Report from the Select Committee on the Vaccination Act (1867) : together with the proceedings of the Committee, minutes of evidence, appendix and index.

  • Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Select Committee on Vaccination Act (1867)
Date:
1871
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report from the Select Committee on the Vaccination Act (1867) : together with the proceedings of the Committee, minutes of evidence, appendix and index. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    been vaccinated; must not that lead to great uncertainty as to the efficacy of vaccination ?— Certainly. 363. Since you became convinced that there was no absolute efficacy in the system of vaccina- tion, you went much further, and you concluded that vaccination, apart from its efficacy in pre- venting small-pox, lowers the power and induces diseases of all kind?—The fact is continually brought before me from the uncertainty of the operation of the vaccine virus. 364. I observe that the answer that you gave as to its lowering the power and rendering the body liable to certain diseases, was apparently a medical axiom that when artificial disturbance of the constitution was produced and fever ensued, that was known permanently to lower power and to induce liability to disease ; but f presume that while you practised vaccination you did so under the impression that its effi- cacy with regal’d to small-pox would atone for that constitutional mischief which was in- evitable; that was so, was it ■—Yes. 365. You also came to the further conclusion that it is likely to produce, or make to grow, the hitherto dormant seeds of positive disease, such, for instance, as syphilis?—Yes. 366. You would not be surprised if after a child was vaccinated it became subject to certain eruptions, such as eczema or syphilis ?—Certainly not. 367. Would you imply from its being so that there was any constitutional taint in the system, or that the eruption proceeded from vaccination ? —What I stated was, not that it imparted disease, but brought into existence diseases. 368. Whether syphilis lying dormant in the system was brought out by this disturbance, or whether it was the direct result of vaccination from a child with constitutional syphilis, must be then, as I understand, a mere matter of theory ?— It is a matter of fact, because the child from whom I vaccinated having syphilis, the syphilitic virus was conveyed to the second child. 369. But had you, on examining the parents of the first child, found no evidence of syphilitic taint, how would you have accounted for the appearance of disease in the vaccinated child ?— I have no doubt that frequently vaccine deve- lopes syphilitic ulcers which would otherwise be dormant. 370. Apart from the examination, therefore, it would be a pure matter of theory whether the child from which you vaccinated was actually suffering from syphilis, or whether the child operated upon had the dormant seeds of syphilis in its own constitution ?—There was nothing to lead me to infer that there was any constitutional taint amongst the parents of those children. 371. If you had not discovered constitutional syphilis in the parents of the child from which the lymph was taken, it surely would not have been possible for you to assert that vaccination must have rendered active the dormant seeds in the constitution of the vaccinated child?—No. 372. Dr. Brewer.] You have an opinion that a pure Jennerian vesicle can be produced by a modified influence, and that that pure vesicle can contain the seeds of venereal disease ?— Yes. 373. Of course you know the experiments which have been tried both here and elsewhere upon this very subject; unvaccinated persons, who happened to be suffering from chancre, have been vaccinated, and vaccine vesicles have been raised in close contiguity to the chancre, and from vesicles so raised, vaccinations have been performed; but never has it happened on a single occasion that syphilis, or that any other result than vaccine has followed the use of the vaccine lymph, which was purposely taken from a syphilitic subject, and this is confirmed by men of the highest possible position, and the largest possible amount of experience, Acton, Lee, West Marston, and the rest; do you believe that ?—I believe if I had seen nothing of those whom I had vaccinated beyond the eighth day, I might have said that; but if it does not make its appearance until the expiration of three or four weeks; and many a person has passed through the vaccination in the regular way, and has been certified as having been properly vaccinated, who was afterwards covered with syphilitic sores. 374. Do you know that one case only is re- corded, and that a French case of any known disease being communicated with the vaccine matter, that being a young woman in La Cliarite, who, at the very time of vaccination, was suffer- ing from une affection uterine ?—Yes, I believe you will find on reference to Record’s works that there are several such cases. Mr. TV. J.Collins, M.D. 28 February 1871.