VACCINATION IN THE ARMY.

Vaccination and re-vaccination in this branch of Her Majesty’s service is rigorously enforced, not only upon soldiers, but upon their wives and children, and when a man is found to be insusceptible to the infection of cow-pox, a record is kept, and he is re-vaccinated at some subsequent period. The Army Regulations (p. 5, Section 3, Article 619), compel the medical officer to report yearly whether every man, woman, and child belonging to the regiment bears unequivocal marks of either small-pox or cow-pox, and require him to keep a register of the names, appearances, and days of Vaccination, of all patients vaccinated. Article 620 prescribes that Vaccination is to be resorted to whenever small-pox is prevalent amongst the troops, their wives, and children, not only wherever the marks of Vaccination are unsatisfactory or indistinct, or where a long period has elapsed since the date of the operation, but wherever previous re-vaccination has been unsuccessful. Article 625 provides for the re-vaccination of all soldiers’ children, wherever 10 years have elapsed since the date of their having been vaccinated. Article 628 provides that medical officers are not to make punctures in less than two places in re-vaccination, or in less than three places when the evidence of original Vaccination is indistinct, or single. The serious nature of the operation may be understood from the fact, that in some regiments it is customary to allow a week or a fortnight’s suspension of drill duty, to give time to recover from the effects of the operation. But "bad arms," according to the admissions of the men themselves, are not rare as a consequence, and some never recover. While staying at Eastbourne, a short time ago, one of the patients (a discharged soldier) in the Convalescent Home, told me that, on the re-vaccination of the men in his regiment, six of them died from the effects of the operation, and the life of a seventh man was only saved by cutting off his arm at the shoulder. In the year 1860, thirty recruits from Stockport were vaccinated at the Shorncliffe Camp, of whom 13 died within six months, from the injuries received in the operation, and Mt. DUNCOMBE, M.P.,*

*"Mr. DUNCOMBE’S resolution was for a ‘return of the names and age of every non-commissioned officer and private vaccinated in the Shorncliffe Camp during the months of February, March, and April last; the names of those who have since died the conditions exhibited in the arms of those who died; together with the number of amputations adopted to save the lives of those affected with vaccination.’ "—Lancet, June 30, 1860.

moved for a return shewing the extent of the disaster. This information was, like the disaster at Algiers, in 1880, religiously suppressed. The following is part of a letter which appeared in the Lancet for July 7th, 1860, signed a "Military Surgeon," which will throw some light upon the matter :—

"VACCINATION AT SHORNCLIFFE.— SIR,— Having seen in the Lancet of last week an article commenting on a return moved for by Mr. DUNCOMBE, respecting those who have died from Vaccination, the number of amputations required to save life, &c., at the camp at Shorncliffe, I can only say that it would be advisable to extend this return, and ask for the number of those who have died or had their arms amputated since the promulgation of an order from the late Director-General ALEXANDER, limiting the performance of the operation to a particular part of the arm, viz., two inches above the elbow-joint in front, immediately over the insertion of the deltoid muscle. The results from this unfortunate erroneous rule, have, I fear, produced an amount of injury that will never be known, as it will be exceedingly difficult, even in the present day, to procure an accurate return, as military medical men are too fully alive to the injury likely to occur to their future prospects of promotion in the service, were they found ready and willing to expose such mistakes. The irritation, inflammation, and consequent loss of limb, and in some cases of life, from adopting this rule, I myself am practically acquainted with, as I was on board, not very long since, in a case where a fine healthy young soldier had his arm amputated at the shoulder-joint to save his life, in consequence of mortification supervening upon erysipelatous inflammation of the forearm after Vaccination. I also saw, at the same time, another case, in which, although the limb was saved, it has been rendered worse than useless—in fact, an incumbrance—to the man, from the suppuration and inflammation following Vaccination. The man’s services are, of course, lost to the army."

Mr. BENJAMIN DREW, of Radford, Nottinghamshire, who was formerly in the army, writes to Mr. SCRIMSHAW, of Nottingham, that he saw two soldiers in Parkhurst Barracks, Isle of Wight, whose arms had been amputated in consequence of mortification following Vaccination.

