First (-Second) report of the Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the subject of vaccination; with minutes of evidence and appendices.
- Great Britain. Royal Commission on Vaccination.
- Date:
- 1889-1890
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: First (-Second) report of the Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the subject of vaccination; with minutes of evidence and appendices. 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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![and for 1876, 84,716. 91*4 per cent, were vaccinated with humanised lymph, and only 7 62 per cent, with animal lymph. The next figures are re-vaccinations. There were to be re-vaccinated 1,079,881; released from vaccination because they had had small-pox during the five preceding years (that is under one of the paragraphs in the law) 1,203; because they had been successfully vaccinated during the five years 9,848 ; making a total of 11,061. There therefore remained to be re-vaccinated 1,068,830. Of those there were vaccinated with success 898,601; unsuccessfully 119,972 ; and with results un- known, because the children were not brought up for inspection, 6,147. 1513. At what age is the re-vaccination P—The re- vaccination is at the twelfth year of age. That is laid down by a particular paragraph in the law. 1614. (Mr. Meadows White.) Is the law a long one ?— There is a good deal of it. I was going to make a trans- lation of it, but I have not yet been able to do so. 1515. [Chairman.) It would certainly be important to have the passage with reference to re-vaccination ?— That portion of the Yaccination Law of the 8th April, 1874, is as follows: § 1. The following are to be sub- ject to vaccination : (1) every child before the end of the calendar year following the year of its birth, unless it has been medically certified (§ 10) that it has had the natural small-pox; (2) every pupil of a public or private school, except Sunday and evening schools, within the year in which the pupil has com- pleted his (or her) twelfth year, unless it be medically certified that he (or she) has had natural small-pox, or has been successfully vaccinated within the last five years. 1516. (Mr. Bradlaugh.) It would be well to have the earliest case of re-vaccination occurring under the German law. There is legislation as to re-vaccination dating back for 50 years, is there not ?—Only for the arrny^ 16]7. (Mr. Picton.) Are you not aware of the law of 1835 ?—That was not a law ; it was an ordinance, and that so far as I know did not make re-vaccination com- pulsory except under certain circumstances. 1518. Are you aware that it is inserted in the Gesetz- Sammlung fiir die Koniglichen Preussischen Staaten, which is a collection of laws ?—Yes, but it has never been considered to be a law, and has never had the force of a law. 1519. It is a legal regulation, is it not?—It is a legal regulation ; but according to all the German authorities it never absolutely had the effect of a law because it could always be avoided. 1520. Are you not aware that there are certain penal- ties enforced ?—^Yes, but the penalties were not invari- ably enforced: in fact, according to many persons, especially Schulz, who is now Director of the Eoyal Vaccination Institute in Berlin, the penalty was very seldom enforced indeed, and only indirect pressure was brought to bear. 1521. [Mr. Bradlaugh.) On that you have, I presume, no knowledge of your own except that which is derived from the writings of these gentlemen ?—Yes, but they are ofiicials. I may state that when the German Com- mission sat in 1884 one of the anti-vaccinationist mem- bers of that Commission, Dr. Boing, made a similar statement, 1522. (Professor Michael Foster.) When was the report of that Commission published .f—I could not be certain when it was published, but it must have been published about the end of 1885 or the beginning of 1886. 1523. Might we have a copy of that ?—There is a copy here, and you will find there that Dr. Boing dis- tinctly states, although he is an anti-vaccinationist, *' We had no vaccination law in Prussia before 1874. I am reading now from a paper which I wrote for the Medical Press and Circular. 1524. (Dr. Collins.) Will you kindly continue the passage and finish the quotation ?— Before 1874 we had no vaccination law in Prussia; nevertheless I believe that the thorough vaccination of the popula- tion before the compulsory law of vaccination was promulgated was greater than at the present time. 1525. It was, therefore, more complete than at pre- sent ?