENT HYDROPHOBIA. 128 
rect. However this may be, it is asserted they prescribed no anti- 
dotes for poison. 
Dr. Stokes was sent to the City Hospital in an ambulance, with 
no attendant or nurse. 
The ambulance bearing the lone sufferer arrived at the City Hos- 
pital about 10.30 last Saturday morning. From that hour until three 
o’clock in the afternoon, through some oversight or misunderstanding, 
the doctor lay 
ALONE ON A STRETCHER 
in the receiving ward, with no one to care for him. They did not 
even know who he was or where he came from. His brother had 
arrived in the meantime from St. Johnsbury, and it took three hours 
before the red tape was unwound sufficiently to permit him even to 
see the sufferer. The brothers met at last, but there was no recog- 
nition. 
Let the veil be drawn over the painful scenes of the next two days. 
Dr. Stokes’s agonies were ended by death at 4.30 on Monday 
afternoon. 
A post-mortem examination revealed the fact that there was no 
typhoid, malaria or erysipelas in his system. Everything was per- 
fectly normal. He had died of blood poisoning. 
The sequel of this whole distressing affair will probably be a civil 
suit for damages against Dr. Stokes’s attending physicians. Two 
members of the secret fraternity have arrived from the headquarters 
in New York to investigate the causes of their brother’s death. They 
are satisfied that the medical attendance during his illness was not the 
proper one. What steps will be taken by Dr. Stokes’s brother and 
sister will be definitely decided after the funeral. 
A member of the Massachusetts Legislature said yesterday that the 
compulsory vaccination law was doomed, and that efforts for its re- 
peal would be made in the next General Court. 
The services this afternoon in the Harvard Street Church will im- 
press on many minds the truth of the Psalmist’s words: “In the 
midst of life we are in death.” 129 
A “MONSTROUS” LAW. 
To the Editor. 
Sir,—The recent house-to-house censuses, taken already in be- 
tween seventy and eighty towns and villages, show that multitudes 
do not believe in vaccination. Nay, more, they abhor it. It does 
not prevent small-pox. The vaccinated have small-pox like the un- 
vaccinated, and die of small-pox. The majority of patients in every 
hospital are vaccinated. In towns where the inhabitants refuse to be 
vaccinated there is often less small-pox than in towns where all are 
vaccinated. The only sure preventive of small-pox is cleanliness 
without and within. 
Vaccination is not harmless. It corrupts the blood, and brings on 
fever. Many die under vaccination. If they are weak, it makes 
them weaker. If they are ailing, it makes them worse. No one can 
tell what may happen when a child is thus poisoned, for no one can 
tell from whence the poison came, nor how it may develop, nor what 
extra disease it may carry with it. Many children in perfect health 
are never well after vaccination. Their constitutions are wrecked. 
Thus Sir Joseph Pease said in Parliament, “The President of the 
Local Government Board cannot deny that children die under the 
operation of the Vaccination Act in a wholesale wray.” 
Among the numerous diseases communicated by vaccination is that 
disease which all regard as most loathsome and shameful. Since 
vaccination was made compulsory, the deaths from that disease among 
English children have increased fourfold. It is an awful fact. The 
deaths, moreover, represent only part of the mischief. Many who 
survive are enfeebled or maimed for life, and transmit the affliction 
to their own offspring. In this manner the vigour of our nation is 
sapped with deadly effect. 
Hence, wise parents, knowing these things, and loving their children, 
refuse to have them vaccinated ; and, because they refuse, are prose- 
cuted and fined, and if they cannot pay the fines, are thrown into 
prison. Thousands are thus maltreated for faithful devotion to their 
children’s welfare. Nor is this all. The prosecutions are frequently 
repeated, until the parents are ruined or driven out of the country. 
In view of such martyrdoms, Mr. Bright has said ; “The law which 130 
inflicts penalty after penalty on a parent who is unwilling to have his 
child vaccinated is monstrous, and ought be repealed. 
William White, 
(Author of “The Story of a Great Delusion.”) 
The Laurels, Cheshunt, Herts. 
VACCINATION. 
To the Editor. 
Sir : The vaccination question being tabooed for the Medical jour- 
nals it must be cheering to the heads of many families to find the 
public press is changing front in that respect. I presume the reason 
is not far to seek ; to all save the indifferent, and those officially in- 
terested the formidable opposition to exceptional legislation in this 
direction sufficiently accounts for it. The glaring intolerance of com- 
pulsion is too much for the spirit of the age to last. Every class of the 
community makes itself heard. Even the medical vaccinator speaks 
out in terms of caution if not condemnation ! This is gratifying to 
remark. The conservatism of the faculty has always been prover- 
bial. Medicine if not doggedly opposed to change in what concerns 
it, prefers that it should at least originate with itself, and more from 
esprit de corps than from conviction. If direct expressions of sym- 
pathy with the heterodox cry is rare with the practitioner, there are 
few who do not number among their professional brethren one or 
more who hold that some concession is required in deference to ob- 
jectors worthy of respect. Doctrinal beliefs in Pasteurian and Jen- 
nerian prophylaxis is sincere in many scientific quarters. We know 
and it is much to be regretted, that these two questions, viz., the 
protective efficacy of vaccination and its compulsory enforcement, 
should so generally be accepted as one and indivisible. To the 
honor of the profession be it said, there are exceptions, and these are 
much more numerous than is commonly imagined. And why should 
it be otherwise? Publicly, the conflict of opinion is simply for or 
against the protective rite; in the profession controversy hedges 
every aspect of the question, and naturally there are conscientious 131 
thinkers and workers who hesitate to aid and abet a practice to ob- 
jection on scientific as well as non-scientific grounds. To independ- 
ent thinkers who are not enslaved by doctrine and routine, it should 
now be evident that the question and all its length and breadth will 
have shortly to be frankly faced by societies and schools, and the 
sooner the better. Vested interests, prejudice, and ignorance will, 
as usual, be difficult to deal with, but in a matter involving so much 
individual wrong and injustice without compensating general benefit, 
this should be no bar to thorough consideration of the unjustifiable 
institutions. Faculties and Parliament are not infallible, and delu- 
sions both in law and physic will have their day, which is sometimes 
well to hasten to a close—compulsory vaccination I conceive to be one 
of them. The medical student and practitioner who have given seri- 
ous attention to the subject, and who, like myself, feel satisfied of 
the absurdity of the practise and injustice of the law relating to it, 
must see that the increasing agitation for at least amendment in both 
is sure to ultimately triumph, and, what is more, foresee that when 
it does the would-be scientific figment left will neither profitably nor 
reputably be worth retaining. 
A. M. Browm, M. D. 
59 Keppel street, 
Russel-square, London. 
“NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN VACCINATION.” 
Sir,—Having been a witness before the Royal Commission on the 
subject of vaccination, I may claim to know a little in a special man- 
ner on this vexed question. And it is in that capacity that I wish to 
offer a few words in criticism of the article by Sir Henry Roscoe, in 
your last issue. 
It is now often stated that the practice of inoculation, which was 
the predecessor and the precedent for our vaccination, was not the 
fatal thing that experience has proved it to be everywhere it has been 
used. The article that lam criticising takes the same tone. It says 
inoculation never became general, either in this country or elsewhere, 
and for a very good reason. The very opposite is true—that inocula- 
tion of small-pox was general here, and in the East away back to a 132 
great antiquity, and is now the one special difficulty that the Indian 
Government has, in the spread of the rival and more recent practice 
of vaccination. 
This same practice is the difficulty in the way of the attempts of 
the French Government to spread the practice of vaccination in the 
colony of Tonquin, and also in the colony of Algeria. In the latter 
colony it is inoculation of small-pox that is the present popular 
practice, and vaccination is the unpopular one. To so great an ex- 
tent was this fatal practice carried, that Moore, the friend of Jenner, and 
the historian of the small-pox, went so far as to say that it had caused 
the sacrifice of “ millions of lives.” And while no doubt this is an 
exaggeration, it must not be forgotten that it Avas an expression that 
was not used by a layman, but by this student of the ravages of the 
disease. Had this fatal and superstitious practice been out of the way 
we should not have the later one to combat. It was the adoption of 
it that caused a good deal of the excessive mortality by small-pox 
last century. If your contributor had read the work of Professor 
Crookshank on this subject he Avould have been more careful and ac- 
ctirate in his statements. 
What, for instance, can he mean by this—“ While the death-rate 
from small-pox was formerly 100, it does not now reach 40r5? ” I 
must confess that unless there is a misprint, this is a most amazing 
statement that I find it impossible to understand. Formerly 100 
what? Not surely 100 deaths in a hundred cases? No one could 
possibly say so. What is it? And yet of this so extraordinary a state- 
ment the writer says, “ about this there can be no manner of doubt.” 
Perhaps “ The Gondoliers” is responsible for the quotation, and it 
slipped in thoughtlessly. The fact is, and I have verified it by the 
most careful collation of the facts, that the fatality from the small-pox 
is not much different in our day to what it was in the pre-Jennerian 
days, until—and this is the point—the hospital accommodation had 
almost outgrown the needs of our huge metropolis. While the ac- 
commodation was short of the needs, the fatality of the disease was 
from 18 to 23 per cent, of the cases. And that it was of old. Some 
of the old hospitals quoted by the Baron van Swieten, long before 
Jenner, gave as small a fatality as any of our own day. 133 
The next thing that I have to complain of is almost incredible in 
its carelessness. The writer says, “ Nor is it my purpose to inquire 
whether immunity is or is not granted for life by infant vaccination. 
• • . . Up to recent times the immunity—the truth of which even 
the most advanced anti-vaccinationist must admit, if capable of giving 
an opinion at all on the subject—has been a unique as well as unex- 
plained fact in medical science.” This is simply a tradition and not 
a fact at all. Let me show what I mean. We are, let us remember, 
to see that vaccination confers an immunity from small-pox. This is 
the record of fact, made by medical men themselves :—ln the old 
Small-pox Hospital of London, there were admitted from 1836 to 
1851 over 5,600 patients, and of these more than 3,000 were vac- 
cinated. In the same hospital in the following years up to 1867 
there were admitted 7,900 patients, and of these 7,300 were vaccin- 
ated. In the orphan homes at Bristol in the 1871 epidemic 293 
orphans had the small-pox, and all of them were vaccinated. In the 
London hospitals of the Asylums Board, they have had more than 
53,000 patients, and of this immense number no fewer than 41,000 
have been medically recorded as vaccinated. And so I could go on, 
not for our towns in England alone, but for Continental and American 
towns, until I had a great total of 130,000 cases, and had produced 
a total of medically recorded vaccinated patients to the extent of 81,- 
000 ! And then the world is to be told that I and my friends do not 
dispute the immunity given by vaccination ! I never remember to 
have had to answer so reckless a statement. I do not quite follow 
the reason for introducing the Pasteurian inoculations into this dis- 
cussion, and so pass them by. 
I am the more inclined to do so as in the resume of them the au- 
thor does verily seem to have allowed “ the scientific imagination 
full scope for running riot; ” for let me ever so humbly suggest that 
the Pasteurian inoculations are not vaccinations at all as we under- 
stand our enforced practice. We have not in them “ a few drops of 
lymph,” but a cultivated disease that has been stated in full detail to 
have given no immunity from death in 161 cases. If, again, the 
writer had only taken the trouble to study Professor Crookshank, he 
would have seen reason for doubting that the position of the two 
practices was at all alike. 134 
But that is aside from my mark. lam concerned simply to pro- 
test in the most earnest manner against being misrepresented. What 
we affirm, and what we prove by the most irrefutable statistics, is 
this : 
The great bulk of modern small-pox is in vaccinated persons. And 
they bear every sort and degree of vaccination. Good marks offer 
no protection from an attack or death, nor from the most loathsome 
forms of the disease. Our youth are confessed to be heavy sufferers 
from small-pox. And the young up to ten years enjoy no immunity 
in consequence of their vaccination. As in Leicester, so in other 
places, the saving that we enjoy from deaths by small-pox, as com- 
pared with a bygone time, is due, not to vaccination, but to sanita- 
tion and the better carrying out of the duties that an enlightened time 
has placed upon our health authorities. Our towns are cleaner, are 
less offensive, and more airy than of old. We have a water supply 
and a scavenging system that have cost many a million of public 
money. The return for this is found in the lessened incidence of fe- 
vers, small-pox included. In Leicester it is impossible to avoid this 
contention, and the resort is to prophecy a future epidemic. But the 
epidemic is long a-coming, and the vaccinations are almost abandoned 
in that town. This triumph of sanitation in Leicester is a fact full of 
importance. It must be met and not avoided. The secret of Nature 
is that well-being and health are to be had by an expenditure of toil 
and labor, and perseverance in them. There is no royal road to 
well-being through superstition and inoculation. It lies through the 
homely toil inseparable from cleanliness, be it municipal or domes- 
tic, and can only be maintained by following the old advice to keep 
place and person clean and pure. This is the real “ new develop- 
ment” that all professors should encourage as the true road to local 
and national well-being. 
I am, yours truly, Alex. Wheeler. 
Darlington, Sept. 1, 1890. 
MORTALITY PROM VACCINATION. 
To the Editor.— Sir,— At the present time there is an enormous 
defection from the almost universal and jubilant feeling of confidence 135 
in Vaccination as a preventive of small-pox, which at one period of 
its history existed in the world. Thousands of cases have occurred, 
not only in the British Isles, but throughout Europe and America, 
of mortality from Vaccination. It should never be forgotten by the 
public that “ the profession,” in order to shield vaccination from 
reproach, usually attributes such legalized mortality to secondary or 
tertiary causes which have been discussed in some of the first med- 
ical societies at home and abroad ; results, notably syphilitic, scrof- 
ulous, or tubercular infection, which can no longer be scientifically or 
philosophically ignored by pro-vaccinationists, since they are facts 
which have as much conclusive and invincible evidence in them, as 
any facts that can be found in the whole range of practical medicine : 
Lever, of London,Whitehead, of Manchester, Ackerley, of Liverpool, 
Martin, of Bristol, and others have confirmed them. 