On the 6th of March, 1883, Mr. P. A. TAYLOR asked the Secretary of State for War "whether every recruit, on entering the army, was compelled to be vaccinated, without reference either to any objection he might entertain to the operation, to the fact of his having been previously vaccinated, or to his having had the small-pox; and, if so, whether recruiting officers have orders to explain this fact before enlistment?" The MARQUIS of HARTINGTON replied, "Every recruit, without exception, is vaccinated on entering the army: no orders are given to recruiting officers to explain the regulations as to Vaccination before enlistment, but no case of objection has ever been brought to notice." *---Times, March 7th, 1883.

* The following letter, from a private soldier, appeared in the London Echo for October 12th, 1883;— "VACCINATION IN THE ARMY. — SIR,— I know there is fair play for us anti-vaccinators in the Echo; will you allow me to say a few words about Vaccination in the army? Early last March, ML P. A. TAYLOR, M. P., at my request, put a question in the House of Commons as to the Vaccination of recruits—a rather important question to me, as I had just previously entered the army. The MARQUIS of HARTINGTON said that ‘the re-vaccination of recruits is performed without reference to any objection the recruit may entertain to the operation, and no instructions are given to recruiting sergeants to acquaint recruits of the fact. No complaints have ever been received.’ I really think his lordship must have been poking fun at the recruits. No complaints, indeed! Why, anyone with five minutes’ experience of army discipline will have learnt that compliance, and not complaint, is the order. I objected to the Vaccination and some other matters in rather a practical manner, and the result is that, having proved that the law was on my side, and proving, too, that there is a wonderfully strong feeling amongst soldiers against Vaccination, my commanding officer gave me my discharge, at a time when I was brought down almost to the grave with anxiety, hard work, and insufficient food. The truth is, that very many men would object if they dared, but in the official mind’s eye the gravest calamity that can befall a soldier is for him to use his reason. No complaints! What painful irony! Vaccination or starvation; Vaccination or deprivation of wife and children, and the knowledge of their wants without the power of supplying them. "HENRY DUNKLEY."

Four days afterwards, a sentry standing on duty in front of one of the Royal palaces was interviewed:

Q."Can you inform me whether the recruits in your regiment are vaccinated ?" A. "Yes, they are." Q. "Do they ever object to Vaccination ?" A. "Why!" (looking surprised) "it’s no use objecting, ‘cos we knows it’s got to be done, but we don’t like it." Q. "Do you know of any case of injury through Vaccination?" "Do you mean ‘bad arms’ ?" "Yes." A. "Well, I often hear of ‘em; I was down with one four months myself, and had to lay by. I’ve known of two or three men disabled and discharged through Vaccination." Another soldier, of the 85th Regiment of Foot, April 2nd, said, "Well, sir, you see it’s like this, most of us object to Vaccination, and we don’t have it done if we can possibly help it."

Q."But how do you help it ?" A. "Well, when we’re asked about it, some of us say what is not true, that we were vaccinated, say, two years ago; when they let us alone." On the 19th of April, an intelligent trooper of the Scots Guards said, "he had known a number of men sent to hospital through Vaccination, where they stayed three or four months, but at length recovered." Q. "What do the troops generally think of Vaccination?" A. "They don’t hold to it, and don’t think it does any good; besides, it’s very unpleasant for 20 or 30 of us to stand, with bare arms, waiting to be done." Q. "When vaccinated, do you have to attend drill as usual ?" A. "Yes; but the arm exercise, for expanding the chest, is stopped until the arm is well."

Q."Is there any advantage in Vaccination, in your opinion?" A. "Not a bit." More recently, another soldier, whose face was deeply scarred with smallpox, and who had been twice vaccinated, gave it as his firm conviction that "Vaccination was a ——— sham." There can be no doubt, from the general dislike of Vaccination among the artizan classes, that the requirement is a cause of difficulty in obtaining recruits.*

*Mr. GRAHAM SPENCER, Parliamentary Agent, reports that a Petition against Compulsory Vaccination, signed by over 100 soldiers, was presented to the House of Commons on the 15th of last August.

