VACCINATION RESULTS.

MEAN ANNUAL RATE OF MORTALITY IN ENGLAND from SMALL-POX, and from six directly or indirectly inoculable causes, during each Quinquenniad of the 33 years, 1850—80. (P. lxxix., Table 34, of the 43rd Annual Report of the Registrar-General, 1882.) N.B.—Vaccination made compulsory, 1853; more stringently so, I867.

*Small-pox is an epidemical disease, and there has occurred but one great outbreak (1871-2), 18 years subsequent to the introduction of enforced Vaccination, and four years after the futher and more stringent Act.

**Bonchitis, though not, perhaps, directly inoculable, is often observed by intelligent medical authorities to supervene upon, or soon after, Vaccination; and it is obvious that diminished constitutional vitality will render recovery from any disease more precarious; hence the benefit derived by newly.born children from improved sanitation is nearly neutralized by Vaccination. -

***The single epidemic (1871-2) carried off 44,000 only, the general death-rate of the years being somewhat under the average of the period. There was, therefore, no loss thereby, because, had small-pox not been the epidemic, more would have died from other causes; nevertheless, we see that in the vain attempt to prevent this erroneously supposed loss in two years out of thirty, 48,000 lives are now annually sacrificed.

An earlier return—No. 433, dated 1877, entitled "Vaccination, Mortality," *

* When Mr. J. W. PEASE, the member for South Durham, introduced his Bill for the Abolition of Cumulative Penalties for Non-Vaccination, he held up this official document before the President of the Local Government Board, Mr. SCLATER BOOTH, and declared "that the President could not deny that Vaccination slaughters children in a wholesale way."

and No. 392, Session 2, 1880, disclosed similar lethal results; but both these official documents have been cautiously ignored by the medical journals. Their evil portent is, however, well known to the Local Government Board, as will be seen by the following admission from a letter to his constituents at Oldham, by Mr. J. T. HIBBERT, M.P., then Parliamentary Secretary to the Local Government Department, written in June, 1880 :—

"The Return (433) shews an increase of deaths from syphilis of infants under one year from 255, in 1847,—to 1,554, in 1875,—which, in my opinion, is one of the most unsatisfactory features in connection with Vaccination, and one which leads me to support the proposed modification of the Vaccination Law now before the House of Commons."—Lancet, July 17th, 1880.

Concerning this Return, the Glasgow Herald for March 4th, 1878, observes:—

"The document is in the form of a Return issued by the Registrar-General, at the instance of Mr. HOPWOOD, the Member for Stockport, of the number of deaths in England and Wales of children under one year of age, and of persons of all ages, from 15 specified diseases, during the three periods 1847-53, 1854-67, and 1868-75. These periods mark the three epochs respectively, of which the first was prior to the Vaccination Act, the second was when Vaccination was made compulsory, and the third when it was enforced. The average annual percentage of deaths from these diseases in persons of all ages has steadily increased throughout these periods. The ratio of increase has been very nearly one-tenth per cent, annually between the first and third, whilst the second holds a middle place between the two. The exact figures are 0.7745 per cent. of population in the first period, 0.8279 in the second, and 0.8707 in the third. In other words, the increase of the death-rate has reached very nearly one per thousand per annum from 15 selected diseases during the very years when Vaccination was passing by legal enactment from general to universal use. The 15 diseases—which are atrophy and debility (including premature birth), tabes mesenterica, convulsions, cholera, diarrhea, diphtheria, bronchitis, pneumonia, whoopingcough, erysipelas, pyaemia, skin disease, scrofula, syphilis, and small-pox----have clearly been chosen for examination as being of that class which might be expected to find especially favorable conditions for their development in a diseased state of the blood. But the theory suggested by the figures we have quoted goes a step further than this, and appears to affirm that these diseases are actually disseminated by the practice of Vaccination. The poison must be conveyed in infinitesimally small doses, yet in sufficient quantities to spread some of these diseases to such an extent as to cause a very large increase in the death-rate, especially among very young children. All of the 15 diseases enumerated are not increasingly fatal; and, indeed, the deaths from some have fallen off considerably. Those which are the worst are the following, arranged in the order of their fatality :—Syphilis, bronchitis, pyaemia (blood-poisoning), and skin-disease.
    It is no new theory that poisonous matter can be conveyed from one person to another in the vaccine lymph employed in the process of Vaccination, but it has never yet received such confirmation as in the figures which we now have before us. It is, indeed, a most serious matter to find that the deaths from the 15 diseases have increased in England and Wales from 124,799— in 1847,—to 217,707—in 1875,—whilst the population has only risen from 18 millions to less than 23 millions"

In the presence of this wide-spread repugnance, and with such evidence of its evils,*

* HERBERT SPENCER, speaking of the deplorable and increasing ill-health of the rising generation, thus expresses himself :—" We are not certain that the propagation of subdued forms of constitutional disease through the agency of vaccination is not a part-cause. Sundry facts in pathology suggest the inference that when the system of a vaccinated child is excreting the vaccine virus by means of pustules, it will tend also to excrete through such pustules other morbific matters; especially if these morbific matters are of a kind, ordinarily got rid of by the skin, as are some of the worst of them. Hence it is very possible—probable even—that a child with a constitutional taint, too slight to show itself in visible disease, may, through the medium of vitiated vaccine lymph taken from it, convey a like constitutional taint to other children, and these to others."—Education, p. 181.—1881.

the outcome of piteous experiences, the most enthusiastic pro-vaccinators will hardly deny that the system can only be kept up. by stringent coercive measures; and this coercion is more extended, and more cruel and oppressive, than is generally supposed.

Reluctant mothers are dragooned to the Vaccination Stations under threats of summonses, fines, and imprisonment. Inquisitorial and illegal visits are made in schools, and from house to house, to search out unvaccinated children. *

*One of these zealous vaccinating officials, Mr. J. G. GERRANS, M. R. C. S., (like Dr. ALFRED CARPENTER, of Croydon,) demanding a more stringent enforcement of the Vaccination Acts, wrote to a medical journal describing his own zeal, as follows :—" I have one of the largest Vaccinations in London, derived from a densely populated neighbourhood, and which I look closely after; but, though I hunt them like a bloodhound on the murderer’s trail, I am often thrown out."—Lancet, May 23rd, 1863.

Parents summoned before Justices, in the majority of cases, are denied permission to justify themselves, or shew cause for their non-compliance with the Acts. Their medical witnesses, who can certify to the dangers attending the operation, are not permitted to testify; in short, the anti-vaccinators in England, like the negro race in America during the reign of the Democratic slavocracy, have no rights which magistrates are bound to respect.

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