Vaccination  and  the State.
Introduced by ARNOLD LUPTON, M.P.
              Chairman: CHARLES CREIGHTON, M.D.
THE NATIONAL ANTI-VACCINATION LEAGUE

[WHALE: 3 May 2006.  80 page booklet, copy supplied by John Wantling.  Printable version]  See:  Original cover pages  Extracts

Vaccination and the State By ARNOLD  LUPTON, M.P.
Small-pox-or Cow-pox Compulsory by Law.
Exceptions  to  the  Compulsory   Vaccination   Law.
Vaccination as a Condition of Employment..
Singularity of the Vaccination Law
Reasons for Insisting on Vaccination or Small-pox.
The Remedy Worse than the Disease.
Inoculation of Small-pox.
Strange Insistence on Vaccination.
Once Vaccinated Always Safe ?
Primary Vaccination admitted to be a Farce.
One Vaccination Useless !   What Next ?
    TABLE 1 the annual mortality from Small-pox per million persons living
Source of Vaccine Matter.
Spreading Disease to Stop Disease.
Advocates of Vaccination Decline Discussion.
Spreading Small-pox by Inoculation.
Small-pox Inoculating Institutes.
Small-pox Declines when Inoculation Declines.
Vaccination Useless.
Horse-grease Cowpox.
Jenner's Theory Rejected by the Medical Profession.
Absurdity of the Claims of the Vaccinators.
Vaccination taken up by the Government.
Vaccination Made Compulsory.
Jenner Abandons his Original Claim.
Vaccination a Failure.
The Case for Vaccination Examined and Refuted.
    TABLE   II. (Admittedly) Vaccinated People Die of Small-pox.
Anti-vaccinators Refused all Means of Verification.
Vaccination Registers Neglected.
The Classification by Marks Absurd.
Total of Deaths the only True Figure.
Value of Large Marks now denied by "Authority."
All the Patients Really Vaccinated.
Vaccination a Failure in Germany.
"Authority."
The Case against Vaccination.
Epidemics of Syphilis Caused by Vaccination.
Vaccination, Mortality.
    TABLE III.  "Vaccination, Mortality."
"Calf Lymph."
Leprosy.
Onus of Proof lies on the Law-giver.
Wasted Energy.
Vaccination Useless.
Hospital Statistics.
Previous Small-pox no Protection.
Failure of Vaccination to Protect the Army.
Practical  Admission that Vaccination does not Protect against Attack of Small-pox.
Absolute Ignorance of pro-vaccination Authorities of any Scientific Mode of Vaccination.
The Number of Vaccination Marks :  no one Knows how Many.
The  Nature of the  Vaccine  Material :  no one knows  what it is !  Cow-pox,   Horse-pox, Sheep-pox, Small-pox ?
Period for which Vaccination gives Protection, no one Knows!
The Right Way to Deal with Small-pox.
    TABLE IV Deaths in England and Wales in the years and from the causes named. 
     TABLE V. Deaths in London from Small-pox.
Hospital Treatment.
Gloucester Epidemic
Case Fatality :  London, Leeds, Leicester, Sydney (Australia)   Niagara Falls (U.S.A.).
Vaccination Supported by Fables.
Compulsory Vaccination, Any-how, Any-with.
The Conscientious Objector. (Rich objector free, poor objector compelled.)
The Experience of Leicester.   }
    TABLE: VACCINATIONS AND DEATHS FROM SMALLPOX IN LEICESTER
The Experience of Switzerland.
    TABLE  VI.
India and Vaccination (see Appendix).
Experience of England and Wales.
Dr. CREIGHTON (Chairman)
    Opinions of Political Philosophers.
    The  Origin  of the Authority.
    The  Legislative  Principle.
    The Existing Situation  Under the Act of  1898.
APPENDIX.—JUNE, 1914.
Exemption from Vaccination.
    TABLE Exemption from Vaccination. England and Wales.
HOW TO AVOID VACCINATION.
India and Vaccination.
Experience of Montreal.

That VACCINATION IS DANGEROUS (as well as useless) has been repeatedly proved and is known to everyone who has inquired of the cottagers in town and country. It was amply proved to the Royal Commission on Vaccination.

So the method of vaccination practised for 100 years was altered in 1898, but the new method is no less dangerous than the old.

Owing to the fact that in recent years only 40 infants out of every hundred born are vaccinated, the number killed by the process is much less than formerly.

It is amongst the poor who don't keep nurses that fatalities chiefly occur.

There are no adequate statistics showing these fatalities, but it may be estimated that in England and Wales no fewer than 6,000 Infants are Killed every Year by Vaccination.    This is perhaps the least part of the damage.

The Great Damage is that caused to Teeth, Eyesight and Constitution, by the illness of vaccinia forced upon the infant at the most critical and delicate period of its life.

THE  NATIONAL   ANTI-VACCINATION   LEAGUE.

Smallpox and Vaccination  Mortality Returns (England and Wales).

Figures from 1905 to 1919 checked at Office of Registrar-General for England and Wales, by request of Mr, A. K. Waterson, M.P.     1920 figures given in answer in Parliament.

 New Edition, revised and with additions including the Law of 1907 and Statistics as recent as could be obtained in June, 1914.

Vaccination and the State By ARNOLD  LUPTON, M.P.

On Monday, 10th December, 1906, the National Liberal. Club Political and Economic Circle held its Sixty-second Dinner in the Committee Room of the Club.

Dr. C. Creighton presided, and Mr. Arnold Lupton, M.P., read a Paper on the above subject; as follows:

Small-pox-or Cow-pox Compulsory by Law.
One of the most extraordinary and even ludicrous laws ever passed is the vaccination law. The word " vaccination " is French for "cow-poxing," and matter taken from a cow or calf ill with the disease of cow-pox is put into the blood of human beings by the process which is called "vaccination," because the Franco-Latin Word has a nicer sound to our English ears than the word "cow-poxing," According to. this vaccination .law, it is obligatory on every, person under fourteen •years of age to have had one of two diseases, either the disease known as cow-pox,* or the disease of small-pox.** For a person born since 1853 to live without having had one of those diseases is to have committed an illegality; and so habituated are the minds, of many of the people of this country to the law, that they regard it as almost wicked for any person to desire to escape from both of those diseases. But, whilst the law insists on a person having one of those two diseases, it is illegal to give a person small-pox. On the other hand, unless a person has had small-pox it is compulsory to have cow-pox.

*Vaccination Act, 1867, Clause 16: "The parent of every child ; . . hIiiiII . . . cause it to be vaccinated."
**Ibid., Clause 20 : "If any Public Vaccinator . . . shall find that a child . . . has already had  small-pox . . . the parent. . shall thenceforth not be required to cause the child to be vaccinated."   

Exceptions  to  the  Compulsory   Vaccination   Law.
There are two exceptions to the above general rule. The first is that a child need not be vaccinated if from the age of six months to the age of fourteen years * it is so weak or so ill that a medical man will certify from time to time that it would be dangerous to vaccinate the child. The second is that the parent or guardian of a child may obtain an exemption** from compulsory vaccination if he succeeds before the child is four months old in satisfying two magistrates or a stipendiary, that he conscientiously believes that vaccination would be dangerous to the health of the child, and delivers the exemption certificate to the Vaccination Officer within seven days. Since the above was written (and to some extent in consequence of the circulation of this pamphlet amongst Members of Parliament) the Vaccination Act, 1907, has been passed. This Act relieves the parent from the need of satisfying a Magistrate. The Magistrate has simply to witness the declaration. A Commissioner for Oaths may also witness the declaration.

Vaccination as a Condition of Employment..
In addition to the law making vaccination compulsory, with the above-named exceptions, vaccination is a necessary condition of many employments. Thus, most of the servants of, the King have to be vaccinated—for example : every soldier, every sailor, every person in the Post Office. The soldiers and sailors have to be re-vaccinated when they join the Army or Navy. Vaccination is also a condition of employment as, a teacher in a great many schools, and also a condition of attendance at the training colleges for teachers. Many private employers insist on the men and women in their service being vaccinated. In the Government offices, however, a person who has had small-pox is in many cases exempt from the obligation to be vaccinated. Since the above was written, vaccination is no longer enforced on conscientious objectors in the Post Office Department, nor in the Civil Service, nor by the Board of Education. The local education authority, however, may still insist on vaccination.

* Vaccination Act, 1867, Clauses 29 and 31 : " If any Registrar . . . shall give information in writing to a Justice of the Peace that he has reason to believe that any child under the age of fourteen years ... has not been successfully vaccinated .". . the parent . . . shall be liable to a penalty not exceeding 20s."
* *  Vaccination Act, 1898, Clause 2: "No parent . . . shall be liable to any penalty under Section 29 or Section 31 of the Vaccination Act of 1867 if within four months from the birth of the child he satisfies two justices or a stipendiary or metropolitan police magistrate in petty sessions that he conscientiously believed that vaccination would be prejudicial to the health of the child, and within seven days thereafter delivers to the Vaccination Officer for the district a certificate by such justices or magistrate of such conscientious objection."

Singularity of the Vaccination Law
I have no pretensions to great learning as to the customs of other countries, either of the present day or antiquity, but I have never heard of any other similar operation being forced upon every child in a nation. It is true dial some nations make marks with a knife upon their children, but these marks are harmless, and produce no disease, and have no effect upon the blood ; and at the present day there is no country in the world where circumcision, or any other surgical operation, with the exception of vaccination, is enforced by the law of the land.

Reasons for Insisting on Vaccination or Small-pox.
A law enforcing cow-pow or small-pox for every child could only be justified by the strongest possible reasons. The reason that is generally given for vaccination or small-pox is that if a person has once had either of these diseases he cannot afterwards be attacked by small-pox. If this statement were true, it would be an insufficient reason for insisting that every person should have the disease of vaccination, because vaccination in itself, performed upon the whole nation, causes an enormously greater amount of ill-health than small-pox ever did before the disease of vaccination was known.

The Remedy Worse than the Disease.
If we take the period of sixteen years from 1838 to 1853  inclusive, immediately preceding the compulsory Vaccination Act, we find the average annual death-rate from small-pox per million living in England and Wales to be about 417. As every one knows, this was a period when sanitation was much below the present standard, and the deaths from all causes during that period averaged about 22,000 per million living per annum, as compared with about 14,500 per million living in the year 1911. But if we consider the effect of the illness of vaccination, we find that the number of births in a population of 36 millions is about 900,000 a year, or about 24,000 per million persons living. If each of those 24,000 children is vaccinated, it will be ill for approximately one month, which is about the same as if 2,000 children were ill for twelve months each. So that every year there would be per million living the equivalent of 2,000 children ill the whole time, and since life without health is not worth having, the mere illness of vaccination is equal to nearly five times the death-rate from small-pox in England and Wales during the sixteen years before vaccination was compulsory. But the effect of vaccination is not limited to the ordinary illness, because many of the children are killed by it, and others are injured for life. But it is not fair to take into account the death-rate from small­pox for the sixteen years preceding vaccination as any fair estimate of what small-pox would be in present days. Since that time there have been very great improvements in sanitation, both as regards drainage, water supply, burial grounds, supply of food, &c, wages, clothing, housing. And modern sanitary arrangements are sufficient to account for an enormous change in the death rate at the present day.

Inoculation of Small-pox.
But that is not the only reason for the diminution in small-pox. For seventy years preceding the advent of Vaccination in 1798,* and continued in the nineteenth century till finally made illegal in 1840, many of the medical men and surgeons of the period recommended inoculation with small-pox as a mode of preventing the recurrence of the disease. This system of inoculation spread the disease far and wide, with disastrous results,** and accounts for the high death-rate from that disease during the eighteenth century.*** But in many parts of the country, where inoculation was not practised, and when; the conditions of life were fairly healthy; the disease of small-pox was unknown.****

* Final Report, Royal Commission on Vaccination, page 158 : "In 1754 the Royal College of Physicians resolved : ' . . . The College thinks it (i.e. inoculation of small-pox) highly salutary to the human race,' "
**Final Report, Royal Commission on Vaccination, page 159, line 4 : Inoculation  "could only be worked at an intolerable cost of life."
***  Dr. Farr, Final Report, Royal Commission on Vaccination, page 159.
**** Sir Gilbert Blane, Connah Surgeon of Seaford, in Sussex, Cross Historian of Norwich Epidemic. Quoted by A. R. Wallace in the " Wonderful Century," page 225.

Strange Insistence on Vaccination.
What is the reason for this extraordinary insistence on vaccination or small-pox for every child, and for every soldier, sailor, civil servant,* or school teacher ? The suppositions underlying this requirement are (1) that a person who has once had either vaccinia or small; pox cannot afterwards be attacked by small-pox ; (2) that universal vaccination is a smaller evil than periodical outbreaks of natural small-pox ; and (3) that it is right, necessary, and proper for the State to impose the supposed smaller evil on the community in order to protect it from the greater scourge. Not one of these positions can be maintained.

* No longer obligatory in Civil Service or by order of the Board of Education ; see ante.

Once Vaccinated Always Safe ?
The fact that the law, when framed, only insisted upon one vaccination, and that it exempted people who had already had small-pox, is sufficient proof in itself of the original assumption on which it was passed. This was that once you had got small-pox over, you were done with it; that one attack of small-pox protected against another. One vaccination or one attack of small-pox was, and up till this day it is, all that the law asks During the last epidemic in London,* however, all the machinery of Government was in use to put pressure on people through their employers to be re-vaccinated. The recent Blue-book on Vaccination Expenses (Cd. 2,421, 1905) shows that in the four years ended Lady Day, 1903 there were 1,168,058 re-vaccinations charged to the rates of this country, although there is no legal authority to pay for anything but voluntary re-vaccination out of public funds. The law authorises the Local Government Board to make regulations in respect of the re-vaccination only of persons "who may apply to be re-vaccinated" (30 and 31 Vict. Cap. 84, sect. 8). In passing, I am glad to call attention to the ease with which an oppressive law is made still more oppressive by its administrators when there is unhappily an in-disposition to inquire into the existence of injustice. But for both local and imperial authorities conniving at these illegal payments out of the rates there would not have been so many persons subject to coercion by employers in recent years. It was the facility of coercing them at the public cost that led to this great wrong.

Returning from that digression, I repeat that the law rests on the false assumption that one vaccination or one attack of small-pox protected against another, and so was likely to free the country from small-pox altogether. We do not need to be told that this assumption was wrong. The very demand for re-vaccination, the endeavour of the Imperial Vaccination League to get a Re-vaccination Law passed, will save us the trouble of further considering that point. Both vaccinators and anti-vaccinators are agreed that there may be second attacks of small-pox, and that one vaccination is, in any case, of no use.

*1901-2.

Primary Vaccination admitted to be a Farce.
The Right Hon. Walter Long, M.P., on January 14th, 10,03, received a deputation in favour of compulsory re-vaccination on the ground of the inefficiency of the prevailing system of primary vaccination. Mr. Long, in replying, said : "As to re-vaccination, he agreed with the remark made by Dr. McVail, and emphasised by him in  a  very  interesting  article,  which  he had had the advantage of reading within the last day or two, that primary vaccination, of itself, was really almost a farce. To vaccinate children, and then to believe that everything had been done that was necessary in order to secure the proper effects of vaccination, was almost a farce, and was really almost a deception. It would be a great advantage if a well-considered system of re-vaccination at certain age's could be devised. . . . Vaccination in infancy, unless it were repeated at proper intervals, was not a Certain safeguard . . ."

One Vaccination Useless !   What Next ?
Leaving for the moment the inquiry whether there is any real ground for believing that a law of re-vaccination would prove any more satisfactory than the present vaccination law, let us see how this confession of the inefficacy of one vaccination affects the second assumption of the law—the assumption that universal vaccination would be a smaller evil than periodical outbreaks of natural small-pox. It must now be observed that it is not one universal vaccination that is in question. It is universal vaccination frequently repeated, and nobody can be got to say definitely how frequently. The majority of the last Royal Commission on Vaccination (paragraph 533 of their final report) thought parents ought to be warned to have their children re-vaccinated not later than at the age of twelve years. That recommendation is already quite out of date. The Imperial Vaccination League and Jenner Society found that interval dangerously long, and sought to reduce it to seven years, by having the first vaccination at the age of five or six on condition of having another at twelve (see letters of Dr. Bond, Mrs. Garrett Anderson, and the Dean of Gloucester in Times of April 25th, 1906), that is to say, an interval of only six of seven years. Others prefer a quinquennial vaccination; and I think all the pro-vaccinators recom­mend re-vaccination again, unless it has been done within six months, when you are face to face with an epidemic. So the protection against small-pox is no longer promised at the cost of one universal vaccination. The price to be paid is a frequently, almost perpetually recurring, re-vaccination. Is it possible that anyone can seriously maintain that this would be a Smaller evil than an occasional outbreak of natural small-pox ? After all, vaccination is a disease, and those who promote it have recently warned practitioners against regarding it as a trivial operation. Even applied to infants only, it means, in a country where the births are about 900,000 a year, a vast amount of continually and deliberately inflicted temporary illness in the infantile population follow (I much oftener than is supposed by permanent injury and death.