The tragedies attending Vaccination are not confined to any particular class or country, and although, doubtless, as much care is exercised in the selection of vaccine virus for recruits in the army as anywhere, yet the cases of injury are frequent and distressing. Many of them have been subjected to much artful smothering, with the praiseworthy design of keeping the Jennerian prophylactic in creditable odour; but the facts have been too terrible to admit of the attempted suppression, for "murder will out." In December, 1880, fifty-eight young men joined the 4th Regiment of Zouaves, at Algiers. In compliance with the rules of the service, they were vaccinated by the military surgeons, and the whole 58, without exception, were infected, and physically ruined by inoculation with the most terrible of all diseases. The details were published in Le Petit Colon, of Algiers, and in the Paris Journal d ‘Hygiene for June 30th and August 25th, 1881, edited by Dr. DE PIETRA SANTA, a scientific gentleman, eminent alike for his ability and courage. This case was also briefly alluded to by the Paris Correspondent of the Daily News, and reproduced in the Vaccination Inquirer for August and October. The fullest details, however, appeared in La Science Libre, published at Nice, from the pen of an eyewitness, residing on the spot, Dr. P. A. DESJARDINS, after a careful medical examination of the unfortunate youths. From this narrative, it appears that on the 3oth of December, 1880, the recruits in the ₄th Regiment of Zouaves were conducted to the Hôpital du Dey, Algiers, to be vaccinated according to the regulations of the service. Two military surgeons operated, the vaccine being extracted from a couple of infants under two years old, apparently, in excellent health, in whom the lymph appeared to be genuine and normal. Those vaccinated from one child displayed no special incident calling for remark; but the 58 youths (says this medical authority writing from personal observation) who were vaccinated from the Spanish child, developed in a few weeks all the characteristics of syphilis. The marks on the arm were disquieting, and the symptoms so threatening, that the infected youths were, some ten weeks after the operation, sent to hospital. In a month, all but six were dismissed, but they were soon compelled to return, as it was discovered that the terrible disease had infected their constitutions. Dr. DESJARDINS further says: " Some had ulcers, others affections of the palate; some shewed discoloration of the skin; affections of the teeth, gums, and joints, also presented themselves to my observation, in addition to the usual symptoms of this dangerous and disgusting malady. I also noticed decay of the hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes!" Then follows a list of the names and regimental numbers of these unfortunate young men, whose health and future prospects have been fatally blighted by this State-enforced operation.

This terrible example of the effects of Vaccination, when performed under the strict and careful regulations prescribed by the military service in the French Army, has been brought to the notice of the House of Commons no less than six times. The French Minister of War, and the Minister of Commerce, have also been written to—the latter being the chief of the vaccine department in the French service—but no official admission of the disaster has been obtained, and Mr. DODSON, the President of the Local Government Board, declined to publish the correspondence he had received upon the subject with the French Government, though urged by Mr. C. H. HOPWOOD to do so. This vaccine tragedy was referred to, and vouched for, at the International Anti-Vaccination Congress at Cologne, October, 1881.*

*When cases of vaccino-syphilis are disclosed, they are always coupled with the useful medical dictum that they are of the "rarest occurrence." The following list of authenticated and published cases will shew that this opinion is not borne out by experience.

VACCINO-SYPHILIS.

The following is a list of authenticated and published cases of transmission of this one disease alone:--

Lancereaux has published the following Cases of vaccino-syphills:--

Dr. DESJARDINS writes—January, 1883—that, "several of the unfortunate youths are still living at Algiers, ruined for life by this terrible State-ordained infliction."