Again, small-pox has proved fatal in many persons, within my 
own observation and experience, on whose arm had been produced 
numerous vesicles, quite perfect, by means of re-vaccination, even on 
those who bore good cicatrices (four or six) from the first vaccina- 
tion. In my opinion, the vaccine virus is rather identical than sim- 
ilar in nature, as to its relation to small-pox. Jenner believed and 
taught that small-pox, cow-pox, and horse-pox were one and the 
same disease, originating indeed from the same poison, and that a 
person who had been vaccinated, or gone through cow-pox, had 
actually gone through small-pox itself, and was, therefore, protected 
for life against possible recurrence of the latter. An inference, alas ! 
which for fifty years I have seen woefully contradicted in hospital 
and private practice. And it is, moreover, an indubitable truth that 
many persons who were never vaccinated by humanised lymph, or a 
pustular eruption from the teats of cow, identical with the disease 
called “ Grease ” in the heels, &c., of horses, have been made the 
subjects of the crucial experiments of inoculation with small-pox 
matter, and have entirely resisted the virus ! And what is, perhaps, 
a more striking test of the superfluity of Comjmlsory Vaccination, it 
has been grossly overrated as the only prophylactic, whilst ever doing 
incalculable harm. 
This is the case in 1886, and really has been so, on the Continent 
especially, since 1836, when Theile, of Kasan, succeeded in obtain- 136 
mg Vaccinia in the cow as a sequence to variolous inoculation. Un- 
believers who care for the philosophical idea of cause and effect, may 
fairly suggest, I think, that the supposed successes of vaccination, 
in the prevention of small-pox are, after all, neither more nor less 
than mere coincidences. So wanting in reasonable, not to say com- 
plete success, is the existing compulsory poisoning of the people, that 
the enforced operation “ by authority ” is now looked upon by hun- 
dreds of pro-vaccinationists, with secret or open aversion and disgust; 
in short, there is not only a powerful reactionary feeling of abhor- 
rence amongst vast numbers of the medical profession, but yet stronger 
and more avowed indignation is to be seen amongst thousands of ed- 
ucated and intelligent persons clerical, legal and scientific —to 
whom must be justly awarded the palm for pure, calm reasoning, and 
philosophical analysis of the whole national grievance. They know 
that small-pox will never be stamped out so long as vaccination 
stamps it in. Were I to narrate all I have witnessed, pertaining to 
mortality from vaccination, and the injurious effects which its com- 
pulsory enforcement has exerted on the public by conveying into the 
system of the previously healthy, the “seeds” or germinal matter 
of dangerous implacable diseases, each column of this journal might 
be amply filled. 
As Surgeon for many years to a large Workhouse Hospital, Pub- 
lic Vaccinator, and Medical Officer of a Poor Law Union district, I 
have vaccinated many thousands, and should probably have continued 
the operation to this day, had 1 not awakened enough to see the 
truth, a glimpse of which Dr. George Gregory showed me in 1841 
at the London Small-pox Hospital. Unvaccinated children, for ex- 
ample, have sucked the maternal nipple, around which the skin was 
thickly studded with confluent small-pox pustules, and have escaped 
quite unharmed ! Meanwhile, in hundreds of instances cases vac- 
cinated by others and myself—l have seen universal confluent 
eruption with very intense fever, the mucous membranes of the 
fauces and larnyx being dangerously affected, every symptom, indeed, 
worse far than in the unvaccinated from the first, and the eye-lids 
so perfectly closed as never again to open in this world. What will 
later and better instructed ages think of us? Yours with respect, 
William Hitohman, M. D., &c, 
62 Pembroke Place, Liverpool. 137 
WHOLESALE POISONING BY VACCINATION IN 
GERMANY. 
To the Editor.—Sir,—The columns of the press have lately borne 
witness to the high encomiums of several correspondents upon the 
system, pursued in Germany since 1874, for eradicating small-pox 
by means of revaccinations ; though the law referred to, it should be 
known, did little more than reduce to uniformity the stringent prac- 
tice then in vogue in the various states of the German Empire, and 
institute a better mode of registration. In order to determine the 
merits of a particular system, it is important to see that no concomi- 
tant element is overlooked, including what are euphemistically termed 
“ accidents.” A recent experience which has created a profound and 
painful interest throughout Germany would show that these unquali- 
fied commendations have, to say the least, been premature. I have 
just received from Dr. Koehler, one of the medical advisers to the 
Imperial Government at Berlin, some details from his own official 
inquiries, concerning an occurrence due to vaccination, which can 
only appropriately be designed as a disaster. On the 17th June, on 
the peninsular Wittow, Isle of Riigen, seventy-nine children were 
vaccinated with humanized thymos lymph, obtained from the Royal 
Vaccine Institution, Stettin, and with three exceptions all were 
attacked in the second week after the operation with a pustular 
eruption. The vaccinated children communicated the infection 
(Impetigo Contagiosa) to their parents, brothers and sisters, and the 
number of sufferers rose to 320 out of a population of 5,000. The 
disease, writes Dr. Koehler, was conveyed by the vaccination, but 
according to a most searching official investigation the vaccinifers 
were found to be free from eruption. Dr. Koehler says no adults 
died, and he omits to state the number of fatalities amongst children. 
Stringent regulations have been enforced by order of the Govern- 
ment Commissioners, for keeping the infected children from school, 
superintending their medical treatment and supplying deficiency in 
food, at the expense of the State. 
Dr. Schwabe, of Leipsic, referring to the terrible mischief created 
by this serious occurrence, says: “At last, after ten years of the 
Imperial Law of 1874, central institutes for the regeneration of 
cow-lymph by means of calves have been organized by Govern- 138 
ment, because the mischief done by humanized lymph can no longer 
be denied. And now comes the published account of wide-spread 
disease and infection caused by vaccinating with this regenerated 
lymph obtained from a Royal Central Institution ! ” 
This disaster is even more extensive than the syphilization by re- 
vaccination of the fifty-eight unfortunate young recruits at Algiers 
in December, 1880 ; the facts of which, after being officially denied 
in Parliament, were confirmed to me personally last year at Algiers, 
by order of the General in command, and have already appeared in 
the Times and other journals. 
Yours faithfully, 
William Tebb. 
7 Albert Road, Regent’s Park, London., 
BAD SANITATION A CAUSE OF SMALL-POX. 
To the Editor.—Sir,—ln the discussion on Vaccination, the re- 
proach has often been directed against its opponents that they have 
no remedy to suggest, and that, on this account, the specific of Jen- 
ner, although far from being an absolute security, is, at least, better 
than doing nothing. This reproach is the result of unwillingness to 
listen to the arguments with which the Anti-vaccinators support their 
position. The facts are, that for more than twenty years a large pro- 
portion of the most powerful writers against the followers of Jenner 
have distinctly propounded the doctrine that small-pox is essentially a 
filth disease, engendered and propagated by the foul habits and the 
indescribable pollutions of lazy and intemperate populations ; and that 
to such causes the development and dissemination of the various zy- 
motics are wholly due. The upholders of these views are aware that 
such diseases can be inoculated and vaccinated into other people, but 
they maintain that the artificial infliction is an unnecessary evil to the 
human race, which can have no other result than the multiplication 
of patients in hospital or elsewhere. 
The charge against Anti-vaccinators, therefore, that they have no 
proposal whereby small-pox may be mitigated or its epidemic form 
prevented, is wholly without foundation. Their leaders have, during 
the whole course of the agitation against the existing coercive laws, 139 
persistently and unceasingly recommended the safeguard of public 
and private sanitation ; and they have done so with such decisive and 
telling effect that the prominent medical and official doctrine previous 
to 1874, which proclaimed small-pox to be a disease over which san- 
itation had no power, is now almost wholly abandoned, and the med- 
ical profession themselves are now substituting the mitigated formula 
that vaccination and sanitation should go “ hand in hand.” 
Witness the untiring efforts of Mr. H. D. Dudgeon, whose writ- 
ings have done so much to substitute intellectual inquiry for blind 
submission, and to induce systematised sanitary amelioration in 
the town of Leicester. And those who wish to enter further into 
this all important subject should study the writings of Mr, John 
Pickering, of Leeds, Mr. Henry Pitman, of Manchester, Mr. W. 
Hiime-Rothery, of Cheltenham, and Mr. William White, Dr. W. J. 
Collins, Dr. Nichols, of London, and Prof. Adolph Vogt, of Berne, 
in which this power of sanitation as the only scientific antidote, a 
power so long and so blindly disregarded by the vaccine propaganda, 
has continuously and consistently been advocated, until at length it 
is reaching the dimensions of a national belief. Dr. Oidtmann, of 
the invading army of 1870-71, shows how the Germans suppressed 
small-pox in the uncleanly casements of the beleagured French garri- 
son towns by sanitary regulations ; and facts from every part of the 
civilized world have been brought forward at the various Interna- 
tional and general meetings of the Anti-vaccination Leaguers, show- 
ing that even in infected cities the rule is constant, that in the parts 
where the houses are Avell-constructed on elevated ground, and streets 
wide, and the surroundings healthy, the small-pox stands aloof. 
The latest of the greatest small-pox epidemics—that of Montreal— 
in which the proportionate numbers of vaccinated and unvaccinated 
sufferers have not at present reached the public eye, tells the same 
tale of municipal neglect, and teaches the same lesson of the supreme 
value of municipal cleanliness. The late Dr. W. B. Carpenter, of 
London, the Avell-known vaccine advocate, who made personal re- 
searches in Montreal after a previous small-pox epidemic in 1874~75, 
declared in his controversial pamphlet addressed to the House of 
Commons in defence of compulsion, that vaccination Avas so well 
carried out in the above-named city in the year 1883, that “ Small- 140 
pox had become almost entirely extinct.” Then came the great epi- 
demic of 1885, of which the New York Church Press says : “ Small- 
pox is a filth disease, and Montreal has for years been one of its 
abiding-places.” This conclusion is confirmed by a medical resident 
of the Canadian city, Dr. Alexander Ross, who says : “ Ninety-five 
per cent, of our small-pox deaths have occurred in the filthy lane& 
and alleys of the East End of the city.” 
Can any facts be more convincing? 
Yours faithfully, William Tebb. 
Devonshire Club, St. James’s, London. A PERSONAL STATEMENT 
OF THE 
RESULTS OF VACCINATION 
In compliance with repeated requests to furnish a brief statement 
for publication of my experiences of the results of Vaccination, as 
acquired during a period of over twenty years’ investigation in 
various countries, 
I offer the following : 
It has been my experience to travel in all parts of the United 
Kingdom, from Land’s End to the Shetland Islands, and in almost 
every State in Europe, from the Mediterranean to the North Cape, 
in countries intervening between the Tagus in the West, and the 
Volga, Danube, and Bosphorus, in the East, also in Morocco, Algeria, 
Upper and Lower Egypt, Asia Minor, Upper and Lower Canada 
Nova Scotia, and most of the States and Territories of North America ; 
also in Venezuela and British Guiana, South America, in the Virgin, 
Windward and Leeward Islands, the French and Danish West Indies, 
in the Archipelagoes of Greece and Hawaii, the Island of Ceylon, in 
Tasmania, New Zealand, and the colonies of Australasia. 
In all of these countries I have made it my business to inquire into 
the methods and results of Vaccination, procuring information from 
public officials and from intelligent private individuals, and I have 
hardly ever enquired without hearing of injuries, fatalities, and 
sometimes wholesale disasters, to people in every position in life, and 
these have occurred from the use of every variety of vaccine virus in 
use. My informants have included Governors, Chief Magistrates, 
Consuls, Professors of Medicine and Surgery in Continental univer- 
sities, members of legislative assemblies, superintendents of leper 142 
asylums, editors of medical and hygienic journals, chiefs of military 
and general hospitals, presidents and medical officers of State and 
Colonial health departments, superintendents of small-pox hospitals, 
clergymen of all denominations, missionaries, heads of educational 
establishments, and the best informed amongst old residents in the 
places visited. 
In one country it was my privilege to be furnished with a general 
letter of introduction from a Minister of State (since Prime Minister), 
which gave me access to all the official and medical authorities. 
Often the fatality described to me has befallen the infant of a poor 
mother, who with dread forebodings in her mind has tried to shield her 
offspring from the vaccinator’s lancet as long as she could, and, like 
a fugitive slave, only surrendered to the minister of the law when 
overtaken in pursuit or her place of refuge discovered ; or, like that 
of a distinguished Moslem (Suffy Bey Adam), my travelling com- 
panion in 1884 from Damascus to Beyrout, who had lost a daughter, 
a nephew, and a neice (vaccinated together about a year before our 
interview), all of whom died of the operation, after the most acute 
suffering. At other times I have seen stalwart soldiers and post-office 
officials seriously injured, and in more than one instance crippled and 
ruined for life, by compulsory re-vaccination. I have personally in- 
vestigated vaccine disasters at two military hospitals, one in Europe 
and the other in Africa, where in one case three and in another case 
thirty soldiers ultimately died of the operation, and more than twice 
this number were serionsly and in most cases permanently injured. 
In Australasia I have personally inquired into a case of wholesale dis- 
aster—of acute septicaemia, exhibited by terrible ulcerations following 
vaccination with calf lymph—to several hundred persons, and have 
seen the sad consequences in permanently ruined health. I have 
received several thousand written statements from parents, who allege 
that their children have been seriously or fatally injured by vaccination. 