Re-vaccination every five years would cause at least forty times the amount of illness that was due to small-pox before the compulsory vaccination law. By way of reconciling the public to this, it is usual to draw lurid pictures of the small-pox scourge in pre-vaccination days, and to suggest that the difference between small-pox then and small-pox now is due to vaccination. It is a false suggestion and a false contrast. It is no more fair to take the heavy death-rate in London from small-pox for twenty years preceding vaccination as a criterion of what it would be now without vaccination, than it would be fair to take the eighteenth century deaths from plague as likely to recur when vaccination is abolished. It is not only the different sanitary conditions that have to be taken into account. It is the treatment of small-pox itself, the measures, apart altogether from vaccination, for dealing with it and controlling it when it appears, and above all the avoidance of the wilful spread of small-pox, in the hope of combating its terrors. As I am presently going to remind you, it was the practice of inoculation of small-pox as a preventive of small-pox which spread the disease in the eighteenth century. There is a strong suspicion that the new lymph from Germany is introducing this danger again. Certainly for years before the new lymph was introduced, and while vaccination was at its lowest ebb, there was an unprecedented immunity from small-pox in England, as the following table will show ;—

TABLE 1
Table Extracted from the Sixty-seventh Annual Report of the Registrar-General, p. clxviii. Table 25, and also from the Report of the Royal Commission on Vaccination, p. 32, showing the annual mortality from Small-pox per million persons living. Brought up to date from the Seventy-fourth Annual Report of the Registrar-General.

*It was alleged by Mr. Wakley, editor of the Lancet, in 1840, that this heavy mortality from small-pox was due to the practice of inoculation with small-pox by many medical men.
**The practice of inoculation with small-pox matter was made penal by statute in 1840.
***Law passed making vaccination compulsory.
*****Law passed directing vaccinators to call at people's homes and also order from the Local Government Board ordering prosecutions without consent of the Guardians. Exemptions granted to "conscientious objectors" under restrictive conditions.    Calf matter substituted for humanised matter.
†Prior to this date some vaccine lymph prepared from smallpox matter in England had been used in some cases.
††Conscientious   objection   to   infant vaccination admitted.

Source of Vaccine Matter.
The Local Government Board hides in mystery the nature of its present lymph stocks ; but, provided that small-pox is not spread by the continuance of variolous vaccination, the return of virulent small-pox is as little to be feared in (his country as the return of plague.

Spreading Disease to Stop Disease.
If it is not necessary to impose universal vaccination to protect us from small-pox it is all the easier to prove that it is not right and proper. But in this Circle, I think, there will be not a few who will dispute the right of the State, in any case to apply a universal disease, frequently, to protect against another, or a severer form of the same disease. To guard health by assaulting the healthy is a proposition not likely to meet with the approval of the Political Economy Circle.

There is obviously, then, a pressing question to be settled ; it is whether a law so absurd is to be strengthened and made consistent, or whether it is to be abolished.

Advocates of Vaccination Decline Discussion.
One thing even more extraordinary than the law is the trouble one has, to get this question fairly faced. The advocates are willing to make concessions to conscientious objectors, or do anything necessary to abate active hostility, or passive resistance to vaccination, on condition that Ministers and Parliament will not allow the principle of vaccination to be questioned. There is a strong indisposition to discuss vaccination on its merits, and if any medical man is so daring as to question these merits the method adopted with him, and indeed with all anti-vaccinators, is that described by Jenner himself in a letter to Mr. James Moore, the Director of the first National Vaccine Establishment, in 18010. He spoke of a new scheme he was contemplating to "serve the cause of vaccination." He wrote (April 21st, 1810) : "The great feature of the scheme is this — to place every man in a questionable point of view who presumes to inoculate for the small-pox with such a mass of evidence as will be held up to him in favour of vaccination. A general association will be formed of all the medical men in the county favourable to the plan ; and I really think, TO AVOID THE IGNOMY OF RESISTANCE, nearly the whole will come in. Some of the variola-vaccinists have already abjured their old bad habits and joined the standard before it was half hoisted." This question ought to be investigated without fear of the "ignominy of resistance."

Spreading Small-pox by Inoculation.
As the last quotation shows, the anti-vaccinators of Jenner's day were believers in another process—that process of inoculation of small-pox itself, which gave the small-pox in a mild form, but did not prevent it from spreading the infection. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, the wife of the British Ambassador at Constantinople in 1716, saw the filthy process in Turkey, and made it fashionable in England by her witty recommendation. She wrote home :—"Thousands undergo this operation, and the French Ambassador says pleasantly that they take the small-pox here by way of diversion, as they take the waters in other countries." * This system of inoculating small-pox was not at first largely adopted in this country, owing to the severity of the disease produced, and by 1728 had almost ceased. "It was revived in 1740, and in 1754 was authoritatively sanctioned by the Royal College of Physicians, who pronounced it to be highly salutary to the human race." **

*The Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.
**W. Scott Tebb, M.D., " A Century of Vaccination," page 11

Small-pox Inoculating Institutes.
Some of the leading medical men set up establishments, somewhat similar to modern hydropathic establishments, where fashionable, people congregated and were inocu­lated with small-pox, the surgeons acquiring great skill in performing the operation so as to produce the minimum amount of illness, and at the same time prescribing whole­some food and plenty of fresh air and exercise. But still the inoculated small-pox was found to be liable to spread the disease as readily as the naturally acquired small-pox. Dr. Farr says : "Small-pox attained its maximum mortality after inoculation was introduced. The annual deaths from small-pox registered in London, 1760-1779, were 2,323. In the next twenty years they declined to 1,740.   This disease, therefore, began to grow less fatal before vaccination was discovered, indicating together with the diminution of fever, the general improvement of health then taking place." The part played by inoculation in the spread of small-pox was recognised in Paris in 1763, when a decree was issued prohibiting the practice. In our own country small-pox inoculation was prohibited in 1840 on the express ground that it was spreading small-pox. This prohibition marked the final triumph of Jenner's followers over the yearly anti-vaccinators, who were for the most part medical men and others engaged in the practice of small­pox inoculation.

Small-pox Declines when Inoculation Declines.
The stumbling-blocks of perfunctory students of the vaccination question are the wonderfully rapid and world-wide acceptance of vaccination in Jenner's own time, and the contemporaneous abatement of small-pox, but the facts just stated remove these difficulties. In so far as vaccination superseded a process that was spreading small-pox, it was, with other co-operating causes of a sanitary kind, a factor in the decline of small-pox ; but that it was not in itself a preventive of small-pox was shown both-by individual failures and general experience.

Vaccination Useless.
"That vaccination is capable of extirpating the disease or of controlling epidemic waves is," says Crookshank, " absolutely negatived by the epidemic in 1825, and the epidemics which followed in quick succession in 1838, in 1840, 1841, 1844-5, 1848, 1851-2. Vaccination was made compulsory in 1853, but epidemics followed in 1854, 1855, and 1856, culminating in the terrible epidemic in 1871-72 with more than 42,000 deaths. Epidemics followed in 1877 and 1881." (Inaugural Address to Medical Society of King's College, October 26th, 1894.)

Horse-grease Cowpox.
Another and more modern stumbling-block is the notion that Jenner's method was founded on a beautiful tradition which science has in these modern days of serum treatment confirmed. This supposition does not bear the scrutiny of students of the whole question. There is certainly not much poetry in Jenner's own account of the dairymaid's prophylactic, and it was repudiated by his own professional brethren, even those who profited by his idea of substituting cow-pox for small-pox inoculation. The cow-pox which Jenner recommended, he said, was produced in the following manner (I quote his words) : "There is a disease to which the horse ... is frequently subject. The farriers have termed it 'the grease.' It is an inflammation and swelling in the heel, accompanied in its commencement with small cracks or fissures, from which issues a limpid fluid possessing properties of a peculiar kind ... In this dairy county a great number of cows are kept, and the office of milking is performed indiscriminately by men and maid-servants. One of the former having been appointed to apply dressings to the heels of a horse affected with the malady I have mentioned, and not paying due attention to cleanliness, incautiously bears his part in milking the cows with some particles of the infectious matter adhering to his fingers. When this is the case, it frequently happens that a disease is communicated to the cows, and from the cows to the dairy­maids, which spreads through the farm until most of the cattle and domestics feel its unpleasant consequences. This disease has obtained the name of 'the cow-pox.' Thus the disease makes its progress from the horse (as I conceive) to the nipples of the cow, and from the cow to the human subject."

Jenner contended that every person who had had horse-grease cow-pox was protected against small-pox, but persons who had had the other kind of cow-pox were not protected, so that when he was confronted with cases where cow-pox had failed to protect, he said it was a spurious kind of cow-pox. A careful study of the evidence, as it is given in the  writings of  Prof. Crookshank,* of William White.** of Dr. Creighton,*** of Dr. W. Scott Tebb,†of Dr. Monckton-Copeman,†† of Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace,††† and many other writers, fails to show that there was anything worthy of the name of evidence in support of Jenner's theory that horse-grease cow-pox had a specific effect on the human body calculated to prevent infection by small-pox.

* "History and Pathology of vaccination."    2 vols.
**"Story of a Great Delusion."
***" The Natural History of Cow-pox and Vaccinal Syphilis."
†" A Century of Vaccination."
††" Vaccination : its Natural History and Pathology." ,
†††" Vaccination a Delusion " (extracted from the " Wonderful Century").

Jenner's Theory Rejected by the Medical Profession.
The medical men who took up vaccination would have nothing to do with Jenner's theory of horse-pox, and thus saved the scheme from destruction. Vaccination went on receiving credit for the reduction of small-pox really due to the gradual supplanting of the old inoculation process, but in the meantime experience was shattering its claims.

It is amazing to-day to recall the original grounds on which the State began its patronage of vaccination. The petition of Jenner for a grant from Parliament (and he ultimately had two grants amounting together to £30,000) claimed that vaccination had "the singular effect of rendering through life the persons so inoculated perfectly secure from the infection of small-pox."

Absurdity of the Claims of the Vaccinators.
To people accustomed to modern methods of scientific inquiry, it is unnecessary to point out the absurdity of claiming from an experience of not more than three years that some inoculation of the blood would protect for life. No person with any understanding of scientific methods would venture to draw so general a conclusion from such a particular premiss.

Vaccination taken up by the Government.
The National Vaccine Establishment was founded in 1808, with permission to spend £3,000 a year.* This money, apparently, was chiefly spent in salaries.**  Seven vaccinating stations were opened in London, and by the year 1816 the number of people applying annually for vaccination had reached the figure of 7,771.  One of the consequences of the establishment of Government vaccination was the closing of another institution, previously formed by voluntary agency, called the Vaccine Pock Institution, of Broad Street, Golden Square. This institution gave every vaccinated person a certificate of vaccination, and engaged that if the vaccinated patient should take the small-pox, he or she should be entitled to the sum of five guineas. It is said that so many patients laid claim to the five guineas that it was not without satisfaction that a reasonable cause was found for shutting up.***   In the year 1822, the number of persons vaccinated at the National Vaccine Establishment amounted to 8,230. In 1840 the Government passed a law authorising payment for vaccination out of the Poor Rate and making small-pox inoculation penal.†   It was provided that in every Union there should be one medical practitioner, or more, appointed by the Guardians for the gratuitous vaccination of the inhabitants, with remuneration from the rates according to the number operated upon. In 1841 the Government passed a law to relieve persons who were vaccinated at the public expense from the stigma of pauperism.††

* "The Story of a Great Delusion," p. 255.
** Ibid. p. 258.
*** Ibid., pp. 258, 259.
† "The Story of a Great Delusion," pp. 470-471.
†† Ibid., p. 471.

Vaccination Made Compulsory.
In 1853 the Government passed a law making vaccination compulsory.*   In 1861 an Act was passed permitting the Guardians or Overseers of any parish to appoint some person to institute and conduct proceedings for enforcing obedience to the compulsory Vaccination Act.**   In 1867 a further amending Act was passed, and this Act is now the principal Vaccination Act.

In Scotland  vaccination  was  made  compulsory  by Act of Parliament in 1863.

In 1871 another Act was passed appointing a Vaccination Officer, also authorising a defendant to appear in a court of law by any member of his family, or any other person authorised by him. In 1874 an Act was passed explanatory of some parts of the Act of 1871. It declared that the Local Government Board had power to make regulations regarding the duties of Guardians and their officers in regard to the institution and conduct of proceedings.

In 1898 a new vaccination law was passed, in some respects modifying, but not superseding, previous Acts, giving conditional exemption of conscientious objectors,  and substituting calf lymph for humanised lymph.

The remarkable thing about this brief summary of legislation *** is its testimony that, with the exception of the latest enactment, the law not only rests on Jenner's original claim of the value of vaccination, but has been strengthened as Jenner's original claim has weakened.

* Ibid., p. 483.
** Ibid., p. 526.
*** This was written before the Act of 1907, see appendix.

Jenner Abandons his Original Claim.
Before Jenner died he had really abandoned his original claim for vaccination. He no longer said it would protect for ever, or that its protection would be certain. He said it would be as efficacious as inoculation or a previous attack of small-pox. At the same time he set about collecting cases of small-pox after small-pox, and collected one thousand cases to prove that his failures were not more numerous than the failures of small-pox to protect against small-pox. He thus gave away the very foundation of his claim for vaccination. But the State has gone on legislating on the original assumption. It will be found that whenever a vaccination law is introduced the members of the Administration responsible excuse themselves from discussing the merits of vaccination.    These they insist on taking for granted.

Vaccination a Failure.
From the earliest experiments down to the present time the history of vaccination is a record of failure. Jenner's time was fully occupied in explaining his failures,* and he displayed great ingenuity and resource in this work. Small-pox, like other diseases of its kind, sometimes increases and sometimes declines. Whenever, since vaccination was started, small-pox has declined, people have said : "See what vaccination has done for us ; it has stamped out the disease." Whenever there has occurred an epidemic, people have said : "See what those wicked anti-vaccinators have done ; by not being vaccinated themselves, they have exposed those who are vaccinated to an attack of small-pox." It is like the relatives of a man who has gone out to fight, clad in armour, and mortally wounded by a bullet which passed through his useless breastplate, attributing his death to the proximity of a comrade who had refused to hamper himself with a weight of useless armour. It is curious that the most obvious facts are those which some people find most difficult to see. For instance, it is obvious that if vaccination is a protection against small-pox, the vaccinated person has nothing to fear in an epidemic of that disease, and that if vaccination will not protect a person when he is exposed to the infection of small-pox, it is an entirely useless precaution when there is no small-pox about from which to be protected. Yet the advocates of compulsory vaccination are, as a general rule, incapable of seeing this obvious fact.

* "History and Pathology of Vaccination," by Crookshank, p. 239 (letter from Jenner) : "It has unfortunately happened that small-pox has appeared in the family of a nobleman here, and, more unfortunately still, in a child vaccinated by me." The child had malignant and confluent small-pox. Dr. William Rowley, Physician to the Marylebone Infirmary, in a pamphlet published in 1805, gave particulars of 504 cases of small-pox and injury after vaccination. "Some of the worst species of malignant small-pox which . . . have been vaccinated " (" The Wonderful Century," A. R. Wallace, p. 219).

The Case for Vaccination Examined and Refuted.
Section 1.—The first argument in favour of vaccination is Jenner's reputation—that what so celebrated a man advocated must be right. This argument has been already refuted, as I have shown that Jenner himself, in his celebrated "Inquiry," pointed out that the only vaccine matter of any use was that which was originally derived from horse-grease, while, as a matter of fact, the vaccine matter which was made popular had no such origin ; so that Jenner's authority, whatever it may be worth, is against the efficacy of vaccination.
Section 2.—The next argument is the statistical one: that since the introduction of vaccination small-pox has been very greatly reduced, and from being a considerable scourge has become an ailment hardly known. The statement is true as regards the decline in small-pox since vaccination was discovered; but the decline had begun before vaccination was discovered, and it has continued notwithstanding vaccination. The reasons for the decline of small-pox are as follow :
(a)        The cessation of the inoculation of small-pox, which was itself the chief cause of the persistency and wide spreading of the disease.
(b)        The great improvement in highways, canals, and railways, by means of which fresh vegetables and fresh meat can be easily conveyed to all parts of the country.
(c)   The enormous improvement   in drainage,  in the sanitary arrangements of houses, in the closing of graveyards in towns, in the closing of polluted wells, and the bountiful supply of pure water by means of waterworks.
(d)        The increase of  wages, the cheapening of food, and the improvement in the dwellings of the working-classes.
(e)   Increased care to prevent the spread of infectious diseases by the separation of infected persons from healthy persons, and the provision of better hospital accommodation, better nursing, and better medical attendance,

(Admittedly) Vaccinated People Die of Small-pox.
TABLE   II.
Deaths from Small-pox in England and Wales, extracted from the Sixty-seventh Annual Report of the Registrar-General, page cxxvi. Table 19, and Seventy-fourth Report, page 45, Table 20.    Twenty-seven years ending 1911.

