Speeches of Mr. P.A. Taylor and Mr. C.H. Hopwood on vaccination : in the House of Commons, June 19th, 1883 / revised from the reporter's notes.

Peter Alfred Taylor

Date:: 1883

Credit: Speeches of Mr. P.A. Taylor and Mr. C.H. Hopwood on vaccination : in the House of Commons, June 19th, 1883 / revised from the reporter's notes. 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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$natural that he should not have done so, and if I may be permitted to say from the answers he has given in this House I should assume certainly that he had not done so (laughter) But surely it is a most unfortunate and painful position for right hon, gentlemen to be made the mouthpiece of a set of medical experts upon doctrines upon which they have and can have no valid opinion of their own. In confirmation of this, I will venture to refer to two answers given by the right hon. gentleman a few days ago to my hon. friend the member for Stockport (Mr. Hopwood) and to myself. To my hon. friend he declared his opinion that cases of vaccino- syphilis were so infrequent as to be hardly wortli notice (on this I shall have something to say presently); but in answer to a question which I put to the right hon. gentleman, namely : whether it was not a fact, as tested by the highest medical authority, that it was impossible in many cases to detect syphilitic taint in a child from whom lymph is taken, h& replied that he understood the report of the committee would show that in such cases the fact of the existing taint must come under the observation of the operating surgeon. Now, if ray right hon. friend had taken the trouble to ask the opinion of one distincruished member of that Board—Dr. Ballard—he would have come to a very different conclusion. ]\rany years ago Dr. Ballard wrote an excellent essay upon vaccinatio-n which gained a prize, and Dr. Ballard said— There were numerous cases on record to prove that vaccine virus and syphilitic virus may be introduced at the same spot by the same puncture of the vaccinating lancet. It is true that since his appointment on the Medical Board, we have heard no more on the subject from Dr. Ballard, but, indeed^ upon this point the evidence is overwhelming. Mr. Jonathan Hutchinson told the members of the Chirurgical Society, in April, 1871, First, that a child born of syphilitic parents may exhibit no signs of disease for months after its birth ; Second, that the public vaccinator may operate on the child and use lymph taken from it without being able to detect the presence of syphilitic poison ; and in October last !Mr. J. Brindley James, a public vaccinator, felt it his duty to warn the British$