The Newcastle Guardians and vaccination : special report of the arguments against the Compulsory Vaccination Acts, at the debate at the Board of Guardians, Newcastle, March 1st, 1878.

  • Procter, Edmund.
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Newcastle Guardians and vaccination : special report of the arguments against the Compulsory Vaccination Acts, at the debate at the Board of Guardians, Newcastle, March 1st, 1878. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    Let us then examine some of the facts of the case. Scotland has often been held up by the advocates of vaccination as one of the best pro- tected countries in Europe. The third annual report of the Registrar- General of Scotland says, “ Never since civil registration began in Scot- land, has Small-pox been so rare as during the past three years, when the vaccination act has been in full operation.” Dr. Wood of Edinburgh stated in his evidence before the Vaccination Committee that there were very few un-vaccinated persons in Scotland. Dr. Playfair said iu the House of Commons, on the Gth of Jul)r, 1870 :—“ There could not be the slightest doubt that compulsory laws, when properly applied, as in Scotland and Ireland, were perfectly equal to stamp out Small-pox in a country.” Tet almost immediately after this, in 1871, a fearful epidemic raged in Scotland, during which according to the Lancet, the deaths from Small-pox were equivalent to au annual mortality of 36 per 1,000. “ Leith, Dundee, Edinburgh, Perth and Aberdeen,’ says the Lancet of February 17, 1872, “are suffering most severely from the epidemic.” Ireland has also been the boast of vaccinators, and Sir Dominic Cor- rigan, then M. P. for Dublin, boasted in the House of Commons, that vaccination had stamped out Small-pox in Ireland. Since then there have been frightful epidemics in Dublin, Belfast and Cork. In Dublin the mortality from Small-pox during 1871-2 was three times as great as the mortality of London in the worst epidemic of this century ; in Cork the mortality during the quarter ending June, 1872, was ten times greater than London.(i) Since then the Jennerites have had nothing to say about Ireland. Regarding France, the returns of the French Government, pre- sented through the Minister of Commerce and Agriculture, and pre- pared by the Imperial Academy of Medicine, show incoutestibly that Small-pox prevailed most in the best vaccinated Departments, “ and for every one death in the ten Departments least vaccinated, there were 49 in those most vaccinated.” I will hand a translation of this report to any one wishing to see it. From the report of Consul Hotham, the British Consul at Calais, vve fiud in the Department-du-Nord, that cases of Small-pox were nearly six times more numerous among children who were vaccinated than among such as had not been vaccinated.(2) From Prussia the evidence is even more remarkable. Compulsory vaccin- ation has been carried out there with a rigour not only unknown, but happily impossible in this country. Not only so, but re-vaccination is very extensively practised; it is almost universal in the army, and has long been largely performed upon the general public. Yet in Berlin there raged seven years ago a Small-pox epidemic with a per-centage of deaths almost incredibly wors3 than the London epidemic of 1871! Dr. Leander Josef Keller, chief Physician to the Austrian Imperial Railway, thus sums up that in well-vaccinated Prussia there died in the ep- idemic of 1871-2, 124,000 persons, and many thousands died having upwards of ten well-vaccinated scars.” To turn for one moment to (1) The London mortality from Small-pox during this epidemic was 2 4 ; Dublin reached 7-6 ; Cork 23-2. (2) Reports from Her Majesty's Consuls.