N.B.—No search was made of the Vaccination Register before putting down a case as unvaccinated.
It is to be noted that the proportion of unvaccinated deaths to the total is about 25 per cent. And also that during the above period the proportion of children not vaccinated to the total births was about 28 per cent., showing that the proportion of deaths amongst unvaccinated is not at a higher ratio than amongst others.

ENGLAND AND WALES. TABLE II.—continued.
(Admittedly) Vaccinated People Die of Small-pox.

Extracted from Annual Reports of the Registrar-General for 1920 and 1921.

DEATHS FROM SMALLPOX

*It is probable that most of the Doubtful were Vaccinated. It is also probable that some of those recorded as not vaccinated had really been vaccinated, because the medical men do not make a practice of searching the vaccination registers, and such a search is necessary to ascertain the fact.

Section 3.—The figures of the Registrar-General,* showing that in the twenty-seven years ending with 1911,  2,505 admittedly vaccinated persons died of small­pox, prove that vaccination does not protect. The advocates of vaccination have declared, as before said, that primary vaccination only is a farce and a deception, they pin their faith on re-vaccination recently performed, i.e., within a few weeks or a few months of coming in contact with infection, and they state that the efficiency of this very recent re-vaccination to protect is proved, because they say that no re-vaccinated nurses in the small-pox hospitals take small-pox. This argument would not be conclusive in favour of re-vaccination, even if it were true, because it is a matter of common observation that nurses are not, as a rule, very susceptible to infection of any kind, and it was observed in the days before vaccination was known and since that hospital nurses generally escaped infection.** It is difficult for an anti-vaccinator to ascertain the number of cases of small­pox occurring amongst hospital nurses. These attacks are not advertised by the medical profession, and therefore it is only occasionally that the public are made aware of their occurrence. In the Report of the Royal Commission on Vaccination, published in 1896, medical men examined admitted (as shown by a cursory examination) upwards of thirty-eight *** cases of, most of them admittedly revaccinated, nurses and attendants taking small-pox.    Since that time,  similar cases have been reported in the newspapers, and it seems probable, from such figures as have been published, that taking into account the exceedingly limited number of small-pox cases, the attacks to which the nurses are subject are quite as numerous as could be reasonably expected, if it were fully admitted that vaccination gave no protection.

* Table II.
** M. Colin, of the Bicetre Hospital: "Of 80 doctors, chemists, and nuns, mostly not re-vaccinated, not one took the small-pox, while of 200 re-vaccinated attendants, 15 were attacked " : Dr. W. S. Tebb, "A Century of Vaccination," p. 232. A manager to the Metropolitan Asylums Board, in a letter dated March, 1892, says he was in a small-pox hospital ship, and visited from 3,000 to 4,000 patients some two or three times, and has never been vaccinated, and has never had small-pox : Ibid., p. 232.
*** Final Report of Royal Commission, pp. 81-85.

Section 4.—It having been conclusively shown that vaccination failed to protect people from attacks of small-pox, the advocates of vaccination then invented the theory that whilst vaccination did not prevent a person from being attacked, it did reduce the death-rate amongst those who were attacked, and they prepared and published statistics, taken from the hospitals under their charge, showing a low mortality amongst those who were vaccinated and a high mortality amongst the un-vaccinated; thus in the Annual Report of the Metropolitan Asylums Board for the year 1902, which gives statistics relating to the epidemic of the years 1901 and 1902, the mortality amongst small-pox patients is given as follows :

Fatality Rate per cent, of Cases of the Same Class.
                                                                                     Per cent.
(Admittedly) Vaccinated..............................                      10
Those whose vaccination is doubtful         ..                        39
Unvaccinated ..         ..         ..        ..                                  33
Average of vaccinated and unvaccinated, about        ......... 17
The deaths amongst the vaccinated are analysed as follows, :        

Fatality Rate per cent, of Cases of the Same Class.

                                                                                                                                Per cent
A1. Those   whose   vaccination   marks   are half a square inch, or more              ..      7
A2. Vaccination   marks  less  than  half   a square inch    ..         ..         ..                  15
A3. Vaccination marks less than one-third square inch    ..         ..         ..                   17
A4. Area of vaccination marks not recorded                                                              38

These figures are interesting, but are not conclusive, because no figures can be considered conclusive in argument unless their accuracy is admitted by both sides to the controversy. In this case, the anti-vaccinators were refused all opportunity of verifying, the classification of patients, and this refusal was contrary to the intention of Parliament. The Act of 1898 provided by Section 8 that the clerk of any sanitary authority which shall maintain a hospital for the treatment of small-pox patients shall keep a list of the names, addresses, ages, and condition, as to vaccination of all small-pox patients treated in the hospital, such entries to be made on admission, and shall at all reasonable times allow searches to be made-therein, and upon demand give a copy under his hand or under that of his deputy of every entry in the same, on payment of a fee of sixpence for each search and threepence for each copy.

Anti-vaccinators Refused all Means of Verification.
Members of the National Anti-Vaccination League applied for leave to inspect the registers relating to the hospitals of the Metropolitan Asylums Board, and were informed that these registers were kept at the small­pox hospitals, and that no person would be allowed to enter the hospitals to inspect the registers unless he was re-vaccinated. In this way the anti-vaccinators were excluded from inspection of the registers. They then applied to the clerk for a copy of the entries, offering to pay the statutory fees. To this the clerk replied that the Metropolitan Asylums Board was not a sanitary authority, and he therefore declined to give the list. By these means the anti-vaccinators were excluded from all chance of verifying the classification of the patients.

Vaccination Registers Neglected.
It is a remarkable and striking fact that whilst the advocates of vaccination, who receive large grants of public money, are continually preparing and publishing tables of statistics showing the difference in the mortality of vaccinated and unvaccinated patients, yet in no single hospital or epidemic have they made a thorough inquiry into the vaccinal condition of the patients. This can only be done by an inspection of the vaccination registers. This would settle beyond a doubt the question whether or not the patient had been vaccinated in infancy. This conclusive test, however, is seldom, if ever, applied by those who prepare the statistics in favour of vaccination. People who are accustomed to the preparation of really scientific statements will be able to estimate at their true value statistics which are prepared without reference to the best sources of information.

The Classification by Marks Absurd.
It is, however, instructive to criticise the classification given above. Here we have a table which professes to show that if the patient is vaccinated his chances of life depend on the size of the vaccination marks ; thus, if your vaccination mark is a little over half a square inch your chances of recovery are twice as good as they would be if the vaccination mark were a little under half a square inch. If the vaccination mark is a little less than one-third of a square inch, the chances of recovery are almost as good as if the mark is a little less than half a square inch ; whilst, on the other hand, if the area of the vaccination mark has not been recorded, then the patient is in a most dangerous condition, thirty-eight per cent, of such patients dying in 1902, or five times as many as those which have a mark of half a square inch and upwards, whilst those who are entirely unvaccinated die at a less rate than those who are vaccinated, but the area of whose vaccination marks is not recorded. In 1902 it was, however, worse still to belong to the "doubtful" class. These unfortunate persons died at the rate of 39 per cent., as compared with only [figure unreadable] per cent, in the case of the unvaccinated class. The absurdity of these figures is evident at a glance; but so accustomed are those who believe in vaccination to the absurd that these figures are gravely put forward as a guide.

If, however, we refer to the Report of the Statistical Committee of the Metropolitan Asylums Board for the year 1901, we find a still more extraordinary classification of the deaths from small-pox.. Thus, whilst the average case fatality of those who are stated to be vaccinated is just under 10 per cent., the case fatality of those vaccinated persons the area of whose marks is not recorded is 58 per cent., or nearly six times the average case fatality, whilst of those who are in the "doubtful" class the case fatality was 51 per cent., or more than five times the average vaccinated mortality. But if we go to the unvaccinated class, there we have a death rate of only 31 per cent., a little over half the death-rate of those unfortunate vaccinated persons the area of whose vaccination marks was not recorded.

Total of Deaths the only True Figure.
It is, however, from the total deaths that the most striking lesson is to be learnt.  The average mortality of about 17 per cent, is about the same as the average mortality in small-pox cases before vaccination was known.* As 70 per cent. of the cases in this hospital were admittedly vaccinated, these figures are conclusive proof that vaccination has not reduced the fatality rate in the hospitals.

* Final Report, Royal Commission on Vaccination, paragraphs 47, 54, and 53.

Value of Large Marks now denied by "Authority."
It is also important to notice that whilst in the above classification great importance is attached to the area of the scars made by vaccination on the arms of the patients, the value of large marks is entirely contrary to the opinion of Jenner, the originator of vaccination, who maintained that one little puncture was quite sufficient, whilst the Local Government Board still gravely demands four large marks to be made; but in the year 1901 Dr. Monckton-Copeman * discovered (and so have other distinguished pro-vaccinators)** that the area of the marks is unimportant, and that with proper treatment of the vaccinated person the marks may be almost, if not quite, invisible.

* Vaccination Enquirer, May 1st, 1905, reports Dr, Monckton-Copeman, in a paper read before the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society of London, December, 1901 : "When every care has been taken . . . the scarring of the skin which remains may be astonishingly slight . . . the huge and deep scars . . . were caused by micro-organisms other than that specific to vaccinia . . . and are not evidence of any equivalent degree of immunity against the infection of small-pox."
** Dr. G. Kingsford Barton, in the British Medical Journal, November 30th,. 1901 ; the Hospital ; the Cleveland Journal of Medicine, U.S.A. ; the Lancet, April 28th, 1900.

All the Patients Really Vaccinated.
There is a third comment to be made on these classifications of the Metropolitan Asylums Board. It would appear from the Reports*  that as a matter of fact the whole of the small-pox patients in their hospitals had been vaccinated. This is shown in the elaborate tables given, but in the Summary every patient is put in the unvaccinated list who was not known to have been efficiently vaccinated at least fourteen days before symptoms of small-pox were observed. But, considering that all these patients were, as it would appear from the tables, actually vaccinated, either what is called successfully or unsuccessfully, it would have been better not to classify 2,278 as unvaccinated. If the medical men were of opinion that vaccination was no good, why did they vaccinate these poor people, and so give them two diseases to fight—cow-pox as well as small-pox ? And if they thought that vaccination did the patient good, why do they classify them as unvaccinated ? This is another instance of the absurd predicaments in which the pro-vaccinator finds himself when he has to deal with the actual facts.

* Metropolitan Asylums Board Annual Report, 1901, pp. 113-117; 1902, p. 250B.

Section 5.—The next argument in favour of vaccination is derived from file experience of Germany.   "Look," they say," to Germany, where small-pox has been stamped out.    Look at the German Army,  where no soldier ever dies of small-pox. Read their drastic laws for vaccination and re-vaccination, and then deny, if you can, the beneficial effects of vaccination."   Here we meet again our old friend the post hoc mistaken for the propter hoc. Germany has drastic vaccination laws, and very little small-pox, therefore vaccination is good and necessary. The answers to this argument are numerous and complete. In the first place, what is the use of being vaccinated as a protection against small­pox if there is no small-pox against which to be protected ? What is the use of a man's wearing a bullet­proof coat if there are no bullets flying about to prove the value of the coat ? He might just as well go about in evening dress. The value of vaccination can only be tested when there is small-pox infection in the vicinity. Such a test is made when British troops go to India, and to towns where small-pox is always, or nearly always, to be found; the value of the vaccination and re-vaccination they have undergone is tested. Now, during the twenty years 1881-1900 inclusive, the average strength of the British Army in Egypt and India was 69,751. Out of these men, 1,149 were attacked with small-pox, and 113 died, giving a case fatality of 10 per cent. These troops are all picked men in the prime of life, well fed, well clothed, well housed, well washed, well exercised, and well disciplined, and all are vaccinated, yet the fatality per 100,000 was eight times as great amongst these troops as it was in the town of Leicester during the same period, where, there was comparatively little vaccination. This is one answer to what is called the argument from Germany. Let the well-vaccinated German troops go to India and Egypt, and they also will be liable to small-pox.

But it may be asked,  "How is it that there is so little small-pox in Germany ? " The answer to it is two-fold. In the first place, there is small-pox in Germany, and if we exclude the seaport towns of England from consideration, there is very little more small-pox in England than in Germany. The statistics seem to show that in England infection is more likely to be found in a seaport town than in an inland town, presumably because the infection may be brought from the East Indies by ships.

If we take the case of Berlin,* which is an exceedingly well vaccinated town, we find that, leaving out the epidemic years of 1901-2, there is more small-pox per 100,000 persons in Berlin than in London, and there is good ground for leaving out the epidemic year of 1901-2 from London because just before that epidemic began the medical advisers of the Local Government Board** had distributed vaccine lymph which originated from the corpse of a man who had died of small-pox.

The originating stock of lymph now in use has been got from Germany.***

There is, however, another explanation of the freedom of Germany from small-pox. Since the great epidemic of 1871-2 the Germans have had drastic laws, efficiently carried out, for isolating small-pox patients, and in order to facilitate the isolation of small-pox, patients from the rest of the community they have paid the wages of a workman in whose family there was a small­pox case, so that he could stay at home. Similar care in other places has proved effective. The Germans also-initiated great sanitary reforms in household arrange­ments and drainage.

* The Annual Summary of the Registrar-General gives the deaths from small-pox in London and in Berlin for the nine years ending with 1912 as follows :—
 London.                     Berlin.
1904... .. 25                    ----
1905..    10                        1
1906..     — ..                 16
1907       —                      1
1908..     —                      1
1909        2                       1
1910  ..    ---                     6
1911        9                 ..    6
1912        1                       4
Totals     47                     36
The population of London was 4 1/2 millions, and that of Berlin 2. If Berlin had been as populous as London, the total deaths would have been 81, or nearly 72 per cent, more than in London.
** Dr. Monckton-Copeman, Lecture at Victoria University, Manchester, April 25th, 1904.
*** Letter from President Local Government Board, dated July 1 4th, 1906, to Sir William Collins : " The director of the Board's Glycinerated Lymph Establishment obtained as stock for starting his calf-to-calf vaccinations lymph from Cologne."

Vaccination a Failure in Germany.
There is absolute proof that vaccination in Germany was not effective to prevent small-pox, because vaccination has been compulsory in Prussia for the last seventy years. In 1871 Dr. Seaton said to the Committee on Vaccination : "Q. 5,608 : I know Prussia is well protected " ; and the general medical opinion was expressed thus in an article in the Pall Mall Gazette, May 24th, 1871 :
"Prussia is the country where re-vaccination is most generally practised, the law making the precaution obligatory on every person, and the authorities conscientiously watching over its performance. As a result, cases of small-pox are rare."

As a matter of fact; however, during the twenty-four years preceding 1871 there had been a much greater small-pox mortality in Prussia than in England. Almost immediately after Dr. Seaton made the above statement the small-pox broke out in Prussia, and killed in 1871-2 125,000 people, nearly all of whom had been vaccinated. The experience of Germany, therefore, demonstrates the failure of vaccination and the success of sanitation.

Referring to cases in Germany, Creighton mentions that "In Bavaria, in 1871, of 30,742 cases of small-pox, 29,429 were in vaccinated persons."  In reference to the effect of re-vaccination in Germany, Creighton says : "The Bavarian contingent (of the army), which was re-vaccinated without exception, had five times the death-rate from small-pox in the epidemic of 1870-1 that the Bavarian civil population of the same ages had although re-vaccination is not obligatory among the latter." 

"Authority."
Section 6.—Perhaps the chief argument used in favour of vaccination is that of "authority." It is said that the medical profession are in favour of vaccination, that they know all about it, and it is folly for anyone who has not been medically trained to have an opinion on the question.

I would suggest that a real authority is a man who has devoted some years of his life to the study of the vaccination question and who is unbiased by any pecuniary advantage or professional sympathy in the conclusions at which he arrives.