I have proved beyond doubt, by personal inquiries in various coun- 
tries where leprosy is increasing, that the increase is largely due to 
vaccination, and have furnished the testimonies of numerous medical 
authorities and of official reports, (all mention of which have been 
omitted from our leading medical journals), in support of these in- 
criminating allegations. These facts have been detailed by me in the 143 
Times, Nonconformist, Echo, Leeds Mercury, Manchester Guardian, 
and Examiner and Times, Leicester Post, Newcastle Leader, Glasgow 
Leader, Cardiff Daily News, Gloucester Citizen, Journal d’Hygiene 
(Paris), and other influential and well-known English, American, 
and Colonial journals, and some of them were quoted by me with 
chapter and verse before the Royal Commission on Vaccination now 
taking evidence in London, and will be found in the third official 
report of the proceedings. 
I may also mention that numerous facts of a sinister character were 
contributed by many of the delegates representing the leading Euro- 
pean States at the International Anti-Vaccination Congresses held in 
Paris, Cologne, Berne, and Charleroi, the reports of which have been 
published and presented to the chiefs of Governments and of Public 
Health Departments in all countries. It seems to me, therefore, that, 
in view of these experiences and in presence of such unimpeachable 
facts, the opposition which has arisen, and is growing daily in nearly 
all countries, is a commendable and patriotic struggle, which should 
be encouraged in every possible way. The laws (often cruelly enforced) 
which compel the parents of this and other countries to put the health 
and lives of their offspring into the hands of irresponsible State officials, 
with the alternative of severe and not seldom ignominious punish- 
ments, is a grave national blunder, and constitutes a species of 
tyranny wholly indefensible ; and it behooves every good citizen to en- 
deavor by every constitutional means, in the interests alike of justice, 
of individual and parental rights, and in defence of the public health, 
and of our helpless children, to get these laws completely and per- 
manently extinguished. 
William Tebb. 
Burstow, near Horley, Surrey, 
June Ist, 1891. 
THE DOWNFALL OF A GREAT DELUSION. 
To the Editor of the Torquay Times. 
Sir : The letter, “ Right or Might ” published in your last issue 
affords another instance of the existence and growth of a strong anti- 
vaccination feeling in this town. Conscientious objectors to vaccina- 144 
tion would, however, do well to bear in mind that the ultimate vic- 
tory of good is assured. There can, therefore, be no question as to 
the final issue of a conflict against an unjust law or an evil principle. 
The struggle may be protracted, dangerous and costly. Or as in my 
case, it may, although faced with the possibility of the utter ruin of 
local professional prospects, result in gratuitous advertisement and 
considerable pecuniary gain. A man who places the safety of his 
child before the security of his own person or pocket has Omnipotence 
behind his back. And he must therefore be victorious, for we have 
not yet been advised of the defeat of that force which is pledged to 
kt save the children of the needy,” and to “ break in pieces the 
oppressor.” 
In my last letter to these columns, I was able to give a list offifty-three 
Boards of Guardians who have decided upon non-prosecution. I now 
hasten to note further indications of progress. The Weston-Super- 
Mare Gazette of August 30th, reports that eight cases of non-compli- 
ance with the abominable requirements of the Vaccination Acts, were 
reported to the Axbridge Board of Guardians, by the Vaccination 
Officer for the Western-super-Mare district. The. Chairman labor- 
ing under the delusion that the Guardians were bound to prosecute, 
proposed that the usual steps be taken, but an amendment to allow 
the matter to remain in abeyance pending the report of the Royal 
Commission, was carried by a large majority, one guardian wisely 
remarking that although the parent of a child was fined £l for non- 
vaccination, the child after all went unvaccinated. So Weston is 
now free, Eastbourne has been for some time, and Torquay must 
shortly follow. 
The Manchester Guardian of August 22nd states that in Keighley 
district last year there were 587 births, and only 11 vaccinations ;in 
the Bingley district 304 births, and only 8 vaccinations ; and in the 
Harworth district 98 births and 22 vaccinations. The North is evi- 
dently moving on. 
Nor is the South lagging behind in the great struggle for liberty. 
The Leicester Post, of August 28th, informs me that a gentleman, 
with whom I have the honor to be slightly acquainted, John Farley 
Rutter, Esq., solicitor, appeared at the Shaftesbury (Dorset) police- 
court, in answer to two offences against the Vaccination Acts, anum- 145 
ber of other persons being summoned at the same time. A fine of 
os. was inflicted, the Chairman expressing hatred of such prosecu- 
tions, but holding that he was bound to convict. Like poor deluded 
Mr. Bridges, of the Torquay Bench, he had evidently never read, 
marked, learned and inwardly digested the 31st section of the Vacci- 
nation Act of 1867, which expressly states that the judge “ may, if 
he see jit, make an order,” etc., thus rendering the carrying out of 
the law entirely optional, and by no means compulsory. 
But not only in the police-courts, but in the press as well, is the 
battle being fought. There is now passing through the latter a remark- 
able work from the pen of Mr. J. Pickering, F. R. Gf. S., F. R. S. S., 
F. S. A., etc., in which inter alia he undertakes to prove that sanita- 
tion is the only preventive of epidemic or endemic influences, and 
that as sanitation becomes more general in its application, disease 
forms of the zymotic type will disappear; that the faculty has no 
treatment suitable for small-pox or other eruptive fevers ; that infec- 
tion is the result of unskilful treatment; that “ pittings ” and other 
after consequences are due to unskilful treatment or defective sanita- 
tion ; that vaccination has no place in science, does not protect from, 
or modify small-pox ; that it is a communicator and disseminator of 
disease ; and that it cost the United Kingdom from fifty to one hun- 
dred thousand lives per annum. 
With these latter statements agrees the testimony of Dr. John Epps, 
twenty-five years director of the Royal Jennerian Institute. After 
vaccinating about 120,000 people, he finally declared in 1861, that 
vaccine virus was a poison, that it was neither an antidote to nor a 
corrigent of small-pox, and that, seeing that it paralysed the expan- 
sive powers of a good constitution, no one should have a right to 
compulsorily transplant such a mischievous poison into the life of a 
child. Surely this is vaccination wounded in the house of its friends, 
especially when we consider that it would be an easy task to flood 
these columns with medical testimony similar to that above stated. 
Instead of vaccination destroying one child out of 100,000, as your 
ill-informed correspondent of a few weeks ago rashly asserted, the 
Parliamentary returns for 1868 to 1886 show that while during that 
period out of every million children under one year old 68,923 died 
of ordinary diseases, 78,587 died of diseases proved to be the direct 146 
product of vaccination, the increase of these diseases being in direct 
proportion to the increase of compulsory vaccination. 
And when over against the quondam popularity of, and the now 
exploded belief in the so-called invention of that arch imposter, Jen- 
ner, we place the facts we have previously stated, together with others 
of the same kind, as well as the direct medical and statistical testi- 
mony as to the failure of vaccination to prevent or mitigate small- 
pox, the heart-rending record of death, disease, and injury caused 
by vaccination, and the extortion and persecution inflicted upon its 
opponents by the brutality and ignorance of the supposed representa- 
tives of law and order, we can only thank God that the day of 
liberty has at last arrived, and although it has not yet attained 
its meridian splendour, we confidently expect, and earnestly contend 
for perfect and complete liberty of conscience, knowing that “ when 
that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall 
be done away,” The dawn of liberty is the death-warrant of 
vaccination, and every prosecution is another nail driven into the 
coffin of the Vaccination Acts. 
Yours truly, 
Orlando A. Mansfield. 
Mus. Doc., T.C.T., F.C. 0., L. Mus., T. C. L., L. Mus., 
L. C.M. 
3. S. Mark’s Place, Torquay, Sept. 2nd, 1890. 
COMPULSORY VACCINATION IN THE UNITED 
STATES-THE VACCINATION OF EMIGRANTS. 
Sir: A form of enforced vaccination practiced in the United 
States, but not tolerated in any European State, is that of the com- 
pulsory re-vaccination of all emigrants who are unable to produce to 
the inspecting surgeon certificates of recent vaccination. 
The steamship the Augusta Victoria, of the Hamburg-American 
Line, had over eleven hundred passengers, of whom 670 were emi- 
grants, occupying the steei’age, including a considerable number of 
Jews driven out of Russia by the cruel May Laws of 1882. The 
saloon and second-class passengers were in no way interfered with, 147 
but the unfortunate third-class passengers were subjected to inquisi- 
tion and examination. 
A considerable number remonstrated and refused on one pretext or 
another to allow themselves to be operated on, but would, as the doc- 
tor informed me, have to submit hereafter, and no fewer than 430 
were obliged, under pressure, the day after leaving Hamburg, to sub- 
mit to the disgusting rite, with the alternative of a month or six 
weeks’ quarantine at Blackwell’s Island or of being lodged in gaol 
and vaccinated by force. This is the right of asylum in a free coun- 
try for refugees from oppression with a vengeance which would have 
shocked the signatories of the Declaration of Independence, and 
caused them to blush with shame. The sui’geon, with a look of sat- 
isfaction, told me he had vaccinated the entire contingent of 430 
(young, middle-aged, and old, strong and weak, sickly and healthy), 
in about five hours ; the same dose of animal virus being adminis- 
tered to each of his unhappy patients. 
Some of them afterwards complained bitterly of the injuries they 
received, but remonstrances were in vain. 
The doctor admitted occasional disasters, but he knew nothing of 
them after eight days. After the operation each victim received a 
green-coloured pass card, containing the word “ vaccinated,” signed 
by the surgeon, although only twenty per cent, of the vaccinations 
were successful. 
This occurred before I got on board at Southampton, and without 
at that time knowing the indignity that had been practiced I thought 
I had never seen a more wretched, downcast, undone body of emi- 
grants in my life. It was some days before they recovered their 
wonted looks. 
A fellow-passenger, an ex-judge of the Supreme Court of New 
York, from whom I sought information, allowed that the invidious 
selection of third-class passengers was a most undemocratic course 
of procedure. It was regarded as a police regulation, but in any 
case he held that neither the Supreme Court of the State of New 
York nor of the United States could take cognizance of an appeal, if 
made, as to its unconstitutional character. I informed him that the 
Honourable James E. Sewell, of Massachusetts, had some time ago 
expressed his opinion that the whole of the vaccination enactments 148 
were unconstitutional, but, were tolerated because no case had ever 
been submitted to the Supreme Court at Washington. 
It is much to be regretted that this has not been done. The in- 
stances of injury caused by these careless, perfunctory, and indiscrim- 
inate vaccinations will never be ascertained, as neither the official 
vaccinators nor the boards of health keep any record of them. lam 
convinced that they are numerous and distressing. The victims, 
however, are only poor emigrants without the means, influence, or 
time to institute legal proceedings against the steamship companies 
for compensation, consequently little is heard about them. Dr. T. 
Devight Stow, formerly member of the Massachusetts’ Legislature, 
has sent me a photograph of one of the sufferers, Edward Jones, 
from Brierley Hill, Staffordshire, a strong, compactly built man in 
perfect health previous to vaccination. The operation was per- 
formed on board a Cunard steamer against his will, and produced 
terrible erysipelatous inflammation of the entire arm, high fever, 
vomiting and malaise. The vaccine ulcers were three-fourths of an 
inch in diameter, and the photograph now before me shows one arm 
to be entirely and the other partially covered with a pustular vaccinal 
eruption. Dr. Stow says he has not witnessed a more complete and 
disgusting case of invaccinated blood poisoning for many years. 
Three other cases of injury are reported by the same medical authority 
arising from vaccination at the same time. The Boston Herald a short 
time ago reported that the Cunard Steamship Company had been obliged 
to compensate Michael Tarpey, a steerage passenger, for injury caused 
by enforced vaccination on board the steamship Catalonia. At the 
close of the third International Anti-Vaccination Congress at Berne, 
Switzerland, in 1883, the delegates waited upon the American 
charge d’affaires with a memorial reciting numerous cases of injury 
to European emigrants through the imposition of re-vaccination pre- 
vious to landing in America, which he promised to lay before his 
government. Nothing, has, however, yet been done, and Dr. Win- 
terburn, an authority on the subject, says that they must now wait 
the issue of the report of the Royal Vaccination Commission for any 
hope of emancipation. 
William Tebb. 
Murray Hill Hotel, New York, 
Aug. 18, 1890. 149 
COMPULSORY VACCINATION IN THE UNITED 
STATES. THE RIVAL SYSTEMS. 
To the Editor. 
Sir : The vaccine specialists in the United States appear to be 
more and more perplexed as to the relative safety and efficiency of 
the varieties of cow-pox recommended by rival purveyors and pro- 
prietors of “Vaccine Farms ; ” and boards of health are often at their 
wit’s end in the administration of a troublesome and embarrassing 
business. Some years ago Dr. H. A. Martin, of Boston, issued a 
pamphlet on the “ unfortunate results of vaccination,” detailing the 
serious consequences attending the use of-humanized virus, and suc- 
ceeded to a considerable extent in discrediting for a time the use of 
arm-to-arm vaccine, and substituting in public favor cow-pox of bis 
own manufacture. Dr. Martin’s son has now one of the most ex- 
tensive factories for cow-pox in the country. The public, however, 
are far from satisfied. A Cincinnati pro-vaccinal medical journal 
before me says that the jumping of physicians from one kind of virus 
to another and back again during small-pox outbreaks has been at- 
tended with indifferent success from either kind, and “ has not left 
the professional mind in the most satisfied condition.” If the medi- 
cal profession are dissatisfied the reflecting portion of the public are 
by no means free from anxiety. The reports which I hear in all 
quarters of serious and fatal results from the use of bovine virus are 
quite as frequent as formerly obtained from human vaccine, but as 
neither the National Board of Health at Washington nor the State 
Boards of Health keep record of these disasters, it is impossible to 
learn their extent, and public inquests are rarely held upon them. 