The United States military reports furnish numerous details of Vaccine disasters, even more terrible than the one at Algiers. [The excessive mortality among the prisoners at Andersonville, in the American Civil War, has been mainly attributed to the general re-vaccination, practised upon them under conditions of great insalubrity.] JOSEPH JONES, M.D., Professor of Physiology and Pathology, University, Nashville, U.S., 1868, says :—

"The Federal prisoners confined in Camp Sumpter, Andersonville, Georgia, were vaccinated, and, in a number of cases, large gangrenous ulcers appeared at the points where the vaccine lymph had been inserted, causing extensive destruction of tissues, exposing arteries, nerves and bones, and necessitating amputation in more than one instance. From the establishment of the prison, on February 24th, 1864, to October 1st, over 10,000 Federal prisoners died, i.e., near one-third of the entire number perished in less than seven months. These accidents led to the belief among some of the prisoners that the surgeons had intentionally introduced poisonous matter into their arms during Vaccination. No wonder they had such a persuasion, seeing that about 100 of them lost the use of their arms, and about 200 were so injured that they soon afterwards died. Though some medical officers were tried before a special military commission, convened in accordance with orders from the War Office at Washington, on the charge of having wilfully poisoned the Federal prisoners with vaccine lymph, it was shewn that the unhappy consequences of Vaccination at Andersonville were paralleled in the Northern prisons. ‘After careful inquiries,’ says Dr. JONES, ‘among returned Confederate prisoners, I am convinced that the accidents attending Vaccination were quite as numerous and severe in Northern prisons as in Southern."

And Dr. FRANK HASTINGS HAMILTON, late Lieutenant-Colonel Medical Inspector, United States Army, confesses that Vaccination almost constantly produces the same results (i.e., ugly and intractable sores), and is in many cases followed by abscesses in the axillary, cervical, and other glands. On the 26th of May last, 68 recruits were vaccinated at Dordrecht, Holland, in compliance with the usual military order. In a few days, seven of them were found to be more or less injured in the infected part, five very seriously, of whom three died after acute suffering. The Minister of War, Mr. WEITZEL, was interpellated in the Second Chamber of the Netherlands Parliament by Mr. FABIUS; the painful facts were admitted, and a circular was thereupon issued by the War Office to the effect that Vaccination would be no longer compulsory in the army. It may be here mentioned that enforced Vaccination in the Federal Army, Switzerland, was abrogated on the 26th of December, 1882, on account of "accidents" inseparable from the operation, and it is now said, that not a solitary recruit will accept the Jennerian ordinance.

It would be easy to multiply evidence of injuries and fatalities consequent upon the operation so rigorously enforced in the militaly service, to any extent, if space afforded. The question that may pertinently be asked is, Does the rite protect the soldier from small-pox? Mr. JOHN SIMON, in his evidence before the Parliamentary Committee of 1871, maintained that it did, and Dr. SEATON designated our re-vaccinated Army as a "perfectly protected population." Mr. JOHN PICKERING, of Leeds, an able statistician, examined the official documents, and found that in the 10 years from 1859 to 1868 there were 117 small-pox deaths in the army, equal to an annual rate of 1.46 per 10,000, whilst the small-pox death-rate during the same period amongst the civil population, was only 0.86 per 10,000, that is, less than two-thirds of the army rate.

The small-pox epidemic of 1870-2 paid no respect whatever to this "protected population," either at home or abroad. On March 5th, 1871, under the head of Parliamentary News, we find that Colonel WILSON PATTEN asked whether it was true that a battalion of Guards had been stopped on its way to Dublin, on account of the smallpox having broken out? and if so, whether a portion of it had been ordered to Fleetwood? Mr. CARDWELL replied that it was true that a battalion of Guards had been stopped in London, in consequence of the small-pox having broken out, but it had not yet been decided where they should be sent. Again: in the Medical Press and Circular (April 26th, 1871, p. 359), we find a paragraph headed "Small-pox in the Coldstream Guards," which reads to this effect :—

"At Dublin, a bad case of small-pox occurred in the second battalion Coldstream Guards, immediately after its arrival in Dublin. It will be remembered that the battalion was reported to be infected with this terrible epidemic, previous to its departure from London."