If such is the standard of authority then "authority " is on the side of the anti-vaccinators. We have the opinion of the late Dr. Collins, who was a public vaccinator, but who resigned that appointment because he considered vaccination did great harm and no good, and he wrote a book to prove his case. We have the opinion of Dr. Creighton, who was employed by the publishers of the "Encyclopaedia Britannica " to write an article on the subject of Vaccination ; he thereupon made a careful study of the question, and came to the conclusion that vaccination was not only useless, but dangerous. There is Professor Edgar Crookshank, who has published two ponderous volumes on "The History and Pathology of Vaccination," a work which he undertook in order to demonstrate the scientific basis of vaccination ; but the result of his inquiry was to show that there was no scientific basis for the practice, and he expressed the opinion in his book that the practice would fall into desuetude.*  Then we have the opinion of Dr. Walter Hadwen, of Gloucester, who has made a special study of the question of vaccination, and who also has decided that it is both useless and dangerous. Then we have the opinion of Sir William Collins, a medical man of the highest eminence, knighted on the occasion of the King's coronation, who also considers that vaccination is a bad thing. Then we have the opinion of Alfred Russel Wallace, LL.D. Dublin, D.C.L. Oxon., F.R.S., &c, that "Vaccination (is) a Delusion, its penal enforcement a Crime." The names I have mentioned above constitute, indeed, an authority worthy of respect.

*  "History and Pathology of Vaccination," by E. M. Crookshank, M.B., Vol. I., p. 466 : " It is hardly probable that the futility of the practice will be generally acknowledged in our generation, though nothing would more redound to the credit of the profession."

7.—Age Incidence.—One of the main arguments of the pro-vaccinators is that whilst one hundred years  ago young children were the chief sufferers from small-pox, at the present time young children enjoy comparative immunity. They argue that this is due to vaccination. On the other hand, the Registrar-General calls attention to the number of deaths among young children from chicken-pox, as certified, and he points out that since chicken-pox is not a dangerous disease, they are probably really cases of small-pox.  It may also be observed that during the small-pox epidemic of 1871-2, the number of children under ten years of age per million living who died was greater than the numbers who died in the epidemics of 1848, 1851 and 1852. It may further be remarked that if vaccination is the reason why comparatively few children take the small-pox, why is it that re-vaccination does not prevent our soldiers from taking the small-pox ? It may further be noted that children even when the vast majority of them were vaccinated, have freely taken the small-pox. For instance, the Report of the Metropolitan Asylums Board fof the year 1902 shows that 1,225 children under ten years of age were treated for small-pox in that year out of a total of 7,916 patients. This shows that out of every 100 patients more than fifteen were children under ten. On reference to the statistics of the Registrar-General,* we find that in England and Wales the total number of persons of all ages in the year 1901 was 32,527,843, and the total number of children under ten years of age was 7,203,999, or about 22 per cent, of the total population ; so that even without making any correction for chicken-pox cases, it cannot be said that children have any striking immunity from attack. Of course, the pro-vaccinators will reply that the bulk of the children in the small-pox hospitals were unvaccinated, but this is a statement which they have not thought it worth while to substantiate by reference to the vaccination registers, and the National Anti-Vaccination League have more than one proof that the classification made in the hospitals is not to be accepted without such verification.**

* "Census of the British Empire, 1901," p. 12, Table IV.
** Mr. Alfred Milnes, M.A., in his masterly paper, printed in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Vol. LX., Part III., September, 1897, shows conclusively that the reduction in infant mortality is entirely due to improved sanitation, children being peculiarly susceptible to the effect of insanitary conditions. He has extracted from the 45th and 55th Reports of the Registrar-General the annual average death-rate per million living in the decade 1871-80 and in the decade 1881-90. For the towns of Whitechapel and Hampstead, averaging these two decades, it appears that the mortality for all ages is about 7,300 per million living greater in Whitechapel than in Hampstead, while for those under five years old the mortality of Whitechapel is about 37,500 per million living more than the mortality in Hampstead, showing that the conditons adverse to life in Whitechapel are in the case of infants under five years five times more fatal than they are upon the population taken as a whole. These figures show that improved sanitation is quite sufficient to account for the reduced fatality from small-pox in children.

The Case against Vaccination.
The case against the legal imposition of vaccination may be stated under the following heads :
1.—It is an unnatural interference with the blood of a human being. There is not sufficient experience of its ultimate effect on the human race, and therefore it is a wrong thing to do.
2.—The vaccination of infants should never be attempted, because it is difficult enough for a child to survive in any case, and therefore wilfully to introduce an ailment is a serious mistake. An illness in infancy frequently has a permanently deteriorating effect. It may stop the proper growth and development of the teeth ; it may injure the eyes; it may interfere with the development of the body and the mind. No person should wish to make a baby ill, yet that is exactly what vaccination does, and unless the baby is made ill vaccination has not been properly performed. From Jenner downwards, it is laid down by vaccinators that one of the symptoms of efficient vaccination is "constitutional disturbance." "Constitutional disturbance" is medical language for illness.*

 *  "System of Medicine." By Prof. Dr. D. T. Clifford Allbutt (Macmillan & Co., 1897). Effects of Vaccination, Vol. II., pp. 562-565. The ordinary effects of vaccination are described as follows :—"Slight rise of temperature about third day, followed by remissions, and the pyrexia (feverishness), if any occur, reaches its maximum generally before the eighth day ; eruptions such as erythema (redness), roseola (rash), urticaria (nettle rash),  may accompany even the mildest and most favourable cases of vaccination. Among the more usual complications, headache (in adults and elder children), lassitude, irritability, sleeplessness, disturbances of the digestive system, such as anorexia (loss of appetite), vomiting, catarrhal diarrhoea, and possibly during the onset of the vaccinal fever rigors may occur in adults and the re-vaccinated and convulsions in infants, bronchial catarrh or slight temporary albuminuria.

3.—In addition to the ordinary and necessary illness of vaccination, there is the extraordinary and unintended illness which frequently results from the operation.* The anti-vaccinators have called attention to the danger of vaccination ever since it began. Their outcry has been pooh-poohed, but the Royal Commission which sat to investigate the case justified the outcry of the anti-vaccinators, and as a result of their report the vaccination law of 1898 was passed, which entirely altered the System of vaccination. It is now generally admitted that under the system of vaccination practised for one hundred years, with the sanction and ardent support of medical authority, syphilis and other horrible ailments were communicated to human beings, and these were not isolated cases, but numerous cases. Some of these cases are fully set out by Creighton in his article on "Vaccination" in the ninth edition of the " Encyclopaedia Britannica."

* Ibid. Among "the more usual complications, cutaneous eruptions," "multiplication of vesicles," " eneralised vaccinia," "vaccinia gangrena," "vaccinia haemorrhagica," "urticaria," "lichen urticatus," "erythema multiforma,"  roseolus papula vesicula pustula bulbous eruption, eruptions resembling those of measles and scarlet fever, "roseolus and other eruptions common to both"  vaccinia and syphilis ; "eczema," "psoriasis," " pemphigus," "local gangrene," impetigo contagiosa, tinea tonsurens, furunculosis, glandular abscess, cellulitis, erysipelas, septic infections, tetanus purpura, syphilis, lupus ? tuberculosis ? leprosy ? cancer ? epizootic disease ? Thus Creighton states that "the real affinity of cow-pox is not to small-pox but to the great-pox ; the vaccinal roseola is not only very like the syphilitic roseola, but it means the same sort of thing."

Epidemics of Syphilis Caused by Vaccination.
He gives a list of about twenty epidemics of syphilitic infection after vaccination in various countries.  He says :   "Attention was drawn to these cases because they occurred in groups, varying in number from ten to 100 or more, which made considerable stir, especially in country districts. ... In the Third Report of the Clinical Hospital of Manchester, Whitehead states the result of his inquiries on post-vaccinal illness in children. Setting aside . . . 'the statements of mothers,' he admits as truly post-vaccinal thirty-four cases of syphilis or pseudo-syphilis. This report was published in 1859; but when Jonathan Hutchinson published his first series of London cases in 1871, the subject was considered to be quite new."

Facts as to syphilis produced by vaccination are also recorded by this eminent surgeon.

Vaccination, Mortality.
The late Mr. Hopwood, K.C., M.P., obtained from Parliament a well-known Return, headed "Vaccination, Mortality," showing deaths from fifteen specified cases before and after vaccination became obligatory. A certain amount of controversy has arisen as to the inferences to be legitimately drawn from this Return. The Right Hon. Walter Long, M.P., when asked to bring the Return up to date, sheltered himself behind some critical remarks in the Majority Report of the Royal Commission on Vaccination. As the same Commission acknowledged that syphilis, and results resembling those of syphilis and with difficulty distinguishable from them, had been communicated by vaccination (notwithstanding the stubborn denial by the Medical Department of the Local Government Board for many years that such results were possible), I venture to give an extract from the Return, and especially to call attention to the columns showing the deaths from syphilis.

TABLE III.
The following Table is extracted from the above-mentioned Parliamentary Return, dated August 14th, 1877 (433), which is headed : "Vaccination, Mortality." It deals with the following diseases: Atrophy and Debility (including Premature Birth), Tabes Mesenterica, Convulsions, Cholera, Diarrhoea, Diphtheria, Bronchitis, Pneumonia, Whooping Cough, Erysipelas, Pyoemia, Skin Disease, Scrofula, Syphilis, and Small-pox.

This table gives a terrible record of the great increase in deaths from this horrible disease following upon the compulsory infliction of vaccination on the people.    It shows that the deaths from syphilis amongst the babies increased six-fold, whilst the population only increased one-quarter, in other words, the death-rate from syphilis amongst babies was increased four-fold. Nor is it likely that this table in the least degree exaggerates the deaths from infantile syphilis. The tendency amongst medical men would rather be to name some other disease as the cause of death, if it were possible to do so with accuracy. The facts given in this table are sufficient of themselves to condemn vaccination, and, indeed, the system of vaccination which had been practised for one hundred years is now universally condemned and aban­doned in the British Isles.

"Calf Lymph."
But it 'may be said that this is a tale of the past; that, having found out their mistake, the profession have substituted an effectual remedy in the shape of " pure glycerinated calf lymph." On whose authority are we to accept this new kind of vaccination ? On the authority of the same body of men who have been proved to be wrong for the past hundred years ? As a matter of fact, the so-called " accidents of vaccination " are still frequently occurring. It was after the intro­duction of the new lymph that the following case occurred : On March 3rd, 1900, an inquest was held by the coroner at the Sherwood Hotel, Normanton, Derby, on the body of Joseph Donovan.' Deceased was twenty-one years of age. He enlisted at the end of December, 1899, in the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry. He was vaccinated at Pontefract on January 3rd, 1900, by the regimental surgeon, Dr. Clapp, with glycerinated calf lymph. He was never afterwards free from pain. ^ He had a swelling under the arm, which extended to the chest. The report sheets were marked, " Sick from Vaccination." The following morning a rash broke out from his forehead to his knees. Five doctors attended him. He vomited a large quantity of blood and fleshy , substances. He became totally blind, his eyelids coming off whilst being bathed. He died, being eaten away by disease about the nose, eyes, mouth, chin, and other parts of the body.    Up to the time he was vaccinated he was a strong, healthy young fellow, and his family are all healthy. Dr. Luce, who attended him, said that the case was one of acute pemphigus, and might have been caused by vaccination. Two other cases vaccinated by Dr. Clapp were also very ill. Dr. Luce also stated that he had a case of illness resulting from the same calf lymph as that used by Dr. Clapp.*

* Two recruits, named Geall and Morriss, were vaccinated at Caterham Barracks in November, 1906, and died within ten days ; the medical certificate in the case of Geall gave blood-poisoning as the cause, in the case of Morriss it was given as scarlet fever, but the symptoms were the same as those of Geall ; the suggestion of scarlet fever is the usual medical defence of vaccination.

I will now mention a few cases that have recently come within my personal knowledge.

In the spring of 1905 in a village in the Parliamentary Division of Sleaford, a child seven months old was vaccinated, contrary to the wishes of the parents, who could not afford either to apply for an exemption or to pay a fine for non-vaccination.    The child died in four days.

In the autumn of the same year, in another village in my constituency, a little child was vaccinated. It shortly afterwards became very ill. A great part of its arm and the side of its face were eaten away, the child suffering great torments, and then it died, from the results of vaccination.

In the year 1904, at a village in the Sleaford Division, my wife saw a little child which had been recently vaccinated. Matter was running from both eyes, and the child was suffering great pain. In 1905 my wife again visited the same cottage, and she there saw the same child. The matter had ceased running from the child's eyes, but the nerves of the eyes had been so injured that the eyes were perpetually dancing to and fro.

During the epidemic of small-pox in London, 1901-2, a relative of mine was vaccinated, and as a result became ill for six months, and has never been entirely well since.

Another relative of mine was vaccinated about the same time.   The arm swelled up, and was terribly inflamed.

These five cases of vaccination by "pure glycerinated calf lymph," which have just accidentally come within my experience, do not give me confidence that the present system of vaccination is less dangerous than the system which was abandoned in 1898 after being. defended by the Local Government Board for many years.

4.—The Registrar-General's Returns give the number of deaths certified by medical men to be due to vaccination—and the number so given is for the thirty-one years ending with 1911—1,154. It must, however, be borne in mind that the ordinary practitioner considers it to be his duty, so far as possible, to avoid giving certifi­cates calculated to bring vaccination into disrepute. When any person dies, there is generally a complication of ailments, and any one of these may be selected by the medical man as the cause of death. He is not necessarily obliged to give the orginal cause of the illness.

5.—In addition to the deaths caused directly by vaccination, there are a great number caused through other diseases promoted by vaccination.*

* Sir James Paget, the eminent surgeon, in his lectures in 1863 on inflammation, said : "The progress of the vaccine or variolous infection of the blood shows us that a permanent morbid condition of that fluid is established by the action of these specific poisons on it."
    The Local Government Board in 1897 revoked its prohibition of the use of lymph containing even the smallest admixture of blood, and all lymph now used contains blood ; this blood may have specific tendencies.
    Dr. E. C. Seaton, Medical Inspector to the Privy Council, in his semi-official Handbook on Vaccination, published in 1868, quotes (p. 357) from Ceely's opinion on calf lymph "because there is no one who has nearly the knowledge that he possesses of the disease of the cow and of its transplantation to the human species." He quotes Ceely as saying that: "So far from being likely to produce fewer ailments and cutaneous eruptions in the predisposed, he knows from his experience that it would, as being more irritating, produce more."
    Mr. J. Jackson Clarke, M.B. (Lond.), F.R.C.S., &c, the distinguished surgeon, when recently describing experiments in vaccination on the cornea, refers to the resulting "now well-known bodies " which "recall the bodies Russell described in cancer in 1890." Mr. Jackson Clarke further states that the bodies seen in the vaccinated cornea are closely similar in their appearance to those described as protozoa in cancer.
    General Phelps, in a paper read at the Glasgow meeting of the National Anti-Vaccination League, held in November, 1903, says : " Monckton-Copeman and Mann, writing on vaccine lesions in skin, observes : 'Clarke rightly points out that many cells appear similar to those found  in cancer.' "

There is no doubt, that cancer has been increasing with extraordinary rapidity. It is generally impossible to prove that any particular case of cancer is caused by vaccination. On the other hand, it is case for grave suspicion.* Some people trace a statistical connection between the increase of cancer in Ireland and the adoption of the modern system of vaccination with calf lymph.  It is urged against the possibility of vaccination being a cause of cancer that the deaths from cancer are chiefly amongst middle-aged -people; but it must be borne in mind that during the various small-pox scares a great number of middle-aged people have been re-vaccinated, and it must also be remembered that the tendency to a disease, once implanted in the blood, may assert itself at a long interval after such plantation.**

* General Phelps, in the above-mentioned paper, quotes figures from the Special Report on Cancer in Ireland, published as a supplement to the 38th Annual Report of the Registrar-General of Ireland, showing that the mortality from cancer in Ireland has increased very much more rapidly in the last twenty years than it did previously, and this greater increase is coincident with permission to use calf lymph for vaccination. Referring to the medical rejoinder that cancer chiefly attacks the middle-aged and old, and that this increase is chiefly in people of 45 years and upwards. General Phelps answers that as a matter of fact the percentage of increase is greatest in those under 15 ; and it must also be borne in mind that there is an enormous amount of re-vaccination, caused by the boycott of unvaccinated people by the Government services.

** "System of Medicine," by Professor Dr. Clifford Allbutt, Vol.II., p. 622 : Cases of Lupus believed to originate in vaccine scars, five, ten, eighteen, and thirty-four years after vaccination.