The New York Star, March 24, 1890, reports the death of a child 
due to vaccination with animal lymph which, according to the evi- 
dence of one of the medical witnesses, was obtained from “ the best 
cattle available.” “ There is no doubt,” said Dr. Foote, of New 
York, referring to this case, “ but that the little Nolan girl would be 
living to-day if she had not been forced into vaccination. It killed 
the child, and the vaccinators suppress the real cause of the death.” 
The death in this instance was attributed by a medical witness “to 
the violence of vaccine fever.” This method of preserving vaccina- 150 
tion from contempt by attributing its fatal results to secondary causes 
is not unknown in England, and ought to be laid before the Royal 
Commission. American practitioners and others have furnished me 
with particulars of numerous instances of the sad results of vaccina- 
tion in this country, some of which are recorded in medical journals ; 
but to particularize them would occupy too much of your valuable 
space. Dr. Thos. Wood, secretary to the North Carolina Board of 
Health, says, after much experience, “ the degree of sickness fol- 
lowing the use of bovine virus is greater than when humanized 
lymph is used, and is more frequently attended with eruptions.” The 
second annual report of the State Board of Health for Indiana con- 
tains the detailed testimony of ten local physicians as to the sinister 
consequences of bovine virus in the production of “ eruptions over the 
entire body,” “ erythema quite common,” “ ulcerous-looking sores, 
lasting sometimes for six months,” “bad arms,” “ phlegmonous ab- 
scesses and sloughing ulcers,” “ violent and troublesome ulceration,” 
“ severe dermatilis,” and other troublesome symptoms. Dr. T. M. 
Rogers, of Fairfield, Illinois, reported that in his vicinity, in many 
instances, whole schools had been broken up for from one to four 
weeks, owing to the severity of the virus, the vaccinated arms pre- 
senting “ dark red and sometimes almost black ulcers from one to 
one and a half inches deep, and from two to three inches in diame- 
ter,” and so on. So widely is it believed by the more intelligent ob- 
servers of the United States that the tendency of vaccination is not 
to improve or protect the public health, but to impair and destroy it, 
that the edicts of the Boards of Health in many districts are as much 
a dead letter as the Vaccination Acts in Keighley and Leicester. 
William Tebb. 
Chautauqua, N. Y., United States, 
Sept. 18, 1890. VACCINATION. 
The Turn of the Scientific Tide. 
The Article “Vaccination,” which occupies fourteen columns in 
Part 93 of the Encyclopaedia Britannic a, recently published, marks 
a new era in the history of this stupendous delusion, and in the opin- 
ion of competent judges is a prelude to its speedy collapse. 
The verities for which anti-vaccinists, upheld by the justice and 
rectitude of their cause, have contended for the greater part of a cen- 
tury, are virtually conceded in the article in question, which, as befits 
a work of reference, supplies readers with facts from the most un- 
questioned sources, which speak for themselves. Among other 
points, the very full evidence indicates : 
1. —That there is nothing in common between Variola or Small-pox, 
and Vaccinia or Cow-Pox, although it was from a supposed 
equivalence of the one to the other, that Jenner’s teaching found 
favor at the outset. 
2. —That Cow-pox is an infection attended by various risks to infants 
of a serious kind, including Erysipelas, and what has hitherto 
been called Vaccinal Syphilis. 
3. —That Vaccinal Syphilis is an inherent risk, and not due to any 
syphilitic matter mixed with the lymph, although it is so far 
akin to Venereal Syphilis as to have been mistaken for the lat- 
ter. 
4. —That Vaccination neither protects from Small-pox, nor mitigates 
the severity of the disease in those attacked by it. 
The appearance of this implied condemnation of Vaccination by a 
physician and pathologist of the first rank, simultaneously with the 
publication of a New Edition of— 
“ Vaccination proved Useless and Dangerous,” by the emi- 
nent Scientist and Naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace, LL. D., 152 
who arrives at identical conclusions from a statistical standpoint, 
amply justifies the latter’s view of Compulsory Vaccination, and his 
appeal to the sense of justice and humanity in our legislators thus 
tersely expressed : 
“ If these facts are true, or anything near the truth, the enforce- 
ment of Vaccination by fine and imprisonment of unwilling parents, 
is a cruel and criminal despotism, which it behooves all true friends of 
humanity to denounce and oppose at every opportunity. 
“ Such legislation, involving, as it does, our health, our liberty, 
and our very lives, is too serious a matter to be allowed to depend on 
the misstatements of interested officials, or the dogmas of a profes- 
sional clique. 
“ The statistical evidence on which alone a true judgment can be 
founded, is as open to you as to any doctor in the land. We, there- 
fore, demand that you, our representatives, shall fulfill your solemn 
duty to us in this matter, by devoting to it some personal investiga- 
tion and painstaking research ; and if you find that the main facts as 
here stated are substantially correct, we call upon you to undo with- 
out delay, the evil you have done. 
u We, therefore, solemnly urge upon you the immediate 
REPEAL OF THE INIQUITOUS PENAL LAWS BY WHICH YOU HAVE 
FORCED UPON US A DANGEROUS AND USELESS OPERATION AN 
OPERATION WHICH HAS ADMITTEDLY CAUSED MANY DEATHS, WHICH 
IS PROBABLY THE CAUSE OF GREATER MORTALITY THAN SMALL- 
POX ITSELF, BUT WHICH CANNOT BE PROVED TO HAVE EVER 
SAVED A SINGLE HUMAN LIFE.” 
See this question more fully illustrated in the Contemporary Review, 
January, and in the Westminster Review, January and February, 
1889. 
William Young. 
77 Atlantic Road, Brixton, 
February, 1889. 153 
DR. CREIGHTON AND THE JBNNERITES. 
(Reprinted from the Newcastle Daily Leader, March 21st, 1889.) 
The combat deepens. It was only in January that we had to 
draw attention to the article on Vaccination in the final volume 
of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, written by Charles Creighton, 
M. D. Again we referred to the powerful indictment of the com- 
pulsory vaccination laws by Allanson Picton, M. P., in the Con- 
temporary Review for January, and the more radical attack on the 
entire practice by William Tebb in the Westminster Review for Jan- 
uary and February. 
No pretence of a reply has to our knowledge yet appeared ; the sup- 
porters of the present law and practice are obviously stunned by the 
overwhelming character of the attack. Before, however, they can 
have recovered themselves they are met by another and more tremen- 
dous blow. The same Dr. Creighton, whose learning and qualifica- 
tions no one can question who is acquainted with his work, published 
last week Renner and Vaccination, a strange chapter of Medical His- 
tory (Swan, Sonnenschein, 6s). Technical language, the author 
says in his preface, has been avoided as far as possible, and has, in- 
deed, been little needed in dealing with a subject which is a common- 
place of every household. There is a vivacity and a caustic humor 
throughout the fourteen chapters of this history which the subject 
would not lead one to expect, and, having in view the anger and 
resentment which will undoubtedly be aroused in the breasts of not a 
few of his professional brethren, we see in Dr. Creighton a man who 
loves truth above all things, and who well shows in this remarka- 
ble work what has been aptly applied to Rabelais, “ a spirit of jollity, 
pickled in scorn of fortune.” No one who will go through this 
deeply interesting book, Jenner and Vaccination, can doubt that Dr. 
Creighton has studied the question deeply and widely, historically, 
statistically, and pathologically, and however profound may be the 
disgust in orthodox medical bosoms, his final conclusions may be 
seen plainly enough when he says in his concluding chapter—“ The 
anti-vaccinists are those who have found some motive for scrutinizing 
the evidence, generally the very human motive of vaccinal injuries or 
fatalities in their own families or in those of their neighbours. What- 
ever their motive, they have scrutinized the evidence to some pur- 154 
pose ; they have mastered nearly the whole case ; they have knocked 
the bottom out of a grotesque superstition.” 
This is a tremendous thunderbolt, and coming as it does after a 
lengthy and elaborate historical survey, it seems to carry the last 
citadel by assault. The present attitude of the public may be said 
to illustrate the truth of a maxim of Carlyle’s : That no error is 
fully confuted till we have seen not only that it is an error, but how 
it became one. It is in Dr. Creighton’s method of explaining tfiis 
how, not only in regard to England, but the introduction and official- 
isation of vaccination in Germany, Italy, France, and elsewhere, 
that the originality and charm of the work lie. His foot notes are 
full of references to medical and State authorities, both British and 
foreign ; but even here his humour is seen, as, for example, to show 
how strong is the popular feeling against vaccination in Lusatia he 
quotes from the Vienna Fremdenhlatt the following anecdote: A 
schoolmaster having asked, “ Why was Moses hidden by his 
mother?” a small pupil replied, “ Because his mother did not want 
him to be vaccinated.” 
In his handling of the character of Jenner himself, Dr. Creighton 
is free and sarcastic ; his early connection with the celebrated John 
Hunter ; his absurd essay on the natural history of the cuckoo, 
which was the means by which he got himself elected a Fellow 
of the Royal Society; his repeated attempts to acquire the honorary 
degree of doctor of medicine from the University of Oxford; the re- 
fusal to the last of the College of Physicians to admit him to its 
Fellowship ; his bungling over his patients, his cow-poxing and his 
horse-grease ; all this and much more is described in a manner that 
is caustic in the last degree, and with a literary freshness that is 
quite delightful. 
Quoting from a letter from Marshall, one of the disciples of Jen- 
ner, whilst in Italy, describing with fervor the processions of men, 
women, and children to the hospital to be inoculated, headed by a 
priest carrying a cross, Dr. Creighton pungently adds :—u That was 
the missionary apostolic side of Marshall’s cow-poxing zeal, but in 
private circles at Palermo his fee for vaccination was ten guineas to 
genteel families and five guineas in families of the middle classes.” 155 
In his rapid sketch of the Parliamentary history of vaccination, 
Dr. Creighton treads on ground already familiar to students. 
“Behind all the scientific good faith,” he says, with which com- 
pulsory vaccination was recommended, “was also an Act for the 
maintenance of medical authority, and for the saving of medical 
credit.” “Unhappily,” he says elsewTiere, “the dearest interests 
of humanity had to give way before the dearest interests of the 
medical character.” The laity know this already, but a thousand 
thanks are due to this writer for his courage to say so. “ The blow 
to professional credit,” he says, “ can hardly help being severe.” 
The task he set before him was to explain how the medical profes- 
sion in various countries could have come to fall under the enchant- 
ment of vaccination. This he has done Avith a success Avhich is 
remarkable. His Jenner arid. Vaccination will mark an epoch in a 
long struggle, the end of which, to quote the well-known saying 
of our day, is now within a measurable distance. 
COMPULSORY VACCINATION: AN APPEAL. 
To the Editor. 
Sir,—Since the publication of the remarkable treatise on Vaccina- 
tion in the last volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and the 
recent articles in the Contemporary and Westminster Reviews, numerous 
enquiries have been made with reference to the means which are 
being taken to arrest the wholesale mischief propagated by the Vac- 
cination LaAvs. May I venture through your columns to inform those 
of your readers who are concerned for the defence of parental rights 
and personal liberty, as well as those who have Avitnessed the evil 
effects of the Jennerian system in their families, that the Executive 
Committee of the London Society for the Abolition of Compulsory 
Vaccination, are at present quite unable for want of funds to supply 
the growing demand for lectures and literature on this momentous 
subject, and the emancipation of the people from an intolerable in- 
justice is seriously hindered. From recent inquiries instituted in the 
West Indies and in British Guiana, it appears that one of the most 
repulsive, incurable, and mutilative diseases—Leprosy—is according 
to high medical authorities, being disseminated by compulsory vaccina- 156 
tion in these colonies, and as the people are practically without repre- 
sentation, their only resource is an appeal to the English people to 
assist them to put a stop to this hideous and irreparable medical 
blunder. 
Subscriptions may be sent to the Hon. Treasurer (C. Pearson, Esq.), 
15 Harpur Street, London, W.C., or to 
Yours faithfully, 
William Young, Secretary, 
London Society for the Abolition of Compulsory Vaccination. 
77 Atlantic Road, Bixton, London. 
HOW LEICESTER WON HOME RULE. 
To the Editor. 
Sir,— At the present moment when the whole of the civilized 
wojfid is more or less absorbed in the problem of “ Home Rule,” per- 
haps you will be good enough to allow me through the medium of 
your columns to briefly recite how Home Rule was obtained by, and 
works in a large and prosperous as well as beautiful town in the mid- 
lands of England. Leicester was, well let the fact be recalled—a 
very Mecca of orthodoxy, as far as vaccination is concerned. How 
she was perverted or converted is a brief but interesting story. It 
sounds like a revelation to be told that at the present moment there 
are 20,000 unvaccinated persons in Leicester, and that at the recent 
election of Guardians, although several candidates were elected un- 
opposed, there were no fewer than 44,000 votes cast for anti-vaccin- 
ation candidates ! That is enough to take away the breath of old 
maids and doctors, and yet Leicester has a clean bill of health as far 
as small-pox is concerned. 
It all came about in this way. In 1872 almost every soul in the 
town was vaccinated, and yet the fire and brimstone of small-pox 
rained over the town, as if it had been a very Sodom or Gomorrah 
of unrighteousness. Thousands of people were struck down by the 
disease, vaccinated and re-vaccinated alike, till there was hardly a 
house free from the pestilence, and 346 persons—almost every one 
of them vaccinated died. 157 
They had trusted to the phylactery of vaccination, but the disease 
refused to be “ charmed,” and exacted its utmost victim. A few 
earnest spirits were not slow to turn this to account, and they pro- 
claimed war a entrance against this fatal superstition. Clean bodies, 
clean houses, pure air, a regular, healthy life these were the doc- 
trines of the new crusaders. Vaccination, so far as any positive ad- 
vantage was concerned, had been entirely negatived. 
