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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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.

    64/558 (page 40)
    Mr. girl named Robins, in Iiutland-terrace, Pimlico, C.T.Peci'ce, aged five, with small-pox ; she had nut been m.d. vaccinated (a lodger in the house had been taken to Hospital with small-pox); she had it in 7 Marcli the semi-confluent form; was delirious one night; 1^71* the pocks were fully developed over trunk and limbs; she had a bath twice a day through every stage ; she recovered remarkably well. Her little brother, two years of age, also unvaccinated, was frequently at her bedside during the whole course of the illness, played with her in the latter stage of the disease, before she left her bed, and that little child has not taken small-pox; it is hearty, the picture of health. The mother, who is pregnant, ailed a few days in bed, but the infection went no farther. The patient was kept clean, and disinfectants were employed. I was glad to find that Dr. Farr, in the 30th Report of the Registrar General, page 215, very pertinently remarks that “small-pox, as a general rule, occurs only once in life ; some children enjoy an immunity against an attach; they cannot be vaccinated, they cannot be inoculated ; others are infected by the slightest exposure; and under infection, some take the disease slightly, some malignantly, fatally.” The protective power of vaccination has been over-estimated. The susceptibility of the sub- ject to small-pox, as to other diseases, depends on constitutional states which vary in different indi- viduals, and not on any artificial means of pro- tection, such as vaccination, though it may some- times act as a charm. Rliazes, an Arabian physician, who flourished at the beginning of the tenth century, whose work on small-pox and measles was translated by the Sydenham Society, points out most plainly that different bodies have different susceptibilities, some never taking small- pox but are inclined to measles. To assume that every person “ unprotected ” by vaccination is liable to small-pox, is unscien- tific. irrational, and unsupported by facts ; such negative evidence cannot guide you to a correct judgment of the value of vaccination. I have seen a great deal of small-pox during an epi- demic in Northampton in 1853-4, while I was in practice in that county, and I have observed in that population, which includes a very large num- ber of shoemakers (and I was much struck with it), the frequency of mild cases in the unvaccinated, and severe cases in the vaccinated. In one house in the town of Wellingborough, ten miles distant from Northampton, there was a family of seven, all unvaccinated; the eldest was 20, the youngest about five. One of the seven, the little one, had small-pox severely. Two eider ones had it mo- derately ; the remaining four did not take it. Had that family been vaccinated, I should at that time have attributed the mildness of the cases to that cause. Eighty-nine cases of small- pox, at various ages, came under my medical treatment, all of whom, with my assistant (Dr. Henry Thomas, now of Chester), I personally attended. Two cases died. One was Mrs. Rapier (the wife of my dispenser, now a chemist in Norwich), who caught small-pox in her confine- ment, vaccinated. The other death was a boy three years old, the son of Mr. Clarke, fish- monger, in Northampton (now retired from busi- ness and living at Kingsthorpe), unvaccinated. That child’s death was of typhoid, arising from his bedroom being over a store of fish, venison, and refuse, in one of the hottest .1 uly months which 1 remember; but for this circumstance I believe the child would have recovered. TV hen another epidemic of small-pox visited Northampton in 1860 great efforts were made by the medical men, aided by the Vicar of All Saints, the Rev. Sydney Gedge, to get the people vacci- nated. I am not ashamed to own that I lifted up my voice against the polluting practice, and from that day to this, as the Members, Mr. Charles Gilpin and Lord Henley know, the intelligent shoe- makers ol Northampton have evinced a determined resistance to the Compulsory Vaccination Act. I will not weary this Committee with a longer detail ol my personal experience. I may add that Dr. Corner, Medical Officer of Health in the Mile End District, London, reported to the Board ol Guardians twelve months since, four cases ol small-pox in one house in his district; two ol them were vaccinated, two were “ unpro- tected ” ; the two unprotected recovered, and the two vaccinated (protected !) died. The “ Lancet,” in reporting the statement of Dr. Corner, omitted however to tell its readers that the two which died had been vaccinated. Proposition 4.—That all other diseases than small-pox are more severe and more fatal in the vaccinated than in the unvaccinated, especially scarlatina, measles, whooping cough, diarrhoea, fever, erysipelas and phthisis.” In placing this branch of my subject before you, I must beg permission to say that statistics of disease and the registration of cases in hospitals and other public institutions are so defective in this particular, that no very accurate conclu- sions can be arrived at, which, in the former branches of my subject, can be seen at a glance. It is some years since I began to observe the great difference in the intensity of diseases in children more especially, and it was long before I could make up my mind to believe that my suspicion, that the severity of exanthematous fevers was greater in the vaccinated, was correct. I took great pains, however, on all occasions to ascertain in a somewhat extensive practice, whether the patients coming under the care of myself or my assistants, bore the marks of vac- cination. My suspicions were confirmed, and long ob- servation has convinced me that I am not mis- taken. There is no question, I think, that all who have been vaccinated suffer more severely than the un vaccinated. Hence, as I believe, we hear of all the children in a family being swept away by scarlatina. The present Archbishop Tait was a sufferer to this extent. Dr. Robert Watt of Glasgow, Lecturer on the Theory and Practice of Medicine in Glasgow, who published in 1813 a treatise on chin-cough or whooping cough, dedicated to Sir Gilbert Blane, stated that the introduction of vaccination di- minished the mortality from small-pox, which in 1783 to 1788 1789 to 1794 1795 to 1800 1801 to 1806 1807 to 1812 was 20 in 100 was 18 in 100 was 19 in 100 was 9 in 100 was 4 in 100 Dr. Watt states that “ this gratifying result of vaccination (which had been pretty fully estab- lished, perhaps as much so as in any city in the empire) was counterbalanced by a slight increase in