6.—It is interesting to consider what is the nature of the stuff that is put into the blood of babies under the vaccination law. The "pure calf lymph" is what I call pus, but whatever name is given to it there is no doubt that it is matter taken from a pustule. In order to obtain this matter a calf is laid upon the table and securely fastened down, its belly is shaved, and then about 150 cuts are made—an operation which some people consider very cruel. Into these wounds matter from another diseased calf is rubbed, and, as a result, pustules grow from each wound. When these pustules have fully developed the calf is again strapped down on the table, and the pustules are scraped off—another operation which would seem to be very cruel. The matter thus obtained is pounded in a mortar, and afterwards strained through a sieve. It is subsequently mixed with glycerine and becomes the "pure glycerinated calf lymph " of the trade. According to all analogy this is a very dangerous compound to put into the human blood. It is well known that pus, when put into the blood, often acts as a deadly poison. Medical men say that there is no pus in the lymph, but they give no guarantee. If we refer to the columns in the preceding table (3) headed "Vaccination, Mortality," showing the deaths from syphilis, we see that between the year 1853 (when vaccination was made compulsory) and the year 1875 the deaths from that cause of infants under one year old multiplied four­fold. It is hardly possible to avoid the conclusion that this slaughter of the innocents was in a great measure due to vaccination.

7.—It is now said that the danger of infecting people with syphilis by means of vaccination is obviated by the introduction of calf lymph,* but this was a misleading assurance given by the Government, in 1898, because it was shown to the Royal Commission, and is admitted in the Report, that symptoms difficult to distinguish from those of that disease are producible by calf lymph. This somewhat disagreeable, but surely vitally important, subject is dealt with in both majority and minority reports in a way which will convince most impartial inquirers that the continuance of compulsory vaccination on such a misleading assurance as I have referred to, throws a great responsibility on the Government and on the Parliament of 1898. It is well known that Jenner experimented with cow-pox upon human beings, but found it such .a dangerous operation that he gave up the practice.    We, are now reverting (theoretically at least) to the practice discarded by Jenner, as too dangerous but reducing the danger by the addition of glycerine, so as to dilute the poisonous matter.**

* "Cow-pox and Vaccinal Syphilis," by Dr. Charles Creighton, M.D., p. 155. " The real affinity of cow-pox is not to the small­pox but to the great-pox. The vaccinal roseola is not only very like the syphilitic roseola, but it means the same sort of thing. The vaccinal ulcer of every-day practice is to all intents and purposes a chancre, that is apt to be an indurated sore when excavated under the scab. When the scab does not adhere it often shows an unmistakable tendency to phagedena."

** It is, however, generally believed that the vaccination advisers of the Local Government Board have in a great measure secretly given up cow-pox, and to some extent at least use small­pox matter as the less dangerous of the two diseases.

Leprosy.

8.—One of the most horrible results of vaccination has been the spread in some countries of that most terrible of all human maladies—leprosy. This is set out with great learning and research by Mr. William Tebb, in his book entitled "The Recrudescence of Leprosy." In this he shows how leprosy was spread by vaccination in the Sandwich Islands, South Africa, India, * West Indies, Brazil, &c. There is reason to believe it is still being spread by this process, and if so, it is sad to think that under the guise of science our medical men are spreading this most terrible disease in tropical and sub­tropical countries.

* "The Recrudescence of Leprosy," by W.. Tebb. (Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1893.) In a paper read before the Calcutta Microscopical Society, December, 1890, Dr. W. J. Simpson said it was certain that leprosy was on the increase. The Lahore Civil and Military Gazette of May 30th, 1891, has the following article referring to leprosy and the European population in India : "Leprosy seems to have obtained a terrible hold over our white brethren and sisters in India, many of whom are hiding away, unknown and forgotten, in the thickly-populated slums and by­ways of our large cities. I could conduct my readers to godowns and huts where English men and women are to be found in Calcutta in a horrible condition, some in the last stage of the disease."

Onus of Proof lies on the Law-giver.

But is it necessary or right that the anti-vaccinist should be called to prove up to the hilt his case of injury from vaccination ? The action of Parliament has shown that it is not. The probability, or even the fear of injurious results from vaccination, has been admitted as sufficient reason for excusing the conscientious objector, and the moment it is admitted that there is no right and no possibility on the part of the State to force vaccination on parents who believe that it is injurious, it is also admitted that the vaccination law is an inefficient barrier to raise against small-pox.    It may be added that:

Wasted Energy.

9.—One of the serious ill-effects of vaccination is that it misdirects the money and energy which might be more profitably spent in other directions. If all the attention and care which have been given to vaccination had been given to sanitation pure and simple, it would probably have effected a great improvement in the health of the people.

Vaccination Useless.*

In the earlier part of this paper I have shown that vaccination as now performed is really admitted to be of little use even by its most strenuous advocates. I now propose to show, by reference to statistics, that it is perfectly useless, and fails to serve any good purpose.

The table I. gives the annual death-rate from small­pox for every year beginning with 1838 and ending with 1911. It will be noticed that in the year 1871 the death-rate suddenly rose to a higher figure than any since the epidemic of 1838, and that since 1885, the year in which the system of isolating small-pox cases was adopted in London, the rate has been very low. This sudden rise occurred eighteen years after vaccination had been made compulsory, and during this eighteen years the greater part of the educated classes and also the great masses of the people, had accepted Vaccination as being a beneficial operation which would render them safe from small-pox, and over 85 per cent, of children born were vaccinated.    But their confidence was rudely disturbed by this epidemic, which attacked vaccinated and unvaccinated alike, and seemed, if anything, to have a preference for vaccinated people. This epidemic proved, beyond the possibility of contradiction, that vaccination did not protect a person against an attack of small-pox. About the same period epidemics of small-pox occurred in Sweden, Denmark, and Germany. All these countries were considered to be absolutely protected from small-pox by vaccination.

Here we have a complete demonstration of the absolute failure of vaccination to, protect from, or in any way mitigate, the severity of the disease.

* Report of the Royal Commission on Vaccination, p. 203, par. 227 : Official Sanitary Reports, India, p. 142, Report of Sanitary Measures, India, 1879-80 : "Small-pox in India is not a disease that can be controlled by vaccination ... as an endemic and epidemic it must be dealt with by sanitary measures."
    Report of the Army Commission of the Punjaub, 1879, p. 186 : "Vaccination in the Punjaub, as elsewhere in India, has no power, apparently, over the course of an epidemic."

Hospital Statistics.

The hospital statistics of the present time show the same results. In the epidemic of 1901-2 in London, according to the report of the medical men employed by the Metropolitan Asylums Board, 70 per cent, of the patients, or 6,945, in the hospitals were vaccinated, and of these 705 died, and it is probable that if an investigation by anti-vaccinators had been permitted it would have been found that the percentage of vaccinated was much higher.*  

* Metropolitan Asylums Board Annual Report for the year 1902.    On page 66 the following figures appear :—
Total number of small-pox patients              ..   9,659      „
Total deaths  ..        ..        ..         ..            ..   1,629
Mortality, per cent.   ..         ..                               16
Table 2, page 250B, shows the vaccinal condition of patients admitted during 1902. The total number of patients was 7,916. Of this number, 1,462 died, or 18.4 per cent. Of the total admissions, 5,663 were admittedly vaccinated before infection with small-pox, or 71-5 per cent. A further examination of the table shows that 385, in addition to the 5,663, had been successfully vaccinated, although it is said that the vaccination was after infection. It also appears that a further number of 1,868 had been unsuccessfully vaccinated, but this point is not clear. The table says that this number were "not successfully vaccinated." This may mean either that they were not vaccinated at all, or that they were vaccinated, but without what is called "success." Repeated applications to the medical authorities have failed to elucidate this point. The legitimate inference is that they were all vaccinated. If that is correct, the whole of the patients admitted in 1902 were vaccinated. It is difficult to know with what object a patient should be vaccinated after infection.
    According to Table 5, of the total admissions in 1902, 20 had previously had small-pox, and of this number 5 died. Ten of those admitted showed good evidence of vaccination. According to Table 6, 276 are stated to have been successfully re-vaccinated, and 86 are stated to have been re-vaccinated, but unsuccessfully, making a total of 362 re-vaccinated. Of these re-vaccinated cases, 41 are stated to have died, or 11.3 per cent.

At Leeds, in the years 1899 to August 5th, 1904,  577 persons were treated for small-pox in the hospitals. Of these, 509, or 88 per cent., were admittedly vaccinated, and 20 were re-vaccinated. 1 case vaccinated 5 times ; 1 case vaccinated 4 times; 1 case vaccinated 3 times. The total number of deaths was 28, or 5 per cent. ; of these deaths 20 were admittedly vaccinated, and 8 said to be unvaccinated.

The failure of vaccination to protect is nothing new. Those vaccinated in Jenner's time were frequently attacked with small-pox in its severest form. In 1818 Dr. Munro, of Edinburgh, reported numerous cases of small-pox in its perfect form succeeding vaccination in its perfect form. In 1825, 147 vaccinated persons were admitted with small-pox into the London Small-pox Hospital. In 1828, a severe epidemic of small-pox broke out in Marseilles, and 2,000 vaccinated persons caught the disease. "In the well-vaccinated population of Copenhagen, from 1824 to1855,"  3,839 persons were attacked by small-pox, of whom 3,093 had been vaccinated.*

Mr. Marson, of the Highgate Hospital, recorded 3,094 cases of post-vaccinal small-pox treated by him between 1836 and 1851, and a further series of 1,661 between 1852 and 1867. Dr. Gayton, during the years 1870 to 1883, treated 8,234 cases of small-pox in vaccinated persons in the hospitals of the Metropolitan Asylums Board. At Sheffield; in 1887-8, 5,035 vaccinated persons were attacked by small-pox.**

* Final   Report  of  the   Royal  Commission  on  Vaccination, p. 171.
** Ibid., p. 172.

In the London Small-pox Hospital Mr. Marson and Dr. Monk report the percentage of vaccinated persons among the small-pox patients in the, following table :

Year.                                        Post-vaccinal Small-pox cases, per cent, of total.
1826                                                  38
1835-45                                             44
1845-55                                             64
1855-65      .                                      78        .
1878-79                                             93
1885                                                   93
1888-91                                           100

The above figures are of themselves sufficient to demonstrate the uselessness of vaccination.

Previous Small-pox no Protection.

A delusion still survives and prevails in the Government services that one attack of small-pox is effective as a protection against a second attack. The uselessness of this so-called protection was amply demonstrated one hundred years ago, and was one of the main arguments in favour of vaccination, inoculation with small­pox, and natural small-pox itself, being shown to be of no avail against a second attack. Jenner himself collected upwards of 1,000 cases of persons who had had small-pox twice. At Sheffield, in the 1887-8 epidemic, Dr. Barry noted twenty-three cases of small-pox patients who had previously had small-pox. Of these, five died.

Failure of Vaccination to Protect the Army.

I have already given the results of twenty years experience of our Armies in Egypt and India, every soldier carefully re-vaccinated, and yet there were 1,149 attacked with small-pox, and 10 per cent, of the cases attacked proved fatal. In the Report of the Royal Commission on Vaccination it is recorded that in the years 1860 to 1888 3,953 soldiers (all carefully vaccinated) were attacked with small-pox ; of these 391 died, that 9.9 per cent, of the cases were fatal.

These figures prove absolutely that neither vaccination nor re-vaccination protects against small-pox.

Practical  Admission that Vaccination does not Protect against Attack of Small-pox.

So clear is the proof that vaccination is no projection against an attack of small-pox that no honest and well informed advocate of vaccination will try to maintain that vaccination does protect any person from the attack of small-pox. All they can say is that vaccination modifies the type of the disease, so as to lessen the death-rate. This matter was dealt with above when referring to the statistics of the small-pox hospitals, of the Metropolitan Asylums Board, where it was shown that the death-rate in the years 1901-2 was no lower than in the pre-vaccination period of a century before, proving that vaccination had not reduced the death-rate. It has also been shown by Mr. Biggs, of Leicester,* in reference to the epidemic at Middlesbrough in the years 1897-8, that the death-rate among unvaccinated children under ten years old was practically the same as that amongst the vaccinated under ten years. It is quite true that the Medical Officer of Health made out a very different statement, but then the Medical Officer had not taken pains to investigate the previous history of the patients in the hospital, and to find out if they had really been vaccinated or not. Similar observations apply to the epidemic in Gloucester in the years 1895-6. Here, again, the local Medical Officer made a report, showing that there was only one death among vaccinated children under ten years of age ; but Dr. Walter Hadwen, of Gloucester, dealt with these figures in a masterly pamphlet.**  in which he showed that the figures of the Medical Officer of Health were wrong, because he had not properly investigated the history of the patients to ascertain whether or not they had been vaccinated.

* "Small-pox at Middlesbrough : a Reply to Dr. Dingle's Reports," by Councillor J. T. Biggs, J.P., of Leicester, Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society. On page 19 is Table V. This table shows that the correct figures show that the death-rate of vaccinated and unvaccinated children was almost the same, although the Medical Officer of Health had claimed that no vaccinated children under 10 had died, and that the death-rate amongst unvaccinated children had been nearly 47 per cent.
** " Small-pox at Gloucester : a Reply to Dr. Coupland's Report," by W. R. Hadwen, M.D., L.R.C.P. (Lond.), M.R.C.S. (Eng.), L.S.A. (Lond.), Gold Medallist in Medicine and Surgery, &c. Dr. Hadwen quotes Dr. Coupland's report in reference to small-pox in children up to ten years old, giving 26 attacks of vaccinated children and one death, whereas Dr. Hadwen has the names and addresses of 116 vaccinated children up to 10 years who were attacked with small-pox in the epidemic, of whom 27 died. Dr. Hadwen states that the case fatality of unvaccinated children was much greater than that of vaccinated children, but he accounts  for this by the fact that amongst the unvaccinated were included babies in arms, some born in the small-pox hospital, and others of a weakly constitution, and that for the most part the unvaccinated were younger than the vaccinated. Dr. Hadwen gives on page 8 the case of Daisy Sabin, aged 4 years, living at 5, Linden Road, Gloucester, who contracted small-pox 24 days after being successfully vaccinated in six places. The disease took the confluent form, and the child died. On the other hand, her sister, aged 16 months, unvaccinated, was attacked with small-pox, and recovered without being pitted.

Absolute Ignorance of pro-vaccination Authorities of any Scientific Mode of Vaccination.

One would think that, vaccination having been practised for 107 years, volumes having been written upon it, laws passed, many thousands of people prosecuted for non-compliance with the laws, great numbers sent to prison, others heavily fined, those who advocate the practice would know precisely what it is; but they do not: there is no definition of vaccination. There is no known mode of vaccination that is more in accordance with law and scientific practice than any other mode. The self-styled authorities differ amongst themselves, not on slight details, but on the most important questions. For instance,

The Number of Vaccination Marks :  no one Knows how Many.

Jenner said that one insertion, and a very small mark, was sufficient. For generations medical practice in this country considered that two incisions were sufficient, but the Local Government Board has decided that there must be four good marks, and prescribed the area of the permanent mark or scar on the vaccinated person which ought to be produced by efficient vaccination. The King of Prussia, seventy years ago, ordered that there should be ten marks. No doubt he made this order under the advice of the medical authorities of his time.   Recent  investigation—as   previously stated by Dr. Moncklon-Copeman, medical adviser to the Local Government Board in the Vaccination Department— has, however, discovered that the size of the marks is quite unimportant, and that a person may be efficiently vaccinated although the marks are hardly visible, so that on the question of the size and number of marks so-called "authorities" have no sort of agreement, and it is evident that they do not know, that they are absolutely ignorant on this vital and important question. Another most important question is:

The  Nature of the  Vaccine  Material :  no one knows  what it is !  Cow-pox,   Horse-pox, Sheep-pox, Small-pox ?

The first idea of Jenner, and others before Jenner, was to use matter from the cow ill with the disease called cow-pox. This failed, and was dangerous. Jenner's second idea was horse-grease: this failed, also was found dangerous. Later on, others, finding it difficult to get cow-pox, have inoculated cows with human small-pox. A great deal of vaccination has been performed with matter raised in this way. It rested, however, with Dr. Monckton-Copeman to discover a most ingenious method of producing the stuff he wanted. He scraped matter from the corpse of a small-pox patient,* and with that he inoculated a monkey, and succeeded in getting pustules on the monkey. He then inoculated a calf with matter from the monkey, and succeeded in getting pustules on the calf. He then inoculated children with matter from the calf, and succeeded in getting pustules on the children, and a great deal of this matter was sent out by the Local Government Board for vaccinating children. (Shortly after this there began a small-pox epidemic in London.) This method of producing vaccine material did not commend itself, however, to the taste of the British public. Questions were asked about it in Parliament. The Local Government Board, however, instead of standing by its men of science—instead of claiming that they were an authority before which the ignorant public must bow, with strange regard to "ignorant clamour" said that no more of this corpse-monkey-pox should be put into the blood of little English children, and since the Government was hard up for matter for doing the cow-poxing business — of late years they have sent to Germany—obtained from Cologne * some matter with which to inoculate calves in the British Vaccine Establishment. Where the Germans got their stuff from the learned authorities of the Local Government Board do not know, and, apparently, do not care. ***  Any stuff that will raise the regulation pustule on the arm of a little baby will do. They think it is equally effective with any other stuff, in this view of the case they are undoubtedly right ; it is as effective for good as any other of the filthy concoctions with which they have for generations poisoned the blood of our children. It is all absolutely useless.