Men next began to go to prison for conscience sake, and the Acts 
at Leicester, as elsewhere, were enforced with the utmost despotism, 
and with an entire want of consideration. Indeed, Sir Richard 
Cross, M. P., who was Home Secretary in Lord Beaconsfield’s Ad- 
ministration declared from his place in the House of Commons that 
the Leicester magistrates had been guilty of “ a petty abuse of 
power.” Later on came seizures of furniture, and the public sale of 
goods excited great popular indignation. Cases of terrible injury by 
the communication of disease through vaccination cropped up con- 
tinually, and were so well established that medical certificates were 
given in two instances of death from vaccination. 
The town, by a wise scheme, is kept entirely free from small-pox. 
Medical men are compelled under penalties, to report outbreaks of 
the disease within twenty-four hours, and the sufferers are at once is- 
olated. The hospital is administered by the Corporation, and although 
the establishment charges are a mere trifle, no reasonable expense is 
spared in contributing to the comfort and happiness of the inmates. 
Infected clothing is destroyed, and houses are disinfected at the 
public expense ; and yet the total cost of keeping Leicester free from 
small-pox for twelve years by this natural and simple process has not 
amounted to the cost of one year’s vaccination fees ! There have 
been about twenty-three to twenty-five separate attacks of small-pox 
to deal with, the disease in each instance having been imported into 
the town from well-vaccinated communities by vaccinated people, 
and in each instance the disease has been stamped out without spread- 
ing. 
The position of affairs to-day is that there are now about 14,000 
summonses to be issued, and the inhabitants have elected a Board of 
Guardians who, by a majority of twenty-six votes to eight, have 
stopped the Vaccination Officer from issuing a single summons ! 158 
The people, left to enjoy “ Home Rule,” decline to have their 
children vaccinated, and during the first half of 1886 out of 2,500 
children born only 305 were vaccinated, although coercion was in 
active force for four of the six months. Does the town suffer? Not 
a bit of it. Curses there are loud and deep, but only blessings come. 
Other towns may persist in the vain attempt to “mitigate” or 
“ charm ” the disease; Leicester annihilates it. 
Thus Leicester has, in its own way, established a system of “ Home 
Rule” which it means to maintain. The Local G-overnment Board 
have been communicated with, but as yet they have done nothing 
which would tend to deprive the right of a town of 140,000 people to 
manage their own health in their own way. 
Leicester has “ killed ” vaccination ; but it has done more. It has 
shown how small-pox may be most effectually stamped out; and if 
every town in the kingdom were only to do its duty as resolutely and 
as effectively, there is no doubt that this nasty, loathsome disease 
would soon be driven from the country. 
Yours faithfully, 
J. Thomson Stephen. 
28 Tower Street, Leicester. The Vaccination Acts. 
Powers and Duties of Magistrates and Guardians. 
The vaccination question has assumed a position of very serious 
importance : the accumulated evidence of disastrous and fatal results 
following the operation has given an impetus to the reaction of feel- 
ing that is growing in the public mind. The tremendous indictment 
of the practice of vaccination—by Dr. Charles Creighton, a phys- 
ician and pathologist of the first rank—which occupies fourteen 
columns in part 93 of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, recently pub- 
lished, marks a new era in the history of this dangerous and stu- 
pendous delusion ; and in the opinion of competent judges is a prelude 
to its speedy collapse. 
The appearance of this condemation of vaccination, in which the 
filthy and absurd superstition stands confessed for the hideous and 
fatal thing it is, simultaneously with the publication of the new edition 
of Vaccination Proved Useless and Dangerous,* by the eminent sci- 
entist and naturalist. Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace, is sufficient to call 
for the widest and most earnest consideration from every parent in 
the land, and from all who have any part in the administration of the 
tyrannical vaccination acts. 
With regard to the law upon vaccination, there is no statutory 
obligation on guardians to prosecute at all for refusal to vaccinate. 
Under Section 27 of the 30th and 31st Vic., cap. 84, it certainly 
was declared that guardians should prosecute, but that section was 
expressly repealed by a subsequent enactment. After the repeal 
of this section—by the act of 1871—the Local Government Board 
issued a “General Order” to boards of guardians, dated October 
31st, 1874, which “ Order ” was held to set forth the legal duties 
of guardians with reference to prosecutions under the vaccination 
acts. 
*E. W. Allen, Ave Maria Lane. Bvo., pp. 45. Price 6d. 160 
However, that guardians can use their own discretion and decline 
to prosecute their neighbours under the provisions of the infamous 
vaccination acts is perfectly clear. With regard to the “ General 
Order ” above referred to, the President of the Local Government 
Board, Mr. Ritchie, asserted in the House of Commons on the 17th 
of February, 1888, that it “ was not binding on Boards of Guard- 
ians ; the Order ivas merely a communication, and it rested entirely 
iviih Boards of Guardians to exercise their discretion in the matter.” 
Mr. Ritchie also said in Parliament on the sth of July, 1888, with 
regard to vaccination prosecutions, that the Local Government Boai’d 
“could not interfere in the exercise by the Guardians of their 
powers,” and that “enforcement of the Vaccination Act is committed 
to an elective tribunal, and they must use their discretion in the cases 
that come before them.” 
With these utterances of authority staring him in the face, it is 
impossible for any guardian to say he is obliged to put the infamous 
provisions of the present vaccination acts in force against those 
parents who object to run the risk of killing their children by vac- 
cination ! 
The magistrates, also, have an absolute discretion in the Vaccina- 
tion cases which are brought before them, although they constantly 
make the excuse that “ they have no option in the matter,” that “ they 
must administer the law”—that is, by convicting. These excuses 
are as uttexdy false as they are discreditable to those who vainly try 
to take shelter under them. 
In a letter addressed to Mr. Sergeant Simon, M. P., by the Right 
Hon. G. Sclater Booth, President of the Local Government Board, 
on the subject of Vaccination prosecutions, dated August 4th, 1876, 
he says : “It must not be overlooked that even where proceedings 
have been determined on by the local authority, the decision to make 
or withold the order for Vaccination is entirely ivithin the discretion of 
the magistrates.” And a subsequent President of the Local Govern- 
ment Board, speaking on November 28th, 1882, in his place in 
Parliament, in reply to Mr. Hopwood, said, with reference to Vac- 
cination prosecutions, that “ it is open to the justices in any such case 
to impose a merely nominal fine, or decline to make an order for the 
Vaccination of the child.” 161 
What magistrate can have the audacity to say that he “ has no 
option ” in the case of Vaccination prosecutions? or that he “ is bound 
to administer the law,” by convicting under these circumstances? 
With reference to the 31st section of the Vaccination Act, 1867, under 
which authority so much detestable persecution takes place, the 
powers given by it to the magistrates are simply and entirely per- 
missive; they are not imperative in the slightest degree. The words 
of the section are that the magistrates may summon the person de- 
clining to vaccinate, and he “ may, if he sees fitmake an order for 
the Vaccination of the child. He cannot enforce obedience to his 
“order” when he has made it. He can only fine the parent, and he 
has the power to fine him one penny without costs, if he likes. He 
has absolute discretion in the matter. 
A considerable number of Boards of Guardians decline to put the 
Vaccination Acts in force, amongst which may be mentioned :—Ban- 
bury, Bingley, Kettering, Biggleswade, Keighley, Leicester, Glou- 
cester, Oldham, Falmouth, Halifax,. Dewsbury, Hull, Penzance, 
Luton, and the metropolitan parish of Shoreditch ; while at the 
fashionable town of Eastbourne the local magistrates refused to sit on 
Vaccination cases, and Kettering will not even appoint a vaccination 
officer. 
The returns of the Registrar-General show that within a given 
D O 
period of six years, no less than 316 children under one year of age, 
are certified by medical men to have been killed by “Cow-pox 
AND OTHER EFFECTS OF VACCINATION ! ” 
How many more are killed indirectly and permanently injured it is 
not easy to estimate. This fact alone justifies any thoughtful parent 
in preserving his healthy child from the hands of the inoculator of 
nobody knows what. 
No Government is justified in taking such a toll of child life as this, 
for the purpose of maintaining a medical dogma, beastly in its con- 
ception, dangerous and fatal in its operation, and which the 
teaching of science, experience, and common-sense, has demonstrated 
to be one of the most gigantic delusions the world has ever seen. 
O O THE ROYAL COMMISSION ON VACCINATION. 
Where the Anti-Vaccinationists Have Scored 
[From Pall Mall Gazette.'] 
At the last meeting of the executive committee of the London So- 
ciety for the Abolition of Compulsory Vaccination the following reso- 
lution was carried unanimously :—Resolved, that the attention of the 
public be drawn to the following points elicited in the examination of 
witnesses before the Royal Commission on Vaccination, and con- 
tained in its recently-published second report:— 
Q. 6,814. 1. The official admission that in the epidemic of 
1871-2 in Berlin 706 vaccinated children died of small-pox under ten 
years of age, 
6,780, 2. The official admission that no official evidence exists 
for the statement in the Franco-G-erman war that 23,469 French sol- 
diers died of small-pox ; there being no official statistics for those 
years whatever. 
1,670, 6,790, 6,802. 3. The proven falsity of the statement that 
prior to 1874 there was no compulsory vaccination in Germany. 
1,827. 4. The admission that good vaccination marks may wear 
out, from which admission it follows that the mere absence of visible 
marks in a small-pox patient is not sufficient evidence to prove that 
patient is unvaccinated. 
1,855-6. 5. The inability of the pro-vaccination witnesses to ex- 
plain the alleged higher rate of fatality among unvaccinated patients 
now than obtained in the last century, when all were unvaccinated. 
1,794. 6. The admission that less care is exercised in the vac- 
cination of the poor than is the case with the privately vaccinated 
children of the well-to-do classes. 
2,370, 2,624-5. 7. The admitted falsity of the notice issued by 
the Sheffield authorities, that, in the outbreak from which that much 
vaccinated city suffered, not one single revaccinated case was reported 
as having died ; a revaccinated death from small-pox having occurred 
in Sheffield before the issue of such notice. 163 
4,159-67, 4,200. 8. The admission by Mr. Farn, the Govern- 
ment Inspector of vaccine lymph, that no examination of vaccine 
lymph, as conducted by him, will enable him to declare such lymph 
to be pure ; and that no test applied by him will enable him to dis- 
tinguish between lymph from a healthy and lymph from a syphilitic 
child; and that the Government has never guaranteed any lymph 
whatever. 
3,133 and passim. 9. The total inability of the pro-vaccination 
witnesses to give any scientific information whatever as to the nature, 
origin and affinities of cow-pox. 
THE FAILURE, MISCHIEF, AND INJUSTICE OF COM- 
PULSORY VACCINATION. 
To the Editor. 
Sir,—I am often sorely puzzled to reconcile the unstinted appro- 
bation of the despotic vaccination laws with the affectation of sym- 
pathy on the part of Magistrates and others for those who suffer 
under them. If laws are instrumental in coercing the consciences of 
thousands of upright citizens, subjecting them to the cruel and igno- 
minious punishments ordinarily reserved for malefactors, it is obvious 
that they, instead of being defended, ought to be repealed. No small 
amount of ingenuity is expended by vaccinators in explaining away 
the facts and official proofs of the failure of these Acts to prevent 
small-pox, and in minimising the evidence of their evil results. This, 
permit me to say, is not the way that the truth (which ought to be 
the object of every enquiry) is likely to be elicited, and the, public 
health promoted. Before the advocates of vaccination can even 
approach this important subject from an impartial standpoint that 
should remove the coercive chains from the necks of the people ; which 
could easily be done by means of an influentially signed memorial 
presented to Parliament. That vaccination has failed in its intent is 
allowed by all who have seriously examined the facts, and it is so 
obvious that no argument is needed to enforce it. This failure has 
been admitted by the most ardent pro-vaccinators no less than by its 
bitterest opponents. In his essay on “Vaccination,” page 30, Dr. 
Ballard, one of Her Majesty’s inspectors of vaccine, says: “Dr. 164 
Jenner’s prediction has not been fulfilled; experience has not verified 
it; small-pox is not eradicated. Let me add that scientific observa- 
tions lend no countenance to the belief that it ever will be eradicated, 
even from civilised communities.” And the late Dr, Ceeley, of 
Alesbury, who devoted a lifetime to the propagation of animal vacci- 
nation, told the Calf Lymph Conference of the British Medical Asso- 
ciation, December, 1879, “They would not be able to annihilate 
small-pox by vaccination.” In the year 1825, Dr. Baron, the biog- 
grapher of Jenner, says, “Small-pox was nearly as prevalent in 
London as during any of the three great epidemics of the preceding 
century.” This, then, was the result of voluntary vaccination. The 
Lancet of July 15, 1871, testifies to the discouraging results attend- 
ing its universal infliction upon the people after 18 years trial: “ The 
deaths from small-pox had assumed the proportion of a plague. 
Over 10,000 lives had been sacrificed during the past year in England 
and Wales. In London 5,641 deaths have occurred since Christmas. 
Of 9,932 patients in the London small-pox hospitals, no less than 
6,854 had been vaccinated—nearly 73 per cent. Taking the mor- 
tality at 17 1-2 of those attacked, and the deaths this year in the 
whole country at 10,000, it will follow that more than 122,000 vac- 
cinated persons have suffered from small-pox ! This is an alarming 
state of things. Can we greatly wonder that the opponents of com- 
pulsory vaccination should point to such statistics as an evidence of 
the failure of the system? It is necessary to speak plainly on this im- 
portant matter. 