In the same paper, same date, and at p. 360, will be found the following:--

"We learn with regret that it has been officially reported that small-pox has broken out amongst the troops at Malta, although not at present to any alarming extent. At the last accounts, the epidemic continues to spread, and there was a talk, when the last mail left, should it not abate speedily, of delaying the return of the ships of the flying squadron."

Sir J. CLARKE JERVOISE, in reply to a question. of the Chairman, Mr. W. E. FORSTER, at the Parliamentary Vaccination Inquiry, in 1871, referred to the then existing severe outbreak of small-pox amongst the re-vaccinated Scots Fusilier Guards. In 1868, a severe epidemic of small-pox broke out amongst the soldiers in the Sheffield Barracks. The Sheffield Independent thereupon denounced the anti-vaccinators as the cause of it, and suggested that the soldiers must have caught it in the neighbourhood of the barracks. A careful inquiry on the part of the Chief Sanitary Officer, Mr. HENRY B. BATES, accompanied by Inspector KING, was instituted, and the report states— "that the whole of that district was found not only free from small-pox, but in a remarkably healthy state." The Inspector and Mr. BATES then visited the Barracks, and reported the disgusting and dangerous state of the privies. "Mr. CORBETT agreed to adopt immediate measures to abate the evils pointed out, and to call the attention of the War Department to structural defects, with ‘a view to prevent their recurrence."—Sheffield Telegraph, March 9^th 1868. Mr. A. WOLSTENHOLME, of Sheffield, informs the writer that this epidemic spread from the barracks to the civil population, and continued several years.

In the Appendix to "The Truth about Vaccination," by Mr. ERNEST HART, Editor of the British Medical Journal, it is admitted that from 1859 to 1876, there were 1,306 cases of small-pox in the army, with 94 deaths. Nor have the effects of Vaccination of the military in continental nations—where re-vaccination is practised de rigueur—been one whit more encouraging than at home. The Morning Advertiser for November 24th, 1870, reports that "the small-pox, is making still greater havoc in the ranks of the Prussian Army, which is said to have 30,000 small-pox patients in its hospitals." "Madame DE SAULCY, of the ex-Empress’s household, wrote to the Countess DE NOAILLES, 6^th of April, 1871, and mentions that when the smallpox broke out, the Minister of War ordered general revaccination in the army; but, after a short experience, he had to stop the practice, which was ascertained to have spread,the disease, and to have carried it into places where it was not heard of before."—Co-operator, May 6th, 1871. M. BESNIER (Maladies Regnates, Paris, 1872, page 28) says: "Seeking for the duration of the vaccine protection, M. CHAMPOLLION states, that of 3,563 of the military attacked by small-pox in 1868, 2,432 had been vaccinated in their infancy, and 1,131 after their enlistment: that is to say, within an average period of two-and-a-half years."

One of the most widely-circulated arguments in support of Vaccination, ‘is the asserted high death-rate from small-pox of the French Army in the war of 1870-1, as compared with the German re-vaccinated Army. In 1872, the British Medical Journal said :—" According to a statement made at the Statistical Congress, held this year in St. Petersburg, the total number of deaths from small-pox in the German Army, during the recent Franco-German war, was 263, This small mortality is attributed to the system of Compulsory Vaccination, which every man who enters the army must undergo. On the other hand, in the French Army, where re-Vaccination is not compulsory, the number of deaths—as stated by a French authority—was 23,469."