* Lecture by Monckton-Copeman, M.D., &c, Medical Inspector to the Local Government Board, delivered at the Victoria University, Manchester, April 25 th, 1904.
** Vaccination Inquirer, October ist, 1906 : Letter from the Right Hon. John Burns, M.P., President Local Government Board, July 13th, 1906.
***  Is it fair to suggest the medical advisers do know, and do care, and that they are deliberately and secretly substituting the illegal small-pox matter for the cow-pox matter of Jenner ?

Period for which Vaccination gives Protection, no one Knows!

One would have thought that after more than a century of experience the great scientific "authorities" would know for what period vaccination gives protection. Jenner said that it gave protection for the whole of the patient's life, and for making that bold assertion he was given £30,000. It was, however, proved in Jenner's time, and proved by his own work, that it did not give any protection at all. It is now the official view, promulgated by Medical Officers of Health, that protection only lasts for ten years. But this protection is not considered to hold good in case there is any infection to be protected against, and people who are in contact with small-pox cases are advised to be vaccinated much oftener—every  few months.   Some medical men think the protection lasts for seven years; some think it lasts for three years ; some for one year ; some for six months ; others for six weeks. On this most important question these great scientific "authorities" disagree one with the other, and they do not disagree for the mere sake of differing, but they disagree because they do not know, and they do not know because nothing can be known about it. Vaccination has no effect whatever as against small-pox. If anything were known, the medical men who advocate vaccination are not such fools that they would not soon have made themselves acquainted with that knowledge.

The Right Way to Deal with Small-pox.

In the foregoing pages I have endeavoured to deal with small-pox as affected by vaccination. But it may be asked, If vaccination is no good, how is that disease to be dealt with ? To this I reply under the following headings :—

1. Small-pox is a disease of which we should seldom hear the name at the present time if it were not for the old-fashioned nostrum so popular with certain Government officials, and so profitable to certain well-paid servants of the State. The following table, extracted from the Sixty-seventh Annual Report of the Registrar-General, p. cxxvi., Table 19, for the years 1885-1904 inclusive, with the years 1905-1911 added is most instructive.

TABLE IV.
Deaths in England and Wales in the years and from the causes named. 

From the above table it will be seen that, looked at statistically, small-pox is one of the most unimportant of the diseases that afflict humanity in England and Wales. For instance, in the year 1890 only 16 persons died of small-pox in England and Wales, whilst the total number of deaths was 562,248. In the same year measles carried away 12,614 persons ; but whoever talks about measles ? The heaviest mortality there has been from small-pox within the last twenty-two years was 2,464 in the year 1902. In that year the deaths from measles were 12,930, but who ever talked about measles ? In the same year there were 7,366 deaths from influenza, and from whooping-cough 9,805 ;   but who talked about whooping-cough ?

 TABLE IV. continued
Deaths in England and Wales in the years and from the causes named.

 (a) Only 40 per cent, of babies born vaccinated.
In 1907 a practicable conscientious objection to infant vaccination was granted ; it is instructive to notice how Small-pox deaths have been reduced coincidently with the reduction in infant vaccination.
* It is instructive to compare the number of deaths from Diphtheria in the 10 years 1871-80 with the greatly increased number of deaths attributed to Diphtheria since the anti-toxin scrum injection treatment came into general use in 1893-4.

In the same year there were 13,799 deaths from diarrhoea, but who talked about diarrhoea ? No, the whole talk and the whole fuss was about small-pox, and simply for this reason—that there was supposed to be a prophylactic which could be sold to every one, well or ill, and therefore those who had the prophylactic to sell and those who believed in it talked about small-pox and vaccination, and whilst all this talk was going on about one disease tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths were taking place from other diseases which might easily have been prevented by sanitation. On August 31st; 1906, a remarkable article appeared in The Times from a correspondent, completely upsetting one of the grounds on which the majority of the Royal Commission recommended, subject to the illogical expedient of a conscience clause, the continuance of a compulsory law. This ground was that unvaccinated people suffered more from small-pox than the vaccinated, and were more liable to have small-pox fatally. The Times correspondent was faced with the fact that in many towns, some of them notoriously ill-vaccinated, small-pox had been extraordinarily mild, and usually free from fatal results. It was argued that small-pox was changing its character, and it was feared that English communities would soon protest against maintaining the excessive cost of vaccination in order to deal with a disease that was little more dangerous than chicken-pox.

2.  Sanitation.—Small-pox has yielded,  as previously stated in this paper, to sanitation, well-built, well-ventilated houses, good drains, good water supply, good food, and good clothes.

3.  Treatment of  Cases.—Experience  has  shown  that small-pox epidemics can be arrested, and serious epidemics entirely prevented, by isolation of cases.   This isolation may be effected in several ways—

(a) Where there is room in the dwelling of the patient the patient may be treated at home, adopting the usual methods of diminishing the chances of spreading infection. Small-pox is not a disease that is very rapidly spread by contagion.
(b) Where there is not sufficient accommodation at home, the patient, if sufficiently well and strong to risk the journey, should be taken to a hospital, in case there is sufficient room and staff at the small-pox hospital. Otherwise, the patient should be left at home, or moved into some neighbour's house, taking the usual precautions. The effect of this method of isolating cases is strikingly shown in the statistics of London small-pox in the following table, extracted from the Metropolitan Asylums Board's Annual Report for 1911, p. 138, and the .Reports of the Registrar-General :—

TABLE V. Deaths in London from Small-pox. 

 * New Isolation Hospitals established in this year.

The above table shows in a striking manner the sudden reduction in the number of small-pox cases in London after the year 1885. That was the year in which separate large hospitals were established for dealing with small-pox cases.

Hospital Treatment.

If one fact stands out more clearly than another, it is that the case fatality of small-pox depends on treatment. I remember very well, during the small-pox epidemic of 1871-2, reading a letter from Dr. Smedley, of Matlock, Bath, in which he says he regretted to read of the numerous deaths from small-pox. He said : "It is a most harmless disease if properly treated. I have treated hundreds of cases without a single fatality."  The effect of treatment is clearly shown by the following statements:

Gloucester Epidemic*

In this epidemic, during the first twelve months, the deaths out of 277 cases were 151, equal to a death-rate in the Municipal Hospital of 54 per cent, of the cases. The reason for this high death-rate was that the patients were crowded together, two or three or even four in a bed, the nursing staff was too small, the medical attendant was inexperienced. Then came a medical man from the Local Government Board, who sternly condemned the hospital arrangements, and got a newly arranged hospital. Immediately the case fatality fell from 54 per cent, to 10 per cent, in that newly organised hospital, while the average death-rate in the Municipal Hospital out of 730 cases was 27 per cent. But during this same epidemic there came a Captain Fielden, from Derby, who treated over 200 cases. He had a very simple and humane way of treating them. He applied medicated ointment to the feverish skin, and so relieved the symptoms that the patients quickly recovered, and his case fatality was under 2-per cent.

* "A   Century  of Vaccination,"  by  W.  Scott  Tebb,   M.D., P.97.

Case Fatality :  London, Leeds, Leicester, Sydney (Australia)   Niagara Falls (U.S.A.).

In the epidemic of 1901-2 in London the case fatality was about 17 per cent.* In Leeds, during the years 1899 to 1904, to August 7th inclusive, out of 577 cases the deaths were 28, making a case fatality of nearly 5 per cent. In Leicester, in the years 1902-3-4-5, out of 741 cases there were 30 deaths, showing a case fatality of 4 per cent. It may be asked, why this difference in case fatality ? I suggest that it depends, on treatment. In London the number of cases was large in proportion to the accommodation, and therefore neither the air space nor the nursing accommodation was as much as was required for the best treatment. Also, as far as I can make out from the Report of the Metropolitan Asylums Board, ** every case was vaccinated at the hospital or otherwise recently vaccinated, and this would throw an additional strain upon the strength of the patient. The result was a total case fatality for the years 1901 and 1902 of 16.87 Per cent., or nearly 17 per cent. ; whilst for the year 1901 the case fatality was 16.7 portent. ; in 1902, when there were more cases, and consequently more strain was put on the accommodation, the case fatality rose to 18.4 per cent. In Leeds the number of cases occurring annually was small in proportion to the accommodation, and therefore each patient got better at­tention, and the death-rate was not more than 5 per cent. The same observations apply to Leicester, where the death-rate was only 4 per cent, on the average of four years. At Sydney, in 1913, out of 1,016 cases of small-pox there was not a single death, although 95 per cent, of the cases were unvaccinated. At Niagara Falls, 1913-14, out of about 500 cases none were fatal, although vaccination had been largely discarded in the town for many years. Some medical men have now adopted Captain Fielden's principle of applying ointment*** to the feverish skin of the patient with satisfactory results. There is little doubt that if once our medical men could shake themselves clear of the vaccination superstition they would soon be able to deal with small-pox patients in a satisfactory manner.

*  Metropolitan  Asylums  Board  Annual  Reports,   1901,  pp, 113-7
** Metropolitan Asylums Board Annual Reports, 1902, p. 250B.
*** Captain Fielden's ointment contains acetate of copper.

Vaccination Supported by Fables.

Writers and speakers in support of vaccination generally make out their case with stories as to the enormous number of deaths from small-pox that occurred in the days before national statistics and vaccination, but not content with the actual figures from the London bills of mortality, the most extraordinary misstatements have been put forward. As a matter of fact, the death-rate in the eighteenth century in London from small-pox, though heavy, was not heavy in proportion to the deaths from other fevers, including plague, cholera, and typhus, produced by the same causes—that is to say, insanitary arrangements. Extraordinary statements are also made as to occurrences in Africa and other distant lands, in support of which there is nothing worthy the name of evidence, whilst the uncontroverted and incontrovertible statements of the opponents of vaccination are generally left severely alone by the astute advocate of the process of cow-poxing.

Compulsory Vaccination, Any-how, Any-with.

It is one of the most extraordinary things in the history of legislation that whilst the medical profession who advocate vaccination are not in the slightest degree agreed as to what that process is, and whilst there is no definition of the process, and no knowledge of the source of the matter by which the process is to be executed, it should be made compulsory. It may be said in reply that under the Act of 1898 it is not compulsory, because conscientious objectors can get an exemption. As a matter of fact, that is not an accurate statement.

The Conscientious Objector. (Rich objector free, poor objector compelled.)

The * law says that a parent or guardian may get an exemption if he can satisfy two magistrates that he has a conscientious objection ; but practice shows that the magistrates are not easily satisfied. In the Metropolitan area, some of the stipendiaries grant exemptions to every, or almost every applicant, and others refuse almost every applicant. And in the country it frequently occurs that the borough courts grant an exemption and the county bench refuses an exemption. Probably the majority of benches refuse to grant exemptions in most cases. In any case, the usage of the courts makes vaccination practically compulsory on poor people. Take the case of a labourer in a country district. If he wishes to apply for an exemption, he will have to buy a railway ticket, costing, say, 2s. He will have to take with him a copy of the birth certificate of his child, costing, say, 3s. 6d. He must pay the magistrates' clerk's fee, say, 3s. He must lose a day's wage, say, 2s. 6d. ; making a total cost of 11s. How can a poor labourer on 15s. a week afford such a large sum ? And is he likely to make that sacrifice when he knows that there is a strong likelihood of his being refused, when he will come home, without the exemption, having lost 8s. of very hardly earned money ? If a poor man fails to obtain an exemption, and also refuses to have the child vaccinated, he is prosecuted. The magistrates generally inflict the maximum penalty of £1 and costs. This penalty is far beyond the means of these poor men to pay. So the law, as it at present stands, gives exemption to the rich and denies it to the poor.

* By the Act of 1907 it is no longer necessary to satisfy a magistrate ; he simply witnesses the declaration, see appendix.

The Experience of Leicester.  

On the question of the necessity of vaccination, the experience of Leicester seems to be conclusive in the negative. After the epidemic of 1871-2, the people of Leicester became convinced that vaccination was useless, because Leicester was a well-vaccinated town, but that did not protect it from small-pox. So the people of Leicester very wisely determined to find some better protection, which they did. They proceeded to put their town in order from a sanitary point of view, and to a great extent they gave up the useless practice of vaccination. The Guardians refused to prosecute those who objected to vaccination, with the result that of the babies born in the town in the eight years ending in 1895,* only 3 per cent, were vaccinated; Since the Act of 1898, and the Order issued by the Local Government Board compelling the Vaccination Officer to prosecute contrary to the wishes of the Guardians, the number of vaccinations has increased, and in 1902 had reached 28 per cent.** but in 1910 they had fallen to about 10 per cent.***

When the attack of small-pox occurred in the town they proceeded to isolate the case. They provided sufficient hospital accommodation, and as a result of these beneficial measures Leicester has hardly been troubled with small-pox for the last thirty-three years. From time to time tramps have introduced the disease into the town, and occasionally it has spread, so that several hundred cases have occurred in a single year, but the case fatality has been exceedingly low owing to the wise and careful treatment of the patients. During the eight years, 1884 to 1891, there was not in Leicester one single fatality from small-pox. From the time when vaccination was given up to the present time, the annual death-rate from all causes in Leicester has fallen from about 25 per thousand in the five years ending 1875 to about 12 per thousand in the year 1910.***  

The experience of this single town should be sufficient to carry conviction to any unbiased mind that general compulsory vaccination is a foolish and useless process.

* W. Scott Tebb, " A Century of Vaccination," p. 87.
** Supplement to the Report of the Local Government Board for 1903-4, p. xxvi.
***  J. T. Biggs " Leicester Vaccination versus Sanitation." This book gives full information in regard to Leicester.

TABLE VACCINATIONS AND DEATHS FROM SMALLPOX IN LEICESTER

The Experience of Switzerland.

Geneva, which is celebrated in Europe as the home of science and literature, and of the spirit of freedom and progress, has also led the way with regard to compulsory vaccination, and during the last thirty years there has been no compulsory vaccination in Geneva. In Switzerland the question of compulsory vaccination was submitted to the vote of the people, and in the following Cantons compulsory vaccination has been abandoned:—Uri, Glarus, Aargau, Geneva, Baselstadt, Baselland, Unterwalden-ob-den Wald and nid-den-Wald, Zurich, Luzern, Schaffhausen, Appenzellausser-Rhoden, St. Gallen and Thurgau, Schwyz, Bern, in all twenty-three cantons without compulsion, and thirteen with compulsion.

Parallel with the increasing abolition of compulsory vaccination in Switzerland the mortality from small­pox runs towards the extinction of the contagion.

                                                            PROOF.

TABLE  VI.
Table supplied by Professor Dr. A. Vogt, of Borno, Switzerland.
                            Swiss  Population. 

From these absolute numbers, embracing twenty-nine years' results, an Annual Mortality from Small-pox (per million living) among the Swiss population—
A.  Without compulsion to vaccination, of    ..     13
B.   Under              „                          „               23

The table VI. shows that the mortality from small­pox in Switzerland is at a less rate in those cantons where vaccination is not compulsory than in those where it is still compulsory; but where it is compulsory the compulsion is not upon infants, as in, this country, but takes effect only when the child has reached school age.*  It is a remarkable fact that whilst the pro-vaccinists of England France, Germany, and America insist on the danger to the health of the community of the existence of unvaccinated people, yet the most enlightened ladies and gentlemen of these four great countries crowd into Switzerland, and into its unvaccinated cantons every year as the great health resort of Europe. To the learned and aged Professor Dr. A. Vogt, of Berne, is due in a great measure the enlightenment of his people on the subject of vaccination.

It is curious how long it takes to extirpate a well-paid fallacy, but it is evident that if there were any truth at all in the alarmist statements of the pro-vaccinators, Switzerland, instead of being the health resort, as it is acknowledged to be, would be the plague spot of Europe.

* This table supplied by Professor Dr. A. Vogt, of Berne.

India and Vaccination (see Appendix).

Experience of England and Wales.

