Some leading arguments against compulsory vaccination / Issued by The London Society for the Abolition of Compulsory Vaccination.
- London Society for the Abolition of Compulsory Vaccination
- Date:
- 1887
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Some leading arguments against compulsory vaccination / Issued by The London Society for the Abolition of Compulsory Vaccination. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.
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![Bat, secondly, it may be urged that the law should bo BMuntaineclj because t( VACCINATION IS SO USEFUL AGAINST SMALLPOX. Before this position cau be fairly estimated, we must ask— Of what kind is the utility ? And here we obtain, not one reply, but several, each less encouraging than its predecessor. The original Act of 1853 was passed on the assumption of the truth of Jenner's own statement, thatwhat renders the cowpox virus so extremely singular is, that the person who has been thus affected is for ever after secure from infection of the smallpox, neither the exposure to the variolous effluvia nor the insertion of the matter into the skin producing this distemper. Thus, the original claim made on behalf of vaccination was that it conferred absolute and perpetual immunity from smallpox. Nor was this merely the enthusiastic dream of an over- sanguine inventor. This plea passed the law of 1853, and the same plea defended it when passed. In the Blue-book of 1857 Mr. John Simon published his Papers Relating to the History and Practice of Vaccination, and therein we read on p. xiv. :— On the conclusion of this artificial disorder, neither renewed vaccination nor inoculation with smallpox, nor the closest contact and cohabitation with small-pox patients, will cause him [the vaccinated patient] to betray any remnant of susceptibility to infection. Nothing could be more precise or emphatic than these words, unless it be the contradiction they have subsequently received from facts and from later theorists. That one vaccination pro- tects against renewed vaccination is a claim sufficiently disposed of by the advocacy by Dr. Warlomont, of Brussels, of a system of vaccinization, or the repetition of the operation every four months, until the operation refuses to take any further ; and by the wail of Dr. Collingridge, Medical Officer of Health for the Port of London, that smallpox will never be extirpated until a thoroughly efficient system is established of compulsory annual vaccination. The remainder of Mr. Simon's extraordinary statement is easily disposed of by an appeal to the facts of the case. Thus, in the epidemic of 1871, amongst the patients admitted to the Highgate Hospital, 91 5 percent, had been vaccinated; and in 1881, in the same hospital, of 491 patients, 470, or 90 per cent., were in like case; and this at a time when not more than 90 per cent, of the London population was claimed as vaccinated by the Local Govern- ment Board. Thus,not only do vaccinated people take smallpox,](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21363444_0013.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