Nor is the evidence of its impotency as a preventive more con- 
clusively established than of its potency for mischief in the commu- 
nication of some of the most loathsome maladies with which humanity 
is afflicted. Dr. Robert Cory, chief of the Government Vaccine 
Lymph Department, inopportunely contracted syphilis by experimen- 
tally vaccinating himself under conditions, which, according to the 
Lancet, are “ common to all public vaccinations,” and every parent, 
therefore, who sends his child to a public vaccination station is liable 
to similar risks. The enforcement of this risk in a country calling 
itself free, and amongst a people claiming to rejoice in liberty of con- 
science and the right of private judgement, is wholly inconsistent 
with these principles which once were the pride and glory of the 165 
nation. Indeed, our ancient and most cherished rights—civic and 
parental—are ruthlessly outraged and. trampled under foot by the 
vaccination laws. During the year 1884 there were in England over 
2,300 convictions of conscientious and honest recusants, representing 
5,000 prosecutions, and about 20,000 summonses and threatening 
notices. Demonstrations of vast bodies of exasperated citizens are 
becoming of not unfrequent occurrence—a state of things which, if 
permitted to continue, will inevitably lead to a breach of the peace 
and possible loss of life, for which the intolerant vaccinators will be 
wholly responsible. A medical prescription which can only be car- 
ried out by fines and improvements, handcuffs and gaols, and the 
seizure of household chattels, is not creditable to the wisdom or hu- 
manity of the profession through whose instrumentality it has been in- 
troduced, imposed, and fostered, and by whose support it is now mainly 
continued against the wishes, as is now clearly demonstrated, of an 
average of about 90 per cent, of the householders whose opinions 
have been canvassed upon this subject in 38 towns and villages in 
England. 
I am, yours faithfully, 
William Tebb. 
Devonshire Club, St. James’s, 
London. The Royal Commission on Vaccination. 
“ I am persuaded,” said Sir Thomas Chambers, in the House of 
Commons, “that when the bill (the Vaccination Act of 1867) is 
passed, an agitation will commence which will never cease until the 
Act is repealed.” 
Compulsory Vaccination Described in Parliament, 
BiT 
SIR THOMAS CHAMBERS, Q. C., M. P 
Recorder of the City of London 
Vaccination is beyond all comparison the strongest form of “pa- 
rental government ” that was ever introduced into this country. It 
overrides and tramples down parental authority in relation to chil- 
dren. It takes them out of the care of the father and mother, who 
are ordained by Providence to exercise their parental care, and it in- 
sists upon a disease being infused into the blood of every child in 
order to prevent the contingency of its catching another disease. 
That might be justifiable ; but it could only be justifiable, not upon 
medical theories, not upon the observance of innumerable precautions 
and the presence of favourable circumstances, but upon a truth un- 
deniable, UNIVERSAL IN ITS OPERATIONS, CERTAIN IN ITS RESULTS, 
FREE FROM PERIL, AND AN ABSOLUTE PREYENTIYE.—House of Com- 
mons.>1878. THE RESULTS OF VACCINATION. 
Promise and Performance. 
To the Editor. 
Sm,— It seems to have been forgotten by those who are arguing 
for the defence and continuance of compulsory vaccination, on the 
ground that the vaccinators show a larger mortality amongst the 
cases returned as unvaccinated as compared with the vaccinated, 
that they are importing an element into the discussion uncertain in 
its nature and incapable of demonstration, and one which would have 
been ridiculed by the Legislature when the Vaccination Act of 1853 
was introduced and adopted. The only point then considered perti- 
nent was that of the protection afforded by the operation against 
both sporadic and epidemic small-pox, which was declared on the 
opinon of the entire medical profession to be absolute and beyond 
question. Four years later the belief was formulated by Mr. John 
Simon, in his papers on the History and Practice of Vaccination, 
dated 1857, as follows:—“On the conclusion of this artificial dis- 
order neither renewed vaccination nor inoculation with small-pox, 
nor the closest contact and cohabitation with small-pox patients will 
occasion him to betray any remnant of susceptibility to infection.” 
Now for the result. In its issue of 15 July, 1871, eighteen years 
after the introduction of stringent compulsion, when the entire pop- 
ulation had received the benefit of vaccination (whatever that may 
be), the editor of the Lancet thus delivers himself:— “ The deaths 
from small-pox have assumed the proportions of a plague. Over 
10,000 lives have been sacrificed during the past year in England 
and Wales. In London 5,641 deaths have occurred since Christmas. 
Of 9,392 patients in the London small-pox hospitals, no less than 
6,854 had been vaccinated nearly 73 per cent. Taking the mor- 168 
tality at 17£ per cent, of those attacked, and the deaths this year in 
the whole country at 10,000, it will follow that more than 122,000 
vaccinated persons have suffered from small-pox ! This is an alarm- 
ing state of things. Can we greatly wonder that the opponents of 
vaccination should point to such statistics as an evidence of the fail- 
ure of the system ? ” 
The same journal of 27 August, 1881, contains Dr. Fraser 
Nicholson’s report of 43 cases of small-pox of which he had charge 
in the Bromley Union, viz., 16 confluent, 14 discrete, and 13 mod- 
ified ; two of the confluent cases died ; all had been vaccinated, and 
three revaccinated. 
On 23 February, 1884, the Lancet, referring to the small-pox ep- 
idemic at Sunderland, reported 100 consecutive small-pox cases, of 
which 96 had been vaccinated. 
Referring to the epidemic in London, the British Medical Journal 
for 24 May, 1884, reluctantly admits that “against small-pox we 
cannot in all cases confer absolute immunity by any vaccination or 
revaccination.” 
The medical officer of the Taunton Sanitary Hospital reported in 
1885 that there were 171 patients in the hospital, of whom 169 had 
been vaccinated. 
And, lastly, from the Hand-book of the Metropolitan Asylums 
Board for 1886, I find that between 1870 to 1886 out of 53,578 
small-pox patients admitted, 41,061 are returned as vaccinated. 
The proofs of the disastrous failures of vaccination and revacci- 
nation at Montreal and Sheffield are of too recent occurrence to need 
recapitulation here. The history of the Jennerian system from its 
introduction in 1802 to the present time has been a continuous rec- 
ord of humiliation and disappointment which no ingenuity can palli- 
ate or explain away. 
Yours, &c., 
William Tebb. 
Devonshire Club, St. James’s, London. 169 
DESTRUCTIVE VACCINATION. 
To the Editor. 
Sir : During the recent general election many striking facts show- 
ing the destructiveness of vaccination were brought to the notice of 
the candidates. When referring to the danger and frequency of 
syphilis one of these gentlemen in my own Parliamentary division 
said: “I can well believe what you say, for an intimate friend of 
mine had this hideous disease imparted to himself, wife, and chil- 
dren by means of re-vaccination, and I need no further evidence.” 
As the truth concerning vaccination, so long and so carefully sup- 
pressed, cannot in the interests of public health be too widely 
known, I hope you will kindly allow me to present to your readers a 
few out of hundreds of the cases which have transpired recently. 
1. During the past four years the Registrar General has re- 
turned in his official reports 231 deaths due to “ cow-pox and other 
effects of vaccination.” 
2. Dr. Koehler, medical adviser to the Imperial Government of 
Berlin, records in a letter in my possession the particulars of a disas- 
ter on the 17th of June last year at the Isle of Rugen, in North Ger- 
many, when 320 children and adults were infected with a disgusting 
skin disease (Impetigo Contagiosa) originating in vaccination with 
virus obtained from the Royal Central Vaccine Lymph Institute at 
Stettin. Another report says the infection is syphilitic. 
3. In the vaccine catastrophe at Georgia (U. S.) in April, 1882, 
100 students at the South Georgia Agricultural College, Thomas- 
ville, and 500 citizens were disabled with badly ulcerated arms from 
the use of bovine virus obtained from a New England vaccine farm 
in high repute. 
4. Four deaths and five cases of inquiry at Norwich in June, 
1882, from vaccination performed by the public vaccinator, Dr. Guy 
(See official report No. 385.) Several other deaths occurred from 
vaccination in Norwich about the same time. 
5. Fifty-eight recruits syphilized by vaccination performed by 
the army surgeon at Algiers on Dec. 30, 1880, brought five times be- 
fore Parliament. About half these cases terminated fatally. The 
full particulars obtained from medical and other witnesses at Algiers, 170 
in April, 1884, are in my possession, Mr, Brudenell Carter, F. R. 
C. S., says that syphilitic contamination by means of vaccine lymph 
is by no means an unusual occurrence, the majority of the cases of 
apparently inherited syphilis being in reality vaccine. 
Such instances of wholesale contamination are no doubt compara- 
tively rare, otherwise the system must have collapsed long ago, but 
cases of injury and death are of daily occurrence. Mr. John Pick- 
ering, of Leeds, who devoted many years to investigating the facts, 
estimated the yearly deaths from diseases induced by vaccination in 
England and Wales at 60,000, and one of the most scientific ob- 
servers of our day, Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace, says 10,000 chil- 
dren are destroyed every year by five diseases commonly conveyed by 
means of vaccination. Personally I have collected particulars of 600 
cases, and at the Leicester demonstration in March, 1885, about 
three hundred of the delegates and members of the audience publicly 
testified to injury and death, due to vaccination, within their own ex- 
perience. 
Yours, etc., 
William Tebb, F. R. G. S. 
17 Albert Road, Regent’s Park, 
London. 
We take from the Christian Herald the following lamentable 
story : 
Leprosy attacked a missionary’s daughter in the West Indies a 
short time ago, under the following circumstances : After coming 
three years ago with her father, a Wesleyan missionary, from Eng- 
land to the West Indies, she fell ill. On being examined by the 
doctor, it was found that the poor child had contracted leprosy. The 
only probable means of communication was by vaccination, and 
thus the parents, endeavouring to save their daughter from the remote 
danger of small-pox, inoculated her with the horrible poison that 
will make her life a living death and herself a loathsome and repul- 
sive spectacle. Broken in spirit by the sad affliction that had over- 
taken him, and hoping that by returning to England he might get 
something done for his daughter, the missionary resigned his charge 
and made preparations for his departure. But a new trouble awaited 171 
him. The Royal Mail Company’s steamers could not take a leper 
as a passenger, and so he had to remain in the West Indies. At 
last one of Messrs. Scrutton’s vessels agreed to take the sorely dis- 
tressed family to England. They got on board and started on their 
voyage. 
ALLEGED FALLACIES OF M. PASTEUR. 
Five years have now elapsed since M. Pasteur startled the medical 
profession by his alleged cure for hydrophobia. In these five years 
controversy has waged thick and hot around his theory, advocates 
and opponents seeming equally persistent and determined. Dr. 
Thomas M. Dolan contributes to the July number of the Contempo- 
rary Review a careful statement of the case against M. Pastexar, 
which will repay reading whether one regard the Parisian scientist’s 
efforts as failures or successes. Thirteen years’ experience has led 
Dr. Dolan to formulate the proposition that, “ if any one obtained a 
reputation for the prevention of hydrophobia, and if all the dog-bitten 
sought or took this remedy, the result would be statistically favora- 
ble.” In other words, only a small percentage of dog-bitten persons 
die, and, if a physician or school of physicians declares a remedy 
for rabies and administers that remedy to the victims of canine bites, 
the credit for the cures which would follow, in the natural course of 
events goes to the new prophylactic. 
M. Pasteur’s statistics appear formidable, but Dr. Dolan says that 
a comparison with those of the years preceding the introduction of 
the new system shows that, while the number of persons supposed to 
be bitten by rabid dogs in France has increased extraordinarily, the 
average mortality from rabies in France remains almost constant. 
This indicates that, while a number of cases larger than ever before 
has come to notice, probably through the notoriety of the Pasteur 
School, the fatality attendant has not been affected by the Pasteur 
treatment. As many as died before die now, and as many as recov- 
ered before are cured to-day. Indeed, argues Dr. Dolan, the objec- 
tion of science to the statistics is still more powerful. The action of 
the alleged prophylactic resolves into pure empiricism. In certain 
cases injections of the spinal cords of rabbits were followed by the 172 
recovery of the patients, and therefore, it was argued, the prophylac- 
tic was the remedy. Nevertheless, in one series, cords based on one 
formula were used, and some “cures” and some deaths occurred. 
Then the formula was changed, being made more intensive by the 
introduction of cords which had been dried a shorter period, and a 
larger number of deaths resulted. A return to the first formula, with 
slight modification, still developed mortality. As an explanation of 
these deaths it was stated that the patients who died had presented 
themselves too late, but “ cures ” were effected in the cases of some 
people who appeared longer after they had been bitten than some of 
those who died. Indeed, as M. Pasteur himself wrote in the New 
Review, “It is never too late to begin the treatment, as, if not treated, 
the odds are against the patient,” and again he says, “ Madame 
Louisa Caressa came all the way from Spain to our Anti-Rabie in- 
stitution. She had been bitten nearly one year before, on Sept. 16, 
1888, by her dog. ... A few weeks have now passed since the 
last inoculations were made on her. The latter will no doubt prove 
just as efficacious as if she had undergone the process immediately 
after being bitten in 1888,” Yet in the case of Lord Doneraile, who 
presented himself for treatment eleven days after he had been bitten, 
Pasteur could only “ delay the fatal event four or five months.” An- 
other scientific objection to the system, says Dr. Dolan, is the fact 
that we are ignorant of the action of these injections, knowing 
neither the rate of absorption of each injection nor anything of the 
physiological operations which occur. 
M. Pasteur divides all patients into three classes, (A) cases in 
which the dog was proved to be rabid by the experimental test; (B) 
cases in which the dog was recognized as rabid by the veterinary sur- 
geon, and (C) cases in which the dog was only suspected of being 
rabid. But this classification assumes that all the patients were bit- 
ten by rabid dogs, making no allowance for bites inflicted by non- 
rabid animals, and so, if M. Pasteur is to be trusted, an epidemic of 
rabies affecting thousands of dogs must have raged in France during 
the last five years. Sir James Paget of England stated a year ago 
this month that fifteen per cent, of those persons bitten by rabid dogs 
would suffer from the disease and fifteen per cent, would die. Again, 
in the report of the English Hydrophobia Commission, he agrees 173 
with his associates, “ that at least five per cent, of the persons bitten 
would suffer from the disease.” 
