Mr. Elbert Hubbard on vaccination : a critical examination : a special article / [Kenneth W. Millican].
- Millican, Kenneth William, 1853-1915.
- Date:
- [1907]
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Mr. Elbert Hubbard on vaccination : a critical examination : a special article / [Kenneth W. Millican]. 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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![ing, unscientific country wench” whose “chance remark” led to “Dr. Jenner’s ‘discov- ery.’ ” Even Dr. Jenner’s sincerity is im- peached by Mr. Hubbard, not for any lack of moral principle on his part, but simply because he is assumed to have got himself into a dilem- ma, and consequently, and apparently natural- ly—it would have been “too much to expect” anything else—and indeed, almost properly, since “it is the nature of man” in a fix, he just had to lie himself out of it. But the risks from vaccination are very consider- able. This is denied, for reasons which will appear in due course. To poison the body of a healthy child with pus taken from the sores on a sick cow in order that the child shall not catch smallpox, admitting for the sake of argument that vaccination causes im- munity, is a very foolish operation. In vaccination not “pus,” but lymph, is used, a vastly different thing, Jenner particularly cautioned against the use of pus.21 He wrote : “Take the virus before the efflorescence [which indicates the conversion of a vesicle containing lymph into a pustule containing pus] appears.” And again: “I don’t care what British laws the Americans discard [Jenner was corre- sponding in 1800 with Waterhouse], so that they stick to this—never to take the virus from a vaccine pustule for the purpose of in- Wm. W. Welch. The Work of Jenner, etc., quoted above from American Medicine, June 7, 1902, p. 963.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2247982x_0066.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