The Royal Commission on Vaccination, Final Report, page 34, gives a table showing for the years 1872-1893 the number of children successfully vaccinated, and in the Reports of the Local Government Board are to be found the numbers successfully vaccinated up to and including the year 1911. If we take the last 18 years, it appears that the percentage of children registered as successfully vaccinated is on the average about 68 per cent, of the total number of births. But it must not be assumed that only 68 per cent, of the entire population is vaccinated * because a number of children die before the age of compulsory vaccination, and in addition there are a number of vaccinations of soldiers, sailors, school teachers and postmen, &c. ; but making allowances for all these, there still remain a large number of unvaccinated persons. Whether this number be 20, or 25 per cent, of the population I do not know, but if it is 10 per cent., then there are more than four million people in the United Kingdom unvaccinated; and if it is 20 per cent., then there are more than eight million people in the United Kingdom

* In the year 1913 probably the number of infants vaccinated in England and Wales did not much exceed half the number of those born.
In the year   1921   the  number of   persons vaccinated within five years did not exceed 25 per cent, of the population.

unvaccinated ; or, if we take the figures of England and Wales alone, if 20 per cent, unvaccinated, over six million; and yet in 1904 the total number of deaths from small­pox in England and Wales was only 507 (Table IV.)    In the year 1907, the total number of deaths in that year was only 10.    Considering that the total number of deaths from all causes was about 500,000 in each year, the death-rate from small-pox is absolutely insignificant;  and yet, if vaccination is necessary to protect from small-pox, how comes it that with these millions of unvaccinated people there is so little mortality from this cause ?   But the argument may be carried much further.    As previously mentioned, all those people who pride themselves on being authorities on the question of vaccination assert that no person is safe from small-pox who has not been vaccinated during the last ten years.   Now, according to the census of 1901 there were in  England and Wales rather more than seven million children under ten years of  age,   leaving  twenty-five million  persons in England and Wales who were practically unprotected by vaccination, except for the comparatively small number who had been re-vaccinated.   It is safe to say that in England and Wales there are at the present moment not less than twenty million persons who have not been vaccinated within the last ten years, and who are therefore admittedly unprotected by vaccination.   The fact is that the cry for re-vaccination, as clearly foreseen by Jenner 100 years ago, has entirely knocked the bottom out of the pro-vaccination case.    Their case was, "See how much small-pox there was before vaccination was introduced;   see how little small-pox there is now that vaccination   is   general."    Jenner's   case   was,   "Once vaccinated, always protected."    Then came the dissatisfied re-vaccinators, like Dr. Mac Vail, Right Hon. Walter Long, and others, who said, "Primary vaccination is 'a farce,' ' a deception,' ' a source of danger.' "    But at the present time we have, practically speaking, only got this farce and this deception to defend us all from extermination by small-pox, unless we adopt the more rational conclusion that after all we do not require this prophylactic ;  that we can be healthy without putting matter from a diseased calf into our blood; that not only primary vaccination, but re-vaccination  also,  is "a farce," "a deception," and "a source of danger."

In conclusion, I have thus shown, I hope, beyond the possibility of dispute, that all the claims made in favour of vaccination are unfounded in fact; that it is a dangerous practice, and that it is a useless practice ; and the sooner the Government of the country dissociates itself absolutely from such a piece of eighteenth century quackery, the better it will be, not only for the health of the nation, but for the progress of true science, and for the honour and dignity of Parliament and the executive authority.

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Dr. CREIGHTON (Chairman) : Gentlemen, — Having been invited by you to preside at the discussion of a question on which I have expressed convictions of the most settled kind for nearly twenty years, I shall not be expected to make a show of impartiality as between the two sides at the close. But it is not impossible to present some points of history in a more or less objective form, and that shall be my attempt. The history of vaccination in Parliament is a strange one. It can hardly be stated at all without giving it an air of comedy ; but the accuracy of the facts can be tested easily, and the facts may then be left to point their own moral.

Opinions of Political Philosophers.

Before I turn, to the Parliamentary history, I shall touch briefly on the handling of this illustration of State interference by political philosophers. Their treatment of it has been remarkable. With the notable exception of Herbert Spencer, they have accepted Dr Jenner's doctrine and practice of cow-pox as solidly based on what they genetically call "science " or "scientific opinion" ; so that the instinctive dislike of it, or the indifference to it, on the people's part has seemed to them a fair object of legislative pressure ; while any criticism of it, lay or medical, betrayed the mind of a sciolist or a fanatic. In this, I think, we should merely hear the echo of Bacon's confident talk about the certainty of scientific method. The two great provinces of thought which Bacon excepted from the scope of his method were religion and politics ; authority in these is disputable, and has been disputed, so that they have been classic ground in the fight for liberty ; and, per contra, it has just been the Whig philosophers and historians who have shown greatest deference to scientific authority. "How is it," asks Spencer in "Man versus the State" (1884). "that Liberalism, getting more and more into power, has grown more and more coercive in its legislation ?"  Vaccination was one of Cornewall Lewis's instances in his essay of 1849, "On the Influence . of Authority in Matters of Opinion." In his general chapter on Scientific Authority, among the "truths discovered by original inquirers, received by competent judges, and diffused by the influence of authority," he mentioned vaccination (coupled oddly enough with John Hunter's operation for aneurism) as a discovery which had been "after a few years brought to a certain test, and had made way in all countries."  The same deference of the Whig mind to what it vaguely understood as "science" is shown in Macaulay's rhetorical outburst over vaccination at the place in his "History," under the year 1694, where he describes (with little accuracy) the death of Queen Mary from hemorrhagic small-pox, "that disease over which science has since achieved a succession of glorious and beneficent victories." It is hardly surprising that Mill, in his essay "On Liberty " (1859), should have passed over this instance (although there was controversy enough about it even then to have called forth an elaborate reply in the form of a Report to Parliament by the Medical Officer of the Privy Council) ; if he had not been quite sure of the utility—in the widest sense—of Dr. Jenner's doctrine and practice as by law established, he could hardly have avoided bringing it in either under Freedom of Thought or under Liberty of Conduct. It passes unnoticed also in Fitzjames Stephen's "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity " (1873), from which, however, I take the following on Compulsion in general:—

" Compulsion is bad—
" 1. When the object aimed at is bad. "
"2. When the object aimed at is good, but the compulsion is not calculated to obtain it. "
"3. When the object aimed at is good and the compulsion employed is calculated to obtain it, but at too great expense."

Maine  in one of his four essays on "Popular Government " (1885), found in the then very active opposition to vaccination one of his illustrations of the untrustworthiness of plebeian prejudice :—

" Even in our day vaccination is in the utmost danger, and we may say generally that the gradual establishment of the masses in power is of the blackest omen for all legislation founded on scientific opinion, which requires tension of mind to understand it and self-denial to submit to it."

This was replied to by Mr. John Morley (Fortnightly Review, February, 1886) :—

" The instance is, for various reasons, not a happy one . . . I have never understood that vaccination is in much danger. Compulsory vaccination is perhaps in danger . . . The obligation to practise a medical rite may be inexpedient in spite of the virtues of the rite itself."

It is clear that both Morley and Maine were of the same mind as Cornewall Lewis, in having no suspicion that the so-called scientific authority might be rotten. The first political philosopher to entertain such a suspicion was Herbert Spencer; and although he did not probe the matter to the bottom, he made State vaccination one of his leading instances of mischievous meddling and muddling. I ought to mention also an incidental reference to the subject by Leslie Stephen in an essay on "The Scepticism of Newman " ; the appeal to the authority of the Church was as illogical as the appeal to the authority of academic Medicine in the dispute about vaccination. Lastly, under this head may be mentioned, from the point of view of psychology and casuistry, the dispute about the bona fides of the conscientious objector of 1898. Sir W. Harcourt led the Opposition, and divided the House against the condition that the objector should "satisfy " the Magisterial Bench :—

" The notion of referring to the jurisdiction of these men an inquiry into the bona fides of a man who makes a solemn oath of this description seems to me a most dangerous precedent."

The  Origin  of the Authority.

The first interposition of Parliament in this matter of pathology and epidemiology came about naturally enough through the petition presented by Dr. Jenner to the House of Commons for a reward in April, 1802. It is important to remember this, as it accounts for the exceptional character of all the legislation against small-pox that has ensued down to and inclusive of the Vaccination Act of 1898. The Vaccination Law is not an integral part of the Public Health Law, neither formally nor really. Not formally, because it is executed by the Boards of Guardians at the expense of the poor rate, not by the Health Authority. It is not so really, because it rests, not on those broad principles of sanitation which underlie the Public Health statutes, and are so easy to the apprehension of practical men that they have never been matter of controversy, but on one peculiar concept or notion, emanating from the mind of Dr. Jenner, that the matter from the pap-pox of cows could prevent small-pox if inoculated on the arm after the manner of the old inoculation with the matter of small-pox itself. However unlikely it may seem that Parliament should have been occupied on many occasions during a hundred years with so queer a business, it is that, and that only, which has been the subject—a one-man doctrine and practice, bound up with the personality of the inventor at the first, and bound up with his scientific credit and authority until 1840, when it was made the law of the land, which no one dare question with impunity. If the Vaccination Law is often thought of as one of the Public Health Laws, it must be as in some old museums of natural history the whale was included among fishes.

Dr. Jenner's first step was to ask the leave of the House to present a Petition for a Reward. Leave having been given, his Petition was brought in and ordered to lie on the Table. Next came a formal Recommendation of it to the House from His Majesty the King, such as appears to have been at that time constitutional ; the Recommendation was brought to the notice of the House by Addington, the Prime Minister, with some endorsing remarks, and entered on the Journals. The Committee which was appointed in due course to try the Petition had for its chairman Admiral Berkeley, one of the members for Dr. Jenner's county of Gloucestershire, who is described in the Annual Register for 1802 as "the friend and patron" of the discoverer, and as having "brought his discovery forward to notice through the medium of his high rank and great connections." The report of the Committee was unanimous, but one of its members, Bankes, admitted in the debate that he looked on the report with some jealousy, those who signed it appearing to him "in the light of nominees on a committee to try the merits of a contested election, as being the friends of the petitioner." Their decision was in favour of Dr. Jenner's priority as discoverer, and of the superiority of his mode of inoculation to the old, the only evidence against it having been tendered by that part of the medical profession which favoured the old. The Reward was entered in the Commons' Journals on 3rd June, 1802, in these terms :

"That it is the opinion of this Committee [of Supply] that a sum not exceeding Ten Thousand Pounds be granted to his Majesty to be paid to Dr. Edward Jenner as a reward for promulgating his discoveries of the Vaccine Inoculation, by which a mild and efficacious mode of superseding that dreadful malady the small-pox is established."  

An additional reward of £20,000 on July 30th, 1807 —obtained by making interest with Lord Henry Petty, Chancellor of the Exchequer—was enrolled in the same terms, excepting that the mode was described as "mild, efficacious, and not contagious." The same ground of preference for the new mode over the old comes out in the preamble of the first Cow-pox Bill ever introduced into Parliament—a private Bill in 1868, which did not pass : "Whereas the inoculation of persons for the disorder called the small-pox, according to the old or Suttonian method, cannot be practised without the utmost danger of communicating and diffusing the infection," &c. Other attempts were made, in 1813 and 1814, to enforce Dr. Jenner's mode, or to take it under State patronage, on the plea that the extensive practice of the old inoculation then going on was a public danger; but Lord Eldon opposed, and Lord Ellenborough laid it down that the Common Law, is the immemorial remedy against nuisances, was a sufficient safeguard against the alleged danger. The danger, be it said, had not been apprehended in the eighteenth century by the College of Physicians, who, in 1754 pronounced small-pox inoculation to be " highly salutary to the human race." Nor was it admitted by Lettsom, John Clark (of Newcastle), and others who had practised it in the eighteenth century upon thousands of. infants and young children in towns as vaccination is practised now.

The  Legislative  Principle.

Until 1840 Dr. Jenner's mode received no State recognition beyond the £30,000, and the fees of an Advisory Board called the National Vaccine Establishment (dating from 1808) ; and thus left to itself it made no steady headway against the old inoculation, which was more in request than ever. However, Dr. Jenner had appointed a literary executor, Dr. Baron, of Gloucester, who exerted himself to the utmost, after the death of the discoverer, in 1822, to get the cow-pox mode taken under State protection and the other mode put -flown by penalties. He captured the executive of the Provincial (now the British) Medical Association, by whose help, and that of the Medical Society of London, an Act was passed in 1840 to prohibit the old inoculation under a penalty of a month's imprisonment, and to enable the Poor Law Guardians to give gratuitous vaccination to the infants of such impecunious parents as might ask for it. By an oversight in the Act, the parents so applying became paupers for the nonce ; but that stigma was removed by an Explanatory Act in 1841. It is significant that the penal clause against small-pox inoculation was directed in the original Bill only against amateurs and empirics, not against medical men, many of whom had practised it extensively in the small-pox epidemics of 1817-19 and 1825-26, while others of considerable repute made no secret of their theoretical preference for it. "It may be doubted," wrote one of them in 1839, "whether the practitioners of the next century will not laugh at the manner in which we have been misled by Dr. Baron."  The clause against small-pox inoculation was amended so as to include medical men on the motion of Mr. Wakley, editor of the Lancet, who made the monstrous statement that the epidemic of small-pox which the country had just passed through (one of the worst in English history) was due, directly or indirectly, to the use of small-pox for inoculation.

The action of the State in penalising the old inoculation by the Act of 1840 had the effect of silencing the professional opposition of Dr. Jenner's doctrine and practice from that side. The motive for enforcing the latter upon all by a new Act thirteen years later was, that the relatively small amount of gratuitous vaccination which had been applied for under the Act of 1840 had revealed an appalling amount of apathy or carelessness of parents for the safety of their children. It hardly needs to be said that Parliament had no idea of setting up a medical dogma binding upon the intelligences of all, lay or medical, as the Act of the Six Articles of Henry VIII.'s time (the only English precedent) was meant to coerce both clergy and laity who scrupled at the doctrine of Transubstantiation and the corollary practices thereof. No such effect could have been foreseen, although that has been the effect within the profession itself. The object was practical and proximate, namely, to whip up the negligent or apathetic parents, whose unvaccinated children were declared by the Epidemiological Society to be "a nidus for small-pox to settle in and propagate itself."  If it admit of doubt, they said in a Parliamentary Paper, "how far it is justifiable in this free country to compel a person to take care of his own life and that of his offspring, it can scarcely be disputed that no one has a right to put in jeopardy the lives of his fellow-subjects."

That was the ground which Lord Lyttelton  took in introducing the principle of compulsion in 1853. He based it upon the Act of 1840, which was permissive of Jennerian vaccination and prohibitory of inoculation by the old mode. The Common Law maxim, by which the use of small-pox matter was condemned, was " Sic utere tuo ut alienum non laedas." It had been applied in the King's Bench in 1807 in the case of a surgeon who was   convicted  of not  preventing the exposure of an inoculated child so that it became infectious. He was sentenced to six months imprisonment. Section 8 of the Act of 1840 had made that Common Law principle statutory, and it was that section which was made the ground of  "extending the practice of vaccination"— extending it universally, or making it compulsory. "Leaving children unvaccinated," said Lord Lyttelton, "did in reality come under the last head," i.e., the head of exposing inoculated small-pox so as to be infectious. Before giving the Bill the support of the Government, Lord Palmerston consulted the Registrar-General, Major Graham, who advised greater deliberation ; but its promoters, the Vaccination Committee of the Epidemiological Society, were urgent, and the Bill passed through both Houses without a Second Reading debate in either of them, and without a single division.

The subsequent Vaccination Acts call for little remark until the most recent, that of 1898. That of 1867 consolidated all the previous statutes, arid is known as the foundation Act; it is under its Section 29 or its Section 31 that proceedings arc taken against defaulters ; its Section 32 contains the penalty of a month's imprisonment against the use of small-pox matter in inoculating, carried forward from the Act of 1840. From what I have next to explain, about the Act of 1898, it will appear that the old rivalry between Dr. Jenner's cow-pox and the inoculation of small-pox is not yet extinct ; on the contrary, the whole tendency of modern research has been to vindicate the scientific correctness of the eighteenth century inoculation, so that it has reappeared openly in practice in many countries where it is not penalised (India, the United States, Germany, Switzerland) under the name of "variola vaccine," and has displaced Dr. Jenner's discovery to an extent which cannot as yet be stated with precision owing to the clandestine methods of some of the calf-lymph laboratories.

The Existing Situation  Under the Act of  1898.