“ In the 7,000 bitten,” says Sir James, quoting Pasteurian stat- 
istics, “if fifteen of each 100 had died, there would have been as 
nearly as possible 1,000 deaths, but only 100 died. Pasteur has, there- 
fore, saved already nearly 900 lives.” But let us look at the mortality 
in France during the years preceding Pasteur’s work, urges Dr. Dolan. 
If this system saved 900 lives in five years, there must have been an 
equal or proportionate mortality in France before. The facts, how- 
ever, do not substantiate this conclusion. In 1863 the famous Tar- 
dieu reported to the Minister of Hygiene that twenty-five cases of 
rabies approximately represented the mean French mortality from that 
disease. Actual statistics for the years from 1850 to 1872, inclusive, 
as given by Dr. Dolan, show an average annual mortality of thirty- 
two for these twenty-three years. Later statistics show these facts : 
In the four years 1882-85 there were in the Department of the Seine 
thirty-eight deaths ; in the four years, 1886-89, of Pasteurian treat- 
ment there were thirty-seven. These figures come from Dr. Du- 
jardin Beaumetz, Director of the Sanitary Service of Paris. What 
becomes of Sir James Paget’s statement regarding the 900 lives 
saved in five years by M. Pasteur when the French national statistics 
show conclusively that in no five years for the quarter-century pre- 
ceding Pasteur’s discovery did any such number of persons die from 
rabies? Other countries also, affirms Dr. Dolan, negative the state- 
ment. 
Dr. Dolan attacks the theory of inoculation as well. The Pasteur 
system rests on the theory of a specific microbe on which rabies de- 
pends. In fact, however, we know nothing of the nature of the 
virus, and the present formula adapted by Pasteur has been deter- 
mined empirically. Various intensities have been tried and found to 
be failures. At first the spinal cords of rabbits, dried five days or 
longer, were applied to patients, but deaths continued to occur, and 
the intensity of the injection was gradually increased, finally to one- 
day cords. Several patients died under this formida, however, one 
at least, with the suspicion attending his death that the intense injection 
had, at any rate, not delayed it, and, consequently, the formula was 
changed to its present ratio, patients being treated with cords dried at 174 
least five days. But Dr. Dolan says that he is convinced, after long 
study, that five-day cords are mostly sterile, for patients not bitten by 
dogs have submitted to injections for the sake of experiment and have 
remained unaffected ; patients bitten by rabid dogs have been treated 
in the same way, and patients bitten by non-rabid dogs have under- 
gone the process without harm. 
Finally, the proportion of those bitten who escape is surprising and 
reassuring. Before the Select Committee on Rabies, June 28, 1887, 
Prof. Victor Horsley testified that a very large proportion of both 
human beings and animals bitten by rabid dogs do not become rabid, 
and Sir Charles Warren, when examined by the Select Committee of 
the House of Lords, said that 186 constables employed in seizing 
dogs had been bitten by rabid animals and not one had died. Seven 
who were sent to Pasteur were “ cured” indeed ; but the 179 others 
as well, who were denied Parisian treatment, recovered. Among 
the policemen engaged in their regular work of killing rabid dogs 
there has never been a case of hydrophobia, and it is noteworthy that 
they have been bitten by the same class of dogs as were many per- 
sons who presented themselves to M. Pasteur. “ Had all the police 
gone to him,” says Dr. Dolan, “his statistics would have been 
swelled, and his apparent success would have been, under his five- 
days formula, still more pronounced. Had, however, his intensive 
treatment been employed, hydrophobia would, without doubt, have 
been known to the Metropolitan force.” 175 
We have been favoured from the United States with the following 
cutting from a medical paper : 
The good effects of vaccination have been well shown recently in 
Holland. During the years 1870-1873, 20,573 persons died of small- 
pox in that country. Since then, as a result of the strict enforce- 
ment of the new vaccination laws, the prevalence of the disease has 
steadily declined. Last year but a single death from small-pox in 
the entire kingdom. 
[And yet there are cranks, who claim to be intelligent, who deny 
the value of vaccination, and use the most absurd arguments against 
the use of the purest virus.] 
Of the style of the extract we say nothing—it is only a matter of 
taste. But we would like to have the chance of making this very 
confident writer state the reasons whereby he is induced to attribute 
an alleged absence of small-pox from Holland to any recent changes 
in the direction of increased stringency of vaccinal administration. 
If vaccinated Holland has only one death from small-pox, unvaccin- 
ated Leicester and unvaccinated Keighley have no death at all. But 
this obvious answer would hardly have induced us to notice the para- 
graph but for the fact that Holland is an interesting subject to us. 
It is true that there have been of late years some changes in the Dutch 
practice concerning vaccination. On May 26,1883, were vaccinated 
sixty-eight recruits on joining the colours of the army of Holland. A 
few days after, seven of them were found to have been seriously in- 
jured, and, after much suffering, three of them died. The Minister 
of War, Mr. Weitzel,was interpellated in the Second Chamber of the 
Netherlands Parliament by Mr. Fabius, with the result that the facts 
were admitted, and a circular issued by the War Office to make re- 
vaccination optional in the army of the Netherlands, instead of com- 
pulsory, as it had hitherto been. Can our contemporary have been 
alluding to this change when speaking of the immunity that Holland 
has enjoyed as a consequence of the recent changes in her vaccinal 
practice ? Reprinted from Vanity Fair, April 26, 1890. 
VACCI NATION, 
A BACILLUS. 
Perhaps you may not think that we germs know much about vac- 
cination and inoculation and that sort of thing ; but, as a matter of 
fact, we know a great deal more than people suppose. We are 
strongly in favour of all the varieties of inoculation which the kind- 
hearted Medicine Man encourages nowadays, as it immensely in- 
creases our facilities for bringing up our large families. In fact, now 
that those horrible sanitary people are doing away with our old- 
established haunts, we should hardly be able to survive if it were not 
for the inoculation which goes on ; and really an anxious parent must 
confess to quite a debt of gratitude to the modern Medicine Man, 
although he does abuse and misrepresent us so. 
You see, it is in this way. When any sore appears on a calf or a 
child it is because some bad stuff wants to come away. This of 
course constitutes a basis for us, or—at least for so many of us as 
are unemployed or dried up ; and so of course we jump on to it at 
once. We don’t care whether it is on a calf or a baby, it is all the 
same thing to us. So long as we get our grub we are not particular, 
especially when we have been dried up for any length of time. But 
you may easily see why we like vaccination and inoculation so much. 
It is not only that we get a primary basis to begin on ; but when the 
vaccinator comes and takes what the cow or the baby does not want, 
he always takes some of us with him, and so we get a fresh start. 
When we get transferred in this way to another body, we com- 
monly find that it is unpleasantly healthy, and we begin to wish that 
we had not come—at least, our children do ; but we old ones know 
better, and lie low accordingly. We find by experience that when 
we have been introduced in this way there will always be a basis for 
us sooner or later ; and, in fact, many of us prefer to remain in one 177 
body for an indefinite number of years, for we are confident of getting 
sufficient nourishment in time, even if the supply temporai’ily ceases 
and the person we are in seems pretty healthy. You see, we have 
such excellent opportunities for watching the course of events, such 
as no one else can have, because they are not really on the spot as 
we are. To an outsider it appears that, when a person is vaccinated 
or otherwise inoculated, all that happens is the formation of a local 
sore. But we know better, and on which side our bread is buttered ; 
and we know why we would sooner have vaccination enforced rather 
than chance the return or non-return of the old small-pox. You see, 
we come of an old stock, and our knowledge has been very accurately 
transmitted from our progenitors, and extends back to long before the 
introduction of what the Medicine Man calls modern medical science 
—all in capital letters ; and we know that just because the wicked 
sanitary people take away our dear old cesspools and keep blowing 
infection away by disgusting systems of ventilation, so it is quite im- 
possible for small-pox and that sort of thing to get a chance ; and 
if the epidemics don’t get a chance, how shall we get a proper amount 
of nourishment ? I explained this when I wrote for you about epi- 
demics a short time ago, and told you how that we always looked to 
find a basis in the neighborhood of medicine men and drains. 
Well, well—to go back to the question of vaccination, and as to 
why we revel in all kinds of inoculation. It is because we find that 
all such performances tend—as your great philosopher, Mr. Herbert 
Spencer, would say—to “ alter the incidence of organic forces; ” 
and this is a much more important matter to us than you can have 
any idea of. We know that all the functions of the body are set go- 
ing in a certain definite way to fulfill, in the course of time, cer- 
tain definite ends ; and that if this order is directly interfered with 
by the introduction of undigested diseased matter, the chances are 
that there will be trouble sooner or later ; and so that we shall have 
a good time. 
All forms of inoculation are in reality of the same nature, whether 
it is vaccination, or what they call specific inoculation, or otherwise. 
It is like taking a cog out of one of the wheels of a delicately con- 
structed watch. The harm you have done may be apparent very 
shortly, or not for a long time—depending on what may happen to 178 
have been interfered with. One thing that makes us laugh so is the 
Commission which sits upon vaccination. We suppose they can’t find 
anything better to sit upon—such as a germ-catcher, for instance— 
and they don’t seem to know how to sit comfortably on this, as they 
only take the evidence of people who look at pustules outside the body 
and don’t ask us to tell them something that is worth knowing. How 
can they, or the people that they call, know that the vaccination of 
one year may mean the consumption or the liver disease of some 
years afterwards, unless they have been to see, as we have? How- 
ever, everything is turning out in our favor, so we don’t really 
grumble. It is because the Medicine Man has been telling such 
scandalous stories about us of late that we think it only fair to tell 
the real truth occasionally. 
NOTES OF THE MONTH. 
Tunbridge Wells has been the scene this month of the most active 
resistance to the Vaccination laws. The goods of Mr. Ingram were 
seized under a distress warrant in pursuance of the Acts, and a pub- 
lic sale of them was announced. The seizure was ofapairof counter 
scales, and the proceedings were accompanied with a storm of chaff 
from what is described as an enormous crowd assembled at the sale. 
Asked by one voice in the throng whether the goods were marked, 
the auctioneer’s reply was anticipated by another voice, “ Yes, with 
calf lymph,” and roars of laughter. At a subsequent indignation 
meeting presided over by Alderman Clifford, the anti-vaccinators 
were received by the aiidience with the utmost enthusiasm. Mr. 
Ingram made a rattling speech, in the course of which he referred to 
the case of Mr. Mitchell, who was distrained on under these Acts 
while his child was lying dead and his wife dying, and whose fine, 
under these sad circumstances, the Society had paid. In reply to the 
usual vote of thanks, the worthy Alderman presiding said that he 
had been brought to first consider the question by noticing how a 
poor man was frequently sent to prison ; another testimony to the 
splendid service done by those brave men who are willing to suffer in 
earnest for their earnestness. Alike in its comic and in its tragic 
elements, we would ask any calm-minded and rational pro-vaccinist 
whether such proceedings do not in his judgment militate against the 
decency of law, and the possibility of respect for it. HOW BABIES ARE KILLED 
VACCINATION. 
WHAT PARENTS SAY. 
“My child was vaccinated when 13 weeks old ; in two weeks it 
was dead. After vaccination it was seized with convulsions, which 
continued until death.” 
“ My child was vaccinated at the same time as the above, and 
with the same kind of matter ; it also was seized with convulsions, 
which continued until death. After death it went as black as a 
coal; it was such a mass of corruption that the burial suit had to be 
thrown over it instead of being put on.” 
“We believe that vaccination killed them both. 
(Signed) Joseph Taylor, 
Richard Matthew.” 
Smallbridge, March 12th, 1871. 
“ I had a sweet little boy, sir ; he was only four months old when 
he had to be vaccinated. I took him to the station to be done. I 
told the doctor I could not bide to see him cut, so he savagely took 
him out of my arms, and gave him to another woman to hold while 
he did it. The poor thing cried, frightened like, and Avhen the doc- 
tor gave him back to me, I shall never forget his look. He seemed 
to say to me,—‘ Mother, what did you let him do that for?’ I took 
him home ; he seemed smitten from that very hour ; he never looked 
up again, and he died in dreadful agony in less than six weeks. 1 
see that look now, and I shall see it as long as I live.’'—From the 
Anti- Vaccinator, August Ist, 1872, edited by John Pickering, 
F.S.S., F.R. G. S., &c. Blood Poisoning by Act of Parliament. 
MOTHERS,—whose children have been killed, 
diseased, or injured by Vaccination,— are requested to 
send particulars to 
THE LONDON SOCIETY FOR THE 
ABOLITION OF COMPULSORY VACCINATION, 
114 Victoria Street, Westminster, S.W. 
(OFFICE HOURS:—10 A. M. till 4 P. M.) 
It is estimated that more than 20,000 children are 
destroyed every year by this practice, whilst others 
are afflicted with life-long diseases. 
SPECIMENS OF ITS OPERATION. 
“Albert Swain, born December sth, 1882, a particularly strong 
and healthy child, was vaccinated by the Public Vaccinator, Dr. 
Wincworth, on April 12th, 1883. A few hours after the operation 
he became unwell and vomited considerably, continuing to grow 
worse, until death on April 24th, the cause of which was certified 
by the medical attendant, Dr. Burnett, as—‘ Bronchitis, Exhaustion. 
The child’s sufferings were terrible to witness : for three days pre- 
vious to death he was blind, and lay tossing and shrieking in the 
most distressing manner,” 
“Every physician of experience has met with numerous cases of 
cutaneous eruptions, erysipelas, and which were directly 
traceable to vaccination, and, if these could all be collected and pre- 
sented in one report, they would form a more terrible picture than 
the worst that has ever been drawn to portray the horrors of small- 
pox.”—Professor Robert A. Gunn, M. D. 