These figures were cited by Sir LYON PLAYFAIR in the Vaccination Debate on Mr. P. A. TAYLOR’S motion in the House of Commons, on June 19th, as a crucial proof of the danger of neglecting Vaccination and re-vaccination in the French Army: their presentation, in a tone of bold assurance, put all suggestions of doubt aside, and the statement of the 23,469 deaths was received with ringing cheers. Sir LYON gave for his authority Dr. LEON COLIN’s pamphlet La Variole, which he held up as evidence. But that book contains no such figures, and Dr. W. B. CARPENTER, who had already made much capital out of them for Vaccination, by sending them in a tract to every Member of Parliament, and publishing them extensively in the Press, on being pressed for an explanation by ALEXANDER WHEELER, of Darlington, has been constrained to admit that the French Army Medical Returns of the Franco-German war have no such records; in fact there are no authentic statistics of such character in existence in either country (Vide Vaccination Inquirer, Dec 1883, p.174) Much virtuous indignation has been expressed at the refusal of the anti-vaccinators to accept on hearsay these startling and improbable figures, but our caution has been justified by the event, and the distinct avowal of the French Government that no such figures exist in their official documents shews that, in this instance, as in so many others, the vaccinators have been in the wrong, and the anti-vaccinators in the right.

Dr. CARPENTER, in his original pamphlet, made his case appear stronger, by asserting that re-vaccination was not compulsory in the French Army, which assertion he has also perforce withdrawn. The whole of the army, both old and new levies, had received the benefit of primary Vaccination, whatever that may be, and the first levies it is admitted were re-vaccinated. It is, indeed, among these first levies, according to Dr. OIDTMANN—a staff surgeon—that the largest small-pox mortality occurred.

Doubtless the mortality in the French Army during the Franco-German war was excessive, and Professor DE CHAUMONT and others have gratuitously attributed this to Vaccination being less effectively carried out than in the Prussian Army, though the Professor omitted to mention, when he introduced the subject at the Newcastle Sanitary Congress, that 3,000 Prussian soldiers died of small-pox during the campaign. The true cause of this mortality was observed and explained by Dr. H. OIDTMANN, Staff Surgeon and Chief Physician to the Hospitals at Verdun and St. Quentin, in his official report :— "In my numerous marches and halts in the campaign, 1870-75, I directed particular attention to the health statistics. After the taking of Verdun, I noticed that the rooms in which the French hospital patients were miserably decimated during the bombardment, were inexpressibly close and ill-smelling—breeding-places of small-pox poison. The only German physician of the garrison being unwell, it fell to my lot to root out these filthy lurking-holes of pestilence. I was physician of the garrison staff at St. Quentin, and all the statistics of the French, German, and International Hospitals, for six weeks in succession, passed through my hands. The enormous difference between the small-pox mortality of the two armies was caused by the crying neglect of hygienic precautions in the French Military Department, and by the excessive concentration of their system of stationary sick depots, as opposed to the freshness of the hygienic arrangements of the German hospitals, and the ambulatory movements of their scattered troops. No more decisive proof can exist of the correctness of my theory—that the strength and spread of small-pox is both proportioned to, and progressive with, the fostering and shutting in of the small-pox vapour—than these statistics of the FrancoGerman War."

Dr. OIDTMANN adds:--

"Shortly before the outbreak of the war, the whole of the French Army was re-vaccinated. This general Vaccination appeared rather to extend the disease than to protect from it."

Dr. BAYARD, of Paris, writing in October, 1872, says:--

"Every young soldier on his entrance into a regiment, is re-vaccinated. There are few persons in France above 20 years old who have not been revaccinated; and it is my opinion that the 23,469 deaths were cases, not deaths."

The opinion of Dr. OIDTMANN as to the cause of the severity of the small-pox in the French Army, receives confirmation from the official reports respecting the Vaccinations performed in France, during the year 1867, and presented to the Minister for Agriculture, Commerce, and Public Works, by the Imperial Academy of Medicine, Paris. In the excellent translation by Mr. GEORGE S. GIBBS, of Darlington, and published by Longmans, in 1870, I find the following :—

"Dr. DUCHARME, 1st class aide major of the 1st regiment of Voltigeurs of the Guard, engaged with great zeal and success in re-vaccination. A portion of his report is here transcribed :—‘After the medical inspection of 1867, of the 1st Regiment, by Baron LARREY, it was decided to practice re-vaccination in the regiment, and the operation was confided to me. On the 20th of July, 1867, I attended at the Academy with 9 of the 180 young men recently placed on the roll of the regiment. I chose youths of rosy complexion, sound temperament, and free from acquired or hereditary disease. [Here follow details of the mode of operation, and an explanation of the need for proceeding with caution, so as not to cause too many men to be off duty at one time.] I completed a first series of operations on the 31st December, 5867. The number re-vaccinated amounted then to 437, when towards the end of 1868, a smallpox epidemic in a highly confluent form broke out in the regiment. This epidemic, though not widespread (The expression is "assez restreinte," which may mean not of long duration, as it is not mentioned when the epidemic passed away) made nevertheless, many victims—among others one of the infirmary assistants, who died in the Hospital.’