In the summer of 1904 a French physician, Dr. Kelsch, was deputed by the Paris Academie de Medicine to make a tour of inspection of the principal calf-lymph laboratories of Europe, of which he gave an account to the Academy on November '8th, 1904, published in the Bulletin. It is clear that Dr. Kelsch, wherever he went, made enquiries about the use of small-pox lymph, and equally clear that that was his chief interest, as in the end he recommends its introduction into France (where medical and veterinary opinion, led by Bousquet formerly and Chauveau now, has been Strongly opposed to it). It was only at Brussels that he found them still adhering religiously to Dr. Jenner's prescription of cow-pox, the Government stock being invariably replenished from the natural pox of the cow's paps, of which they could always get as much, as they wanted from the Belgian farms by the simple expedient of offering a premium through an advertisement. (To my personal knowledge, cow-pox could be found as easily in England and Scotland, if it were wanted, notwithstanding the audacious statement to the contrary by the departmental official who was chosen to supplement my article on "Vaccination" in the re-issue of the " Encyclopedia Britannica.") see 9th and 10th editions. This fidelity of the Belgian experts to cow-pox is the more noteworthy that it was from Brussels the first calf-lymph came some thirty years ago. The original calf-lymph was cow-pox reproduced on the shaven belly of the calf, and such it is still in Belgium ; but usually at present calf-lymph means small-pox cultivated on the calf.

In one country visited by him, Dr. Kelsch actually found the use of small-pox matter legalised : "Elle est meme ecrite dans la loi : celle-ci autorise les directeurs d'institut a renouveler leur semence avec la variole vaccine." England and Ireland are the only countries which need any such legal authorisation, inasmuch as they are the only countries (so far as I know) in which the practice had been made illegal; so that the reference is probably to a misunderstood section of the English Act of 1898, wherein is prescribed the use of "glycerinated calf-lymph, or such other lymph as may be issued by the Local Government Board." I was present at the Grand Committee on Law when the words in italics were added. This addition to the Government draft was moved unexpectedly by a private member, in a single sentence to the effect that there was no knowing what the progress of science might lead to, and that the Medical Department should be allowed a free hand. The words were accordingly added to the clause in a twinkling, without debate. They mean little, so long as the Act of 1867 stands. But it is now clear to me, in the retrospect, that the Medical Department had been resolved for years past—indeed, ever since the affinity of cow-pox to syphilis was established to their satisfaction by the celebrated case at the Leeds Infirmary in 1889—to get rid of Jenner's prescription altogether, and to bring in the original small-pox inoculation by a back door, so that there need be no radical change in the law and no surrender to their critics, medical or lay. I remember being surprised, when a witness before the Vaccination Commission in 1890, at being questioned about the protective power of the old inoculation—not as a point of historical interest,  but as a practical matter, and in view of a possible return to it; and about the same time I observed that the Principal Medical Officer had quoted somewhere the old opinion of one Dr. W. Black (1781), that the dread of contagion from inoculated small-pox was a bugbear. The next P.M.O. proceeded to Germany to see what they were doing in the way of lymph there, and came back with a report that "variola vaccine" was in use at several calf lymph stations. It was soon after this that Mr. Chaplin, a President of the Board, announced that they saw their way, by improvements in the production and preservation of lymph, to remove the popular objections to it. (This was what had happened in Germany by substituting small-pox for cow-pox, the number of ulcerated arms having decreased remarkably, and all at once, after a certain year.)

In a speech to his constituents before Parliament met, Mr. Chaplin hinted that it might be possible to make these changes by means of an administrative order. However, a Bill was brought in, which is probably remembered now chiefly for Mr. Balfour's interposition to create the conscientious objector, and for the conflict in the House of Lords in the last days of the Session of 1898. The real novelty of the Act was, that it contemplated deliberately and ex animo the abandonment of Dr. Jenner and his cow-pox, without any overt, declaration to that effect, but under the pretext that the technique of the manufacture of lymph was to be improved, according to the most recent methods. To this end the current stock of vaccine throughout England and Wales (not in Scotland) was extinguished, by putting a stop to the practice, in use for a hundred years, of drawing off the fluid, at the eighth day, from the vesicles of the infants last vaccinated (or the "vaccinifers"), and using it for the vaccination of the next batch. Great preparations had been made in Lamb's Conduit Street so as to provide a central source of supply for the Public Vaccinators. One or more of the medical officials had been told off for scientific experiments, the object of which was to transmute human small-pox into vaccine within the meaning of the Act. In those experiments the monkey was found to be the missing link between man and the cow, and it was claimed (in the "Proceedings" of the Royal Society) that the Government expert had made possible in fact what is certainly impossible in law. Those experiments were watched with great interest, but it was denied by successive Ministers that they were more than academic exercises, the lymph from them having never been sent out.

The best proof of the private intention to go back to small-pox is to be found in an obscure corner of the Regulations which were drawn up by the Board complementary to the Act. It was thought expedient to retain, a certain bonus of one shilling per case for efficient vaccination (amounting to about £16,000 per annum), which had been sanctioned by the Lords of the Treasury in 1868, and had hitherto been awarded, on the report of inspectors, for the large surface area and the correctly "foveated" floor of the cow-pox scar. This bonus was retained, but the reference to those famous marks of Marson and Seaton was struck out, for the reason that the lymph about to be issued from the Government laboratory was not of a kind to leave such marks, nor, indeed, any enduring marks at all, save, occasionally, the smooth, sinning marks of suppurating small-pox. This change, I say, was made in the conscious knowledge that the matter about to be issued was not cow-pox. Mr. Chaplin also issued a Minute, in which Dr. Copeman's experiments to cultivate small-pox pustules into a colourable imitation of cow-pox were commended not, of course, in those words. Public vaccinators, under the Act of 1898, are supplied with tubes—ten thousand per week—containing they know not what. According to the latest information, extorted from the Board by the pertinacity of Sir William Collins, it now appears that the experts themselves do not know the source of the lymph, whether it is cow-pox or small­pox, but only that it was procured in Cologne, and that the purveyor thought well of it. To this pass has it come in the country of Dr. Jenner, under the eyes of a Parliament which has been engaged in cockering and protecting his discovery consistently and continuously ever since 1802, and in the administration of a law which is the strictest of any in punishing parents for refusing cow-pox, and vaccinators for using small-pox.

I have been so familiar with these historical matters for a good many years that I have come to view the impossibility of setting them straight, or even of getting the Legislature to understand them, as merely arising from the general perversity of things or as a scene of the general comedy of errors. But when I enter the National Liberal Club I breathe a more strenuous air, and I take the holding of this conference to mean that reform has come within the sphere of practical politics. The set made against anti-vaccinators of the working class at Derby, by orders from head­quarters, shortly before the General Election, will hardly be repeated there, nor the like of it tried anywhere else. The resistance to vaccination within the meaning of the Act has been justified, if by nothing else, yet by the evasions of the prosecuting Board itself. From one point of view the elimination of Dr. Jenner from the business, and the return to the old inoculation, may have been officially well meant, but from another point of view it has been a mean and underhand policy. The straightforward course would nave been to repeal the Vaccination Acts altogether. The reason why that has not been done is, I suppose, that there are vested interests to be considered. There is, however, no time to be lost in winding them up, for it may prove impossible to keep vaccination a going concern. A single well-marked eruption of small-pox from the insertion of Government lymph, such as may happen any day, would be all the proof of illegality that is needed to bring the administration of the law to an automatic stop. As to the old inoculation, its utility and its safety, I wish to express no prejudiced opinion ; but of one thing I feel sure, that Parliament, having burnt its fingers once, will be very careful not to burn its fingers a second time.

-----------------------

Those who took part in the debate included Mr. G. M. Nicholson, Dr. Stephen Smith, Dr. E. J. Edwards, Mr. John Brown, Lieut.-General A. Phelps, and Rev. A. G. B. Atkinson.

Mr. J. H. Levy proposed "The Health of the Chairman," and the proceedings terminated.

APPENDIX.—JUNE, 1914.

The Vaccination Act of 1898 purported to give liberty of non-vaccination, but this liberty was not really obtained. Parents applying for a certificate of exemption had to satisfy two magistrates, or one stipendiary, of their conscientious objections. Some stipendiaries, and many of the magistrates, refused to be satisfied, and imposed delays. Unless the exemption was obtained before the child was four months old, it was too late, The consequence was that in the year 1906, only about 40,000 exemptions were obtained in England and Wales. In the year 1907 the Government recognised that the magistrates had practically declined to carry out the law of 1898, and, consequently, a new law—the Vaccination Act, 1907—was passed. Under this law the parent escaped penalties for the non-vaccination of his child if within four months from the birth he made a statutory declaration that he confidently believed that vaccination would be prejudicial to the health of the child, and within seven days thereafter delivered, or sent by post, the declaration to the Vaccination Officer of the district.

It is the duty of all Magistrates to sign a Statutory Declaration when asked to do so, and the Magistrate's Clerk is entitled to a fee of is. Most of the liberal-minded magistrates will witness the Declaration at their own house, or any other convenient place. Some, however, refuse to do that except in the law court. A Statutory Declaration may also be witnessed by a Commissioner for Oaths, and some other officials.

The effect of this Act has been greatly to increase the number of conscientious declarations, as shown in the following table:

Exemption from Vaccination.
England and Wales.

The following figures indicate the number of children for whom declarations under the Vaccination Act of 1907, have been made.    The total number of births is under a million per annum:  

Year.                  Number.                        Percentage of births.                Approximate percentage of children available.
1908               162,799                                    17.3                                              19
1909               190,689                                    20.9                                              23
1910               230,947                                    25.7                                              28
1911               248,483                                    28.2                                              31
1912               275,929                                    31.6                                              34
1913               300,000*                                  34*                                               37

* Approximate—the figures for the whole year not available.

TABLE
Exemption from Vaccination.
England and Wales.
The following figures indicate the number of children for whom declarations under the Vaccination Act of 1907 have been made. The figures for 1903 are given to shew the effect of the new Act by comparison: 

Besides those exempted a great many others escape vaccination. The method of obtaining exemption is as follows:

HOW TO AVOID VACCINATION.

The Vaccination Act, 1907.

Parents, when registering the births of their children, will find on the Vaccination Paper given them a form of declaration of conscientious objection, which they must fill in, in ink.

Then the father, not the mother, must take the form to a Commissioner for Oaths, or a Justice of the Peace, or a Stipendiary Magistrate, and make a declaration of conscientious objection before him in the terms of the Form. This Declaration must be made within four months of the birth of the child.    It is useless if made later.

The fee for the Declaration is generally 1s. at the Court and 1s. 6d. to a Commissioner.

When the Declaration has been signed by the Magistrate or Commissioner, take or send it immediately by post or otherwise, to your Vaccination Officer. It will be of no use unless he gets it within seven days after its signature by the Commissioner or Magistrate. It is not necessary that application should be made at a Police Court; most solicitors are Commissioners for Oaths, and will take your declaration without questioning you. Some Magistrates will sign the declaration privately, when no fee can be charged.

Apply for further information to The National Anti-Vaccination League

This Society is maintained entirely by Voluntary Contributions, and help is needed to carry on the work.                        

Will You Not Assist ?

A similar Act was passed for Scotland, and the number of exemptions granted in that country is rapidly increasing.

In Ireland, the Poor Law Guardians have liberty to refuse to prosecute for non-vaccination, and many Boards of Guardians have declined to prosecute. In consequence, the number of unvaccinated children in Ireland is rapidly increasing.

In Government employments, the officials of the War Office and Admiralty still choose to make vaccination compulsory, but this compulsion might be abolished any day by the Government, because there is no Statute enforcing vaccination on adults, and the continuation of the compulsion by the officials of the Army and Navy merely continues because these gentlemen are not willing to study the question for themselves, but consider themselves bound by the opinion of their medical advisers, who, in their turn, are unwilling to reconsider a question which they consider was settled 100 years ago.

India and Vaccination.

Vaccination is compulsory in many parts of India. Over 9,000,000 vaccinations were performed in the last year for which we have the records. There are many proofs available to show that it is only the direct and indirect pressure which is put on parents which results in this large number of vaccinations. Indian parents are as much opposed to vaccination as English parents are, and, in some cases, they resort to strong measures to prevent their children being vaccinated. Parents have, in many cases, been fined for the non-vaccination of their children, and in at least one instance a father went to prison for defying the compulsory law. In Bombay, after a struggle lasting for five years, the anti-vaccinists succeeded recently in securing the withdrawal of a proposal on the part of the Bombay Municipal Corporation that re-vaccination should be made compulsory. On the other hand, through Government pressure, vaccination has been made compulsory in Hyderabad (Sind), and in Ahmedabad. In spite of the extension of vaccination, however, small-pox does not show any permanent reduction. In 1908 the ratio of small-pox per million of the population was 754, and in only one year of the previous twenty-three years was such a figure reached, namely, in 1897. Official figures published in Bombay show that a large number of vaccinated children under ten years of age have been attacked by small­pox in that city.

The great harm that is done by vaccination in England has been proved in the foregoing pages, but, great as this is, it is trifling in comparison to the injury inflicted on the population of India, for the following reasons:

In many tropical and sub-tropical countries there are some persons suffering from leprosy, and, because of the fear of contagion, those who are known to suffer from the disease are avoided, and in some cases subjected to confinement. Therefore, those who have the disease conceal the fact as long as such concealment is possible. Children may be born of parents who have that disease, and inherit it from them, and this quite unknown to the medical man or other person attending them. The child may be vaccinated, and vaccine matter taken from it for the inoculation of other children. This vaccine matter containing the germs of leprosy conveys that disease to the children that are vaccinated. In this way leprosy is rapidly spread.* It is sad to think that the people should be subjected to this great and unnecessary curse entirely by the continuation of an antiquated process which has been proved to be absolutely useless. At the foot of p. 38 of this pamphlet is the following note :

Report of the Royal Commission on Vaccination, p. 203, par. 227 : Official Sanitary Reports, India, p. 142, Report of Sanitary Measures, India, 1879-80 : "Small­pox in India is not a disease that can be controlled by vaccination ... as an endemic and epidemic it must be dealt with by sanitary measures."
    Report of the Army Commission of the Punjaub, 1879, p. 186 : "Vaccination in the Punjaub, as elsewhere in India, has no power apparently over the course of an epidemic."

Doubtless in many parts of India arm-to-arm vaccination is abandoned, and in that case the spread of leprosy by that means will be stopped, but those who are vaccinated will remain subject to the other horrible diseases which it introduces into their blood, and it is to be hoped that before long people will be relieved from this unnecessary evil.

India under direct British  Rule.
Year 1919 (latest year for which I have complete vital statistics--A.L,.)
Population         ............................................ 245,290,000
Persons Annually Vaccinated                 ...        10,740,000
Births    ..........................................................   7,212.000
SMALL-POX DEATHS       .................              136,000

* " The  Recrudescence of  Leprosy,"  by  W.  Tebb.    (Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1893.)

Experience of Montreal.

In 1885 there was a severe epidemic of small-pox. The pro-vaccinists alleged at the time, and since, that this was due to neglected vaccination, but no statistics are given to prove this. On the other hand, the late Dr. W. B. Carpenter, a well-known pro-vaccinist, wrote a pamphlet in 1883, of which he sent a copy to every member of Parliament. He referred to his visit to Dr. Philip Carpenter, who resided in Montreal, and he used the following words :

" I made a point of inquiring during my stay there (Montreal) in August last (1882) ... I learned on the very best authority that the objections of the French Catholics (to vaccination) had been completely overcome . . . Vaccination being now as well carried out in Montreal by the Officers of Health as in the other great cities of the Dominion, Small-pox has become almost entirely extinct."

This evidence is sufficient to show that the epidemic of 1885 was not due to want of Vaccination. The fact is, parts of Montreal were in a very filthy condition. The French-Canadian paper Le Monde said, referring to the sewers: "The proof that they are in a bad state is that the stench from the street gullies in certain parts of the city is so powerful as to create nausea in passers by."

On the 25th November, 1885, Montreal correspondent of the Toronto Mail wrote: " The three Wards of St. Mary, St. James, and St. Lewis have contributed about 90 per cent, of the deaths throughout. It is in these wards that the 10,000 cesspools exist which breed the small-pox and other epidemics which help to fill up the mortality reports of the city."

On the 25th November, 1885, the Montreal Herald reported an interview with Dr. Garceau of Boston, Mass., who said, referring to the epidemic of small-pox: " I attribute the chief cause to the frightful system of cesspits."

Since that time Montreal has greatly improved its sanitary condition, with the consequent diminution of disease. Mulhall gave the general death-rate in that town during the years 1878-1880 as 37 per thousand. The English Registrar-General gave the death-rate for the years 1906-1910 at a little over 22 per thousand. Probably more recent figures will show a still lower death-rate.