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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    who have not been vaccinated have also escaped [pars. 1 and 2]. On the other hand every single case ot small pox, after vaccination, is positive proof that vaccination has not in that case prevented small pox [par. 13 es. 3, 4, 7 and 8]. Indeed the proportion of persons who, having broken an arm, have not subsequently fractured a leg, will be very many times greater than the per centagc of those who, after cow pox have not died of small pox. 22. If further proofs of the fallaciousness of this mere negative evidence were wanted, wo find, from the Ecgistrar General’s Eeturns, that Mold. [par. 16, s. 1], during the 1871 epidemic lost 3| per 1000 of its population from small pox; the London rate being only 2|. From official returns since received from Prussia [par. 16, s. 4] the small pox death rate, 1871, was as 2|, to 1 in England; and in Berlin it was as 8, to 2| in London. In Scotland, 1871-2, the small-pox death rate was as 1|, to 1 in England; also 5g in Dundee, to 2^ in London [pars. 16, ss. 2, 4, pars. 17 and 18] and, in Ireland, Dublin 7| aud Cork 23, to 2^ in London. 23. The epidemic, 1871-2, had not reached Ireland and Scotland when the Committee sat; but these statistics have not been publicly brought forward by the medical department, and the London press never publishes communications from Anti-vaccinists ; whilst blue books, aud least of all volumes of statistical figures are read by very few, hence the legislatm-e aud the public are kept iu ignorance of the truth. 24. Ecccntly small pox having been epidemic in Birmingham (where £625 beyond tees, by way of bonus for first-class vaccination, had been awarded by Dr. Seaton to the Public Vaccinator, during the preceding three years); ninety per cent of the cases are admitted to have been vaccinated; and of these eleven per cent died, a rate of deaths to cases higher than usually obtained in the last century prior to the Jesty superstition [p. 99 blue book]. Burnley, Gloucester, Bury, Newmarket, and other places have also suffered from recent epidemic small pox. And the No. 2 sub-district of Londonderry, during the first quarter of this year, lost 16 per 1000 (annual rate) of its population from small pox alone; and in the second quarter 8 per 1000. 25. It is surely unnecessary to pursue further the positive proof that vaccination does not po'event small pox; nor in the face of the rate of deaths to vaccinated cases, now everywhere prevailing, can the shift that it mitigates the disease be maintained. But may it not be affirmed on the contrary that this spurious inoculation (for ii.odern vaccination is nothing else) is really reproducing and multiplying small pox like its predecessor, inoculation proper, in times past [pars. 7 and 13, s. 8; 14, s. 7; 22 and 24].