Vaccination vindicated : being an answer to the leading anti-vaccinators / by John C. McVail.
- John McVail
- Date:
- 1887
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Vaccination vindicated : being an answer to the leading anti-vaccinators / by John C. McVail. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![the mortality of 1877, the doctor is entirely wrong about the facts. There was no excess of vaccination in 1876.* The numbers for the three years 1875-6-7 were—(1) 498,952, (2) 506,587, (3) 529,376, so that the argument is founded on a blunder ; and the number ot vaccinations in the years 1863 and 1866-9 nad no more to do with the subsequent small-pox than had the blunder as to 1876 with the small-pox of 1877. But in order to demolish the doctor's argument, it is enough to point out that the vaccinations of 1854, by far the most numerous of the series, were followed by the very low mortality of 1855, and that a similar sequence of much vaccination and little small-pox connects the years 1852-3, '58-9, '60-1, '65-6, '72-3, &c. And vice versd, vaccination declined in 1870, and small- pox rose in 1871 ; so also in '57 and '58, in '66 and '67, &c. It is of course true that the years 1871-2 were high in both small-pox and vaccination. Every one knows that when small-pox appears, people rush in crowds to get the protection which vaccina- tion affords. But the fact that these get vaccinated because they know that others have died of small-pox cannot by any possibility bring the dead to life again, nor blot out their names and numbers from the records of mortality. In the end the thesis becomes too audacious for even Dr. Wallace to defend. After having spoken as above, he concludes thus (p. 10): I only maintain, however, that it [the dotted line] does not prove that vaccination diminishes the mortality from the disease. But Dr. Wallace is not to be let off in this way. I don't suppose that any one holds that infantile vaccination immediately preceding a threatened epidemic could prevent such epidemic. The children vaccinated would themselves be very much protected ; but their seniors, unless duly vaccinated and re-vaccinated, would be liable to suffer. And so we find it. The principal incidence of the disease is not now on children, as it was in a last-century epidemic, but on the contrary, of the 44,433 deaths in the 1870-3 epidemic nearly 20,000 were over 15 years of age ;f and the average age at death from small-pox is now found to be nearly 20 years.J On Dr. Wallace's showing, Why this change ? In England vacci- nation is compulsory at three months, and children have come to be the class least affected by small-pox, instead of being, as formerly, the class to which small-pox was almost exclusively confined. Dr. Wallace should explain this. It is not enough for him to profess that his dotted line does not prove the value of vaccination ; and * See p. 29. + See p. 51. J See Small-pox in Kilmarnock, loc. cit.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b20395243_0040.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