“ Syphilis, scrofula, and probably every kind of blood-poison can 
be taken by Vaccination, which, so far from being a protection 
against small-pox, seems to have been one of the chief causes of the 
late epidemics. It is never safe to take matter from another body 
ihto our own ; we risk taking all its diseases. There is no doubt 
thousands have been mortally poisoned by Vaccination.”—P. L. 
Nichols, M. D., E. A. S. 181 
PREVENTION IS BETTER THAN CURE. 
If unable to set the infamous law at defiance, the following sugges- 
tions may be acted upon— 
The action of the vaccine poison may be much modified, and 
sometimes destroyed, by giving the infant—every day for a few 
days before and after the operation—a few grains of milk of sulphur. 
As soon as possible after the vaccination, apply a warm bread poul- 
tice, made as follows : 
Dissolve a teaspoonful of borax powder in half a pint of boiling 
water, pour this on bread, and make a poultice in the usual way. 
Some advise sucking the arm, and spitting out the vaccine. 
WHAT VACCINATION DOBS. 
To the Editor. 
Sir: A short time ago, a respectable looking man called on me 
and told me that he had a child suffering very terribly from vaccin- 
ation. I found his name was Wilks, and his residence in Vic- 
toria street, off John street, and I promised to call at his house as 
early as I could. An hour or two afterwards—accompanied by Mr. 
D. Thompson—l went to see the child, and I do not think I am 
wrong in saying that if the parents in Workington could have seen 
it as I saw it, there would have been few vaccinations for many a 
day. Mrs. Wilks, the mother, stated that the child was about three 
months old. It was healthy and doing well until it was vaccinated 
by the public vaccinator. Within a week from that time it had 
become a mass of sores, and when I saw it it was a most pitiable 
object. The poor mother said it had no rest since, but was in con- 
stant pain. No wonder ! The vaccinated arm was swollen, much 
inflamed, and full of sores ; the head and face were blotched, the 
inside of the mouth all sores, and parts of the body likewise ; whilst 
the upper part of the thighs, and parts near, were indescribable. 
The father told me it was their only child, and had been a fine boy 
previous to vaccination, and he said he would go to Carlisle gaol for- 
ever before another child of his should be vaccinated. As I write 182 
I am doubtful in my own mind whether the little sufferer will re- 
cover, but I am in no doubt as to the monstrous character of the 
Acts of Parliament that force parents to submit their helpless little 
ones to such a foul and senseless rite as that of vaccination. If not 
another case was on record, this case of Mr. Wilks’s child is enough 
to convince anyone not pecuniarily interested in the thing, that there 
is great danger in allowing any doctor to cut a child’s arm and inject 
his “pure lymph,” or rather “pure rottenness,” into its veins. 
There is only one way to get these tyrannical laws repealed, and 
that is for parents to defy them and disobey them at any cost. 
Yours, etc., 
T. W. Johnson. 
Workington. 
P. S.—Since the above was written the child has succumbed to 
the State-enforced prescription. THE MITIGATION THEORY OF VACCINATION. 
Jenner’s claims to the absolute protective influence of vaccination 
soon became untenable, owing to the prevalence of small-pox among 
the vaccinated. Numerous cases of the disease occurred in patients 
vaccinated by Jenner himself, but the climax was reached in the case 
of Robert Grosvenor, the child of Earl Grosvenor, who suffered 
from a severe attack of confluent small-pox a few years after Jenner 
had protected him “forever after” by vaccination. A council of 
despair was held at his bedside, and the mitigation theory was there 
formulated. “ The child would have died but for the previous vac- 
cination ! ” Thus were Jenner’s confident assurances of absolute 
protection thrown to the winds, and the mitigation theory substituted. 
Assuming the correctness of this theory, the rate of mortality from 
small-pox per cent, of cases should be considerably less, now that 
over 90 per cent, of the cases of small-pox occur in the vaccinated, 
than the rate of mortality from small-pox before vaccination was in- 
troduced. Such is not the case. The advance in medical knowledge 
has reduced the mortality from fever in the London Fever Hospital 
from 25 per cent, in 1839 to 1.9 per cent, in 1889, but the statistics 
of small-pox shew no such response to the credit of our improved 
methods of treatment. The mortality from this disease has been 
practically stationary since last century, to the complete refutation of 
the mitigation theory. 
Professor Michael Foster thus summarises the evidence given be- 
fore the Royal Commission on vaccination as to rates of small-pox 
mortality at different periods ; 
1760 
(no vaccination) 
18.8 per cent. 
1830 
(with “ 
) 
18.5 “ 
1870 
( t i u 
) 
17.3 “ 
The accuracy of these figures is now very generally admitted ; 
but, to support the Mitigation Theory, we are asked to believe that 
the unvaccinated (who form less than 10 per cent, of the total cases) 
now die at the rate of 40 to 80 per cent., simply because they are un~ 184 
vaccinated, whilst the vaccinated only suffer a slight mortality of 6 
to 10 per cent. ! 
Why are the unvaccinated of the present day so much worse off 
than the unvaccinated of last century? Is it that our medical men, 
with their improved methods and appliances are less successful in 
the treatment of small-pox than their 18th century predecessors ? 
Let us compare the figures : 
Unvaccinated death-rate, present day, . 40 per cent. 
“ “ last century, . 19 “ 
Balance to discredit of 19 th century doctors, 21 percent. 
To support the Mitigation Theory we must either admit that doc- 
tors of the present day suffer from 20 to 60 per cent, of their cases to 
die, over and above what would have died under the treatment of 
their predecessors of last century ; or we must admit that small-pox 
has gradually become a more fatal disease exactly synchronous with 
the extension of vaccination. 
The true explanation is two-fold. 
I,—The un-vaccinated are now a quality as well as 
a quantity.— One of the chief essentials of scientific comparison 
is that the two things to be compared shall be under exactly alike 
conditions, with the exception of the one condition which is to be 
tested. Such is not the case with the vaccinated and un-vaccinated 
in our present-day small-pox statistics. 
The un-vaccinated may be divided into four classes : 
1. Infants under the vaccination age. 
2. Those in too feeble health for vaccination. 
3. The dregs of our urban 'populations, living in insanitary lodg- 
ing houses and weekly tenements, whose nomadic habits enable 
them to escape the vaccination officers. 
4. Opponents of vaccination from intelligent conviction. 
Classes 1, 2 and 3 comprise such persons as would shew a very 
high rate of mortality from small-pox or any other epidemic disease. 
In fact, there is little doubt that, if the death-rates from, say, scarlet 
fever among the vaccinated and un-vaccinated were compared, the 
results would triumphantly “ prove ” that vaccination is equally a 
specific against scarlet fever as against small-pox. 185 
This contention appears to be very generally admitted. 
Dr. R. H. Bakewell, Vaccinator General for Trinidad, in his evi- 
dence before the Committee of the House of Commons on Vacci- 
nation, in 1871, said “It must not be forgotten that in all 
“ European countries the un-vaccinated are taken from the poorest 
“ and most neglected classes of the community, and may fairly be 
“ expected to be bad subjects for any disease like variola,” (i. e. 
small-pox.) 
The opponents of vaccination from intelligent conviction (class 4) 
are mainly confined to towns, like Leicester, Keighly, Gloucester, 
Northampton, &c., &c., where the Vaccination Acts are no longer 
enforced ; and, as small-pox has been almost unknown for many 
years in these places, they do not to any extent affect the comparison. 
The above considerations shew conclusively, that in comparing the 
small-pox mortality of the vaccinated with that of the un-vaccinated, 
we are comparing things which are quite incomparable. 
ll.—The results are demonstrably untrue. 
Small-pox cases may be divided into three classes according to the 
character of the eruption : 
I. Discrete cases, in which the eruption is so moderate that the 
pustules are entirely separate one from another, and the disease 
rarely fatal. 
11. Confluent .cases, in which the eruption is so severe that the 
pustules coalesce, the disease being fatal in about 50 per cent, of the 
cases. 
111. Malignant cases, in which little or no eruption is thrown 
out, the disease attacking the vital organs, blood poisoning usually 
supervening, and death resulting in almost every case. 
We are informed Ijy Dr. Gayton, the late Superintendent of the 
Homerton Small-pox Hospital, in his evidence before the Royal 
Commission, that the “mitigation by vaccination ” is chiefly appar- 
ent among the second-class the confluent cases—vaccination af- 
fording no odds in favor of those attacked by malignant small-pox, 
the severest form of all, and the very one where we should expect 
its benign influence to be most apparent! 186 
The explanation lies in the faulty method of recording the par- 
ticulars of the patients as to vaccination. The assurance of the 
patient or his friends as to his vaccination is not accepted ; the official 
vaccination registers are never referred to, but the sole criterion.is the 
presence or absence of the marks of vaccination on his arm. In the 
discrete and malignant cases of small-pox the pustules are so few and 
far between that the vaccination marks are rarely obscured, and the 
“ Mitigation Theory” admittedly gains nothing by such cases. In 
the confluent cases, however, the eruption is so abundant that any 
vaccination marks that may exist stand little chance of detection, and 
the bulk of such cases are recorded as un-vaccinated! In the Glas- 
gow epidemic of 1871-2 this method of classification was observed, 
but Dr. Russell’s report contained this significant admission, “ Some- 
times persons were said to be Vaccinated, but no marks could be 
seen, very frequently because of the abundance of the eruption. In 
some cases of those who recovered, an inspection before dismission, 
discovered Vaccine Marks, sometimes ‘ very good.’” Thus, some 
of the Unvaccinated who recovered were found vaccinated ; but what 
of the vaccinated under similar conditions, who died with the full 
burden of the eruption upon them? They went to swell the lists of 
unvaccinated deaths, as “ terrible warnings” to anti-vaccinators ! 
The experience of the Glasgow hospital is no isolated instance. 
The falsity of statistics compiled in such a manner has been repeat- 
edly exposed ; but one example, selected from many on account of the 
implied challenge as to its accuracy, must suffice : 
In June, 1885, the authorities of the West Ham Union circulated 
a report, the accuracy of which was vouched for by Dr. Kennedy, 
“not as cooked statistics, but unvarnished facts,” to the effect that 
in the small-pox hospital seventy-six unvaccinated persons had died 
of small- pox during the six months ending May 14, 1885. Through 
the intervention of Mr. Hopwood, then M. P., the addresses of the 
seventy-six patients were obtained and a careful investigation made. 
Owing to removals, etc., facts could onl}' be obtained in forty-three 
cases. Of these forty-three “ unvaccinated ” cases eighteen were found 
to have heen vaccinated and three re-vaccinated. 
Such errors are inseparable from this method of compiling statis- 
tics, yet these are the figures upon which the “ mitigation theory ” 187 
is solely based. We pay immense sums annually to maintain the 
machinery of Registration, but the Vaccination Registers appear to 
be maintained only for the purposes of bringing defaulters within the 
meshes of the law, and securing the much coveted “ Bonuses” to the 
public vaccinators. Until these registers are made the criterion of 
vaccination in cases of small-pox, such blunders as the above,— 
which are constantly occurring, and as constantly being exposed to 
the discredit of the medical profession,—will be inseparable from all 
our hospital statistics. The present system of classification may be 
essential to the support of the “ Mitigation Theory,” but is surely 
undermining the prestige of the medical faculty. 
THE DIFFUSION OF DISEASE-GERMS BY 
VACCINATION. 
To the Editor. 
Sir,—The frightful reproduction and diffusion of disease-germs in 
vaccination explains why sanitary measures and appliances, perfected 
at great cost and skill during the last half century, are powerless to 
reduce the death-rate or disease-rate from causes which are known 
as “blood diseases.” Not only are they powerless to reduce the dis- 
ease and death-rate, but they are powerless to prevent a regular and 
systematic increase from year to year. In fact, the diseases referred 
to may be looked upon as chronic, and neither physician nor sanita- 
rian seems the least anxious to fix the blame upon the one glaring 
criminal—vaccination. All the advance we appear to have made is 
in having effected a displacement, which has introduced artificial dis- 
eases, permanent and lethal, in the place of epidemics, which were 
filth diseases and easily combated and dispersed by sanitation. Thus, 
instead of plague, black-death, sweating sickness, small-pox and 
cholera—the epidemics of the Middle Ages—we have bronchitis, 
scrofula, pneumonia, syphilis and atrophy. The tyranny of disease 
and death holds its undisputed sway, and we err not in saying that it 
is mainly attributable to the vaccinal cachexias, which are as lethal in 
themselves as the individual epidemics above mentioned. It may be 
said with no small degree of truth that each of the quintuple diseases, 188 
bronchitis, scrofula, pneumonia, syphilis, and atrophy, is a plague in 
itself, and that which aggravates the statement is the fact, well 
known to the anti-vaccinator, that the statistics of the diseases 
throughout and in totality are a one-sided affair. The members of 
the faculty are interested in hiding the real figures from the public 
mind, and they unblushingly admit that they give false certificates of 
death. The practice is done to an extent which renders the annual 
register of comparatively little value to the honest statistician. It is 
humiliating beyond endurance that the faculty fail us at every point— 
in the abominable rite of vaccination which they uphold, in the effect- 
ive treatment of disease which they cling to, and in the untrust- 
worthiness of the certificates of death which they issue. What an in- 
dictment ! Who among them dares to challenge it ? Stay the hand 
of the vaccinator for a single year, and trust to sanitation instead of 
vaccination, treat the patient with good diet, baths, and pure air, in- 
stead of a vile drug treatment; give us true certificates of death, for 
which ive pay; and the record of diseases and the roll of death will 
amaze the profession, the statistician, and the public. 
86 Thicket Road, Penge. 
Yours respectfully, John Pickering, F. S. S.