Legal defences to prosecutions under the Vaccination Acts and to illegal vaccination / by H.S. Schultess-Young.

  • Schultess-Young, H. S.
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Legal defences to prosecutions under the Vaccination Acts and to illegal vaccination / by H.S. Schultess-Young. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    DEFENCES POSSIBLE. THE LEGAL DEFENCES POSSIBLE IN PROSECUTIONS UNDER THE VACCINATION ACTS. It is not necessar}^ in this brief treatise to discuss the use or otherwise of vaccination. Shaw's manual, usuall}^ the reference book of justices, devotes the first fifty pages to a defence of compulsory vaccination. Three thoughts are thereby suggested, {a) that it is scarcely consistent with the dignity of the law to preface a text-book with an apology for the law ; {b) that a doubt as to the wisdom of the law follows ; (c) that colour is perhaps given to the author's notes in respect to prosecutions. The mention of the facts appearing in the Royal Commissioners'4th Report and Appendices, will be sufficient counterbalance. It is shewn that in Leicester, during ten years ending 1872, 84-3 per cent, of the total births were vaccinated, and that in 1871-3 193 died from small-pox, while it appears from the last (56th) Report of the Registrar-General that in the ten years ending 1891 only lo'i per cent, of the total births were vaccinated (since reduced, 1893, to i2'9 per cent.), and m 1892-1894 only 14 died from smal]-pox (both periods being the occasions of high- est mortality). An equally significant fact is found in the recently issued (23rd) Report of the Local Government Board, by which it appears that since 1872 there has
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