Current fallacies about vaccination : a letter to Dr. W.B. Carpenter, C.B., &c., &c., &c. / by P.A. Taylor.

  • Peter Alfred Taylor
Date:
1881
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Current fallacies about vaccination : a letter to Dr. W.B. Carpenter, C.B., &c., &c., &c. / by P.A. Taylor. 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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    But what was the sequence of events to which you so con- fidently appeal ? Let the following statistics of the three decades included in your proposition give the answer:— Londox Sjiail-pox Deaths. 185X-60 ••• ••• ••• ••• i 1861-70 8,347 1871-80 ... ... ••• ••• ••• lo,o43 Or to put it in another form, take the following extract from a paper read before the Manchester Literary and Philo- sophical Society {Proceedings, vol. 16, No. 9) by Joseph Baxendell, F.R.A.S.:— “ As the best test of the value of vaccination, I have discussed the sniall-pox statistics of London—the best vaccinated city in the kingdom —{lud compared the results for the five years 1849-63, before vaccina- tion was made compulsory, with those for the five years 1869-73, when •compulsory vaccination had been twenty years in operation. In the former five years, when vaccination was voluntary, and the number of vaccinated persons probably did not amount to 10 per cent, of the total population, the death-rate from small-pox in London was ’292 ; but in the latter five years, when vaccination had been strictly carried out for twenty years, and the number of vaccinated persons was 95 per cent, of the population, the rate was 679 [of the total mortality], thus showing the extraordinai-y increase of 132 5 per cent.” Or take the deaths in England and Wales :— Deaths from .small-pox in the first 10 years after the en- forcement of vaccination—1854 to 1863 33,516 In the second 10 years—1864 to 1873 70,458 You will please observe that in pointing out the fallacy involved in your post ergo propter luie of argument, I have not the least intention of falling into a like fallacy myself, and I will not assert that this enormous increase of small-pox mortality was caused by the increased practice of vaccination after the Act of 1854. Sufiicient for my purpose here is the statement of the fact. But if I were disposed to follow such illogical example, I might make considerable capital by deal- ing with facts in a similar manner ; as for example,—^in the last century in tinprotected London, the small-pox mortality was, say, two to three thousand per million living, while in 1871, the mortality (still per one million living) was in protected— Newcastle 6,351 ’ Darham 4,773 Sunderland 8,283 &C., &C., &C.
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