—The part of the sentence that yon want me to read is this: Because in former times children were vaccinated who, according to the present vaccination law, are not now required to be presented for vacci- nation. Many children were vaccinated in the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth months who at the present time Mr. Arthur F. are not vaccinated until the following year. This shows Hopkirk, a greater per-centage of vaccinated children during the M. D. first year of life than at the present time, when parents wait for the oSicial notification. 11 Oct. 1889, 1626. (Professor Michael Foster.) The whole of this is apparently an answer of Dr. Boing to a statement of Dr. Koch comparing Berlin with London, is it not?— No, this is simply on the question of whether more children were not vaccinated formerly in Prussia before there was compulsory vaccination. 1627. (Chairman.) Or rather that the children were vaccinated at an earlier age, and, therefore, that the per-centage of unvaccinated was less ; that is what I understood to be the statement ?—Yes, that is to say, during the first year of life only. 1528. He explains that to mean, as I understand, that before the compulsory law, which now does not compel vaccination until the end of the second year, people brought the children to be vaccinated in the first year, and, therefore, the per-centage oFunvaccinated children was smaller. The point was whether there was a compulsory law in Germany before 1874?—I have here a translation of a letter which I received from Dr. Koch, the head of the Imperial Health Ofiice in Berlin, to whom I wrote on the question. I asked him whether I was right in stating that there had not been compulsory vaccination in Prussia before 1874, and his reply to me was, Previous to the year 1874 vaccina- tion in Prussia was optional not obligatory. Com- pulsory vaccination dates from April 1st, 1875, in *' which year the Imperial vaccination law of the 8th April 1874 came into force. You are, therefore, perfectly right in your statement. That is from Geheimrath Koch, the head of the Health Ofiice. An important fact is that the number of vaccinations had decreased in Berlin from 1864 to 1866 very considerably, showing that there could have been no very severe com- pulsion ; whereas now-a-days the number is always on the increase, and there is very little escape. 1529. (Dr. Collins.) Your own figures apparently show that from 1865 to 1869 there was an increased per-centage of vaccinations to births in the year, from 36 per cent, in 1865 to 57 per cent, in 1869 ?—Those are the successes. In 1864 there were 25,000 vaccinations altogether in Berlin, and in 1869 there were 9,000. I have similar statistics as regards vaccination for 1883 and 1884, but it would be only a repetition of similar figm-es to those given in my answer to Question 1512. There is one table that I should like to be allowed to hand in, and that is a comparison of the mortality from small-pox in Berlin, London, and Vienna from 1870 up to 1883. (The table was handed in. See Appendix II., Table 0 : page 240.) 1630. (Chairman.) What is the source of that ?—It ia all taken from the reports of the German Commission on Vaccination. It only goes up to 1883, the commis- sion sitting in 1884. 1531. (Professor Michael Foster.) From what page are the figures taken ?—They are taken from the tables at the end; I cannot give the page; but the figures are correct. For London I have taken the figures from the report of Mr. Burt's Committee, which gives a table at the end for London. The table which I have handed in shows that, for the nine years from 1875 to 1883, the mortality from small-pox per 100,000 was in Berlin 1-7, in London 25 • 83, and in Vienna 89' 29. 1532. (Mr. Bradlaugh.) That is summarised from a controversial article which appeared in an evening paper, is it not ?—No ; the figures I gave to the evening paper, I think, afterwards. I had had the notes by me for a long time. I could not be quite sure as to the dates. 1533. (Chairman.) I understand that these are merely figures taken as to Berlin from the report of the Com- mission ; where do you get the Vienna figures from ?— Also from the report of the Commission; and I verified the London figures from the Kegistrar-General's re- ports. They are all given by Dr. McVail in his book, and I have verified them all as far as possible. 1534. To return to the vaccination in the German army, are there any further statistics that you have to give ?—In 1870-71 the mortality from small-pox in the German army amounted to 60'99 per 100,000, but in the Austrian army, which was as yet not attacked by the epidemic, it was 57 38. That is also from the tables presented to the German Commission on Vacci- nation. In the following year the small-pox mortality](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21361332_0171.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
