The vaccination laws : a letter addressed (by permission) to the Rt. Hon Lord Lyttelton / by T. Baker.

  • Baker, Thomas, 1819-
Date:
[1874]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The vaccination laws : a letter addressed (by permission) to the Rt. Hon Lord Lyttelton / by T. Baker. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    6 There had indeed been one or two Committees to decide upon the rewards to be given for what was deemed an infallible preventive of small pox, and for the establishment of a Vaccine Board ; but not until the arbitrary, unconsti- tutional, and illegal proceedings, carried on by straining the Act of 1867, had caused considerable agitation in the country was a single witness ever heard by the House of Commons against the practice of vaccination. At length, in 1871, a Committee was appointed; the Vice-President of the Council having first declared, in the House, that such would not have been proposed, if it were thought possible that any doubt could thereby be cast on the great value of vaccination as a prophylactic against small pox. An application fi’om certain opponents of vaccination to be heard by counsel was refused ; the quasi defence was taken first, but after ten witnesses, out of hundi-eds desirous of coming forward, had been heard, no more were allowed to give evidence; whilst numerous cases of injury or death attested before magistrates, for the purposes of the inquiry, were rejected, on the technical ground that the clerg}Tnan, who produced them, had no personal knowledge of the parties [p. 146].* 11. In like manner no defendant is ever permitted by Justices to state liis reasons, or plead as a “reasonable excuse” (allowed by the statute) the injury or death of a former child. Indeed an Anti-Vaccinist is to be regarded as a “ monomaniac,” or an “ idiot,” and to be put down accordingly, by those who have never been at the pains to consider the subject. We are, therefore, 80 far mainly dependent on the testimony of official returns, and the admis- sions, fallacies, and contradictions of the medical experts before referred to, who were not only allowed to give evidence in their own case, but themselves drew up the report of the Committee. 12. The Court Physicians examined pointed to Mr. Marson, thirty-five years surgeon of the small pox hospital, as the chief authority. Mr. Marson considers a number of vaccination marks important [p, 236]; and in calculating results from his tables of recoveries and deaths, takes no account whatever of the stamina, general health, or condition in life of the patients; nothing whatever e-xcept vaccination and the quality thereof, or non- vaccination ; assuming, among many other assumptions, that whether a patient had been properly vaccinated or not is the sole inquiry necessary, as well as to theii’ chances of recovery from small pox, as to their having * The references given are to the pages of the evidence in the Vaccination Com- mittee Beport, 1871.