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.

    8/12 (page 6)
    of his literary and scientific researches. One extract regarding the Malacca Straits must suffice.— “Now these Chinamen having sound teeth marry Malay women having sound teeth, and their children have sound teeth; but in Singapore and Penang the well- to-do part of them follow ihe example of their European neighbours and have their children vaccinated, and those children grow up to be men and women with teeth as decayed as any people in the world.’’ (9) With such facts as these before us well may we bear in mind that to do evil that good may come is a falsehood as old as the human race. Evidence on this feature of the subject is almost inexhaustible but I fear to weary the Board. I may conclude by referring to a list of 88 cases, just issued by the English Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League, of injury, disease, and death, the almost indisputable consequences of prac- tising this absurd and beastly rite: also a list of 449 cases of death from vaccination, nearly all recorded by medical men, from a document about to be presented to the German Diet. A letter appears in the Newcastle Daily Chronicle of this day, March 1st, 1878, signed by Dr. Wilson (10) and Dr. Wyld advocating vaccination direct from the calf. The present system of vaccination is practically given up, aud the writers admit that “ the anti-vaccinationists are becom- ing more and more active,” and that they “ have a legitimate cause.” It is refreshing to find medical men with such an amouut of candour. But their new nostrum is founded upon mere assertions. Jeuner said if vaccination were general, Small-pox would disappear from the world; Drs. Wilson and Wyld say the same words of their pet practice. It is impossible they can be ignorant, but they simulate ignorance of the fact, that the great god of the Jennerites, Dr. Seaton, Medical Officer to the