THE AUTHOR’S PERSONAL STATEMENT OF THE RESULTS OF VACCINATION
(APPENDIX to LEPROSY AND VACCINATION by WILLIAM TEBB)
During the past twenty-two years it has been my experience to travel in all parts of the United Kingdom, from Land’s End to the Shetland Islands, and in almost every state in Europe, from the Mediterranean to the North Cape, in countries intervening between the Tagus in the west, and the Volga, Danube, and Bosphorus, in the east; also in Morocco, Algeria, Upper and Lower Egypt, Asia Minor, Upper and Lower Canada, Nova Scotia, and most of the states and territories of North America; also in Venezuela and British Guiana, South America, in the Windward and Leeward Islands, the French and Danish West Indies, in the archipelagoes of Greece and Hawaii, the Island of Ceylon, in Tasmania, New Zealand, the colonies of Australia, and in South Africa.
In nearly all these countries I have made it my business to inquire into the methods and results of vaccination, procuring information from public officials and from intelligent private individuals, and I have hardly ever inquired without hearing of injuries, fatalities, and sometimes wholesale disasters, to people in every position in life, and these have occurred from the use of every variety of vaccine virus in use. My informants have included governors, chief magistrates, consuls, professors of medicine and surgery in Continental universities, members of legislative assemblies, superintendents of leper asylums, editors of medical and hygienic journals, chiefs of military and general hospitals, presidents and medical officers of state and colonial health departments, superintendents of small-pox hospitals, clergymen of all denominations, missionaries, heads of educational establishments, and the best informed amongst old residents in the places visited.
In one country it was my privilege to be furnished with a general letter of introduction from a minister of State (since Prime Minister), which gave me access to all the official and medical authorities. Often the fatality described to me has befallen the infant of a poor mother, who with dread forebodings in her mind has tried to shield her offspring from the vaccinator’s lancet as long as she could, and, like a fugitive slave, only surrendered to the minister of the law when overtaken in pursuit or her place of refuge discovered, or, like that of a distinguished Moslem (Suffey Bey Adem), my travelling companion in 1884 from Damascus to Beyrout, who had lost a daughter, a nephew, and a niece (vaccinated together about a year before our interview), all of whom died of the operation, after the most acute suffering. At other times I have seen stalwart soldiers and post office officials seriously injured, and in more than one instance crippled and ruined for life, by compulsory revaccination. I have personally investigated vaccine disasters at two military hospitals, one in Europe and the other in Africa, where, in one case, three, and in another case thirty soldiers ultimately died of the operation, and more than twice this number were seriously, and, in most cases, permanently injured. In Australasia I have personally inquired into a case of wholesale disaster— of acute septicemia, exhibited by terrible ulcerations following vaccination with calf lymph—to several hundred persons, and have seen the sad consequences in permanently ruined health. I have received several thousand written statements from parents, who allege that their children have been seriously or fatally injured by vaccination. I have proved beyond doubt, by personal inquiries in various countries where leprosy is increasing, that the increase is due to vaccination, and have furnished the testimonies of numerous medical authorities, and of official reports (all mention of which has been omitted from our leading medical journals), in support of these incriminating allegations. These facts have been detailed by me in the Times, Nonconformist, Echo, Leeds Mercury, Manchester Guardian and Examiner and Times, Leicester Post, Newcastle Leader, Scottish Leader, Cardiff Daily News, Gloucester Citizen, Hospital Gazette, The Tocsin, Journal d’ Hygiene (Paris), Birmingham Gazette, The Vaccination Inquirer, and other influential and well-known English, American, and Colonial journals; and some of them were quoted by me, with chapter and verse, before the Royal Commission on Vaccination, now taking evidence in London, and will be found in the third official report of the proceedings.
I may also mention that numerous facts of a sinister character were contributed by many of the delegates representing the leading European States at the International Anti-Vaccination Congresses held in Paris, Cologne, Berne, and Charleroi, the reports of which have been published and presented to the chiefs of Governments, and of Public Health Departments in all countries. Not only have the facts been submitted to Continental Ministers of State, and to successive Presidents of the Local Government Board in England, but in December, 1890, I laid them before Mr. Langridge, Chief Secretary to the Government of Victoria, Australia, and before leading officials in other Colonies. It seems to me, therefore, that, in view of these experiences, and in the presence of such unimpeachable facts, the opposition which has arisen, and is growing daily in nearly all countries, is a commendable and patriotic struggle, which should be encouraged in every possible way. The laws (often cruelly enforced), which compel the parents of this and other countries to put the health and lives of their offspring into the hands of irresponsible State officials, with the alternative of severe and not seldom ignominious punishments, are a grave national blunder, and constitute a species of tyranny wholly indefensible; and it behoves every good citizen to endeavour, by every constitutional means, in the interests alike of justice, of individual and parental rights, and in defence of the public health, and of our helpless children, to get these laws completely and permanently extinguished.