"To what should we attribute this epidemic, in a regiment in which 437 re-vaccinations had been performed, and where the hygienic conditions, as to space, ventilation, and food, were excellent, when in the 2nd Regiment of Voltigeurs—lodged in a precisely similar barrack situated in the same court, but on whom no vaccinations had yet been made—not a single case of smallpox existed? What is the explanation of a phenomenon so striking?"

It has been alleged that the French prisoners, in the Franco-German War, carried the contagion into Germany, but Dr. NITFINGER, of Stuttgard, in a letter to Dr. DUPRE, March 1871, says that small-pox broke out as an epidemic in Germany, in the winter of 1870-7, before a single French prisoner had entered the country.

Professor ADOLF VOGT, of Berne University, has exhaustively investigated the facts concerning Small-Pox and Vaccination, and pronounces the Jennerian system an unmitigated delusion. In an admirable summary of the whole subject, under 34 heads, we find the following relating to military Vaccinations : —

‘1st.—That during the last half-century all recruits in the Prussian Army are vaccinated—that is, re-vaccinated——on entering the service, but that during this time, 60 per cent. more deaths from small-pox had taken place than in the civil population of corresponding age

"3rd.—That during the last Franco-German War, the men in the German Army suffered twice as much as the officers, the artillery ten times as much as the cavalry, and the Hessian contingent 60 times as much as the Wurtemburg; though all were under identical conditions in respect to Vaccination; that therefore, quite other influences, than even model Vaccination, must govern this pestilence."

"4th.—That the Bavarian contingent, unexceptionally re-vaccinated, lost nearly five times as many by small-pox in this same war as the Bavarian civil population of the same age at the same time, which is subject to no compulsory re-vaccination. . . .

"5th.—That the French prisoners in German fortresses, all re-vaccinated thoroughly on German soil, suffered more deaths from small-pox than the German garrisons, whose Vaccination protection was of older date. .

"9th.—That for years past, that corps of the French Army, which was only one-fourth as much vaccinated and re-vaccinated as the rest of the army. (i.e., had four times fewer vaccinations and re-vaccinations to reckon,) had, nevertheless, fewer small-pox cases and deaths from small-pox………….."

A practice whose supporters are so amazingly illogical, ought never to have had the assistance of the secular arm. For instance, Dr. COLIN, the French medical authority before-named, admits—or at least proposes to admit—that the vaccine protection has always been temporary. The general consensus of vaccinators estimates the protection to endure, in the long run, for seven years. As the average duration of life is about 42 years, and re-vaccination is with us a comparative novelty, it follows, that for the first-half of this century, not more than one-sixth can have been protected. Our average small-pox death-rate for a number of years previous to JENNER, is estimated by Sir LYON PLAYFAIR at 3,000 per million of population: and as vaccinators usually maintain with much earnestness, that small-pox is almost entirely unaffected by sanitation, the remaining five-sixths ought to have continued to furnish five-sixths of this annual 3,000 per million between the years 1800 and 1850, whereas the Registration Act of 1838 shews that the small-pox death-rate of England and Wales, ranged from 300 to 600 per million from 1838 to 1849. Yet no one really expects our anti-vaccine provincial towns with their numerous unvaccinated children to die of small-pox at 3,000 per million, in accordance with these medical theories. Anti-vaccinators are in fact less afflicted with small-pox than other men; they owe their comparative protection to their well-known stringency in respect of sanitation, municipal and personal.

Next

[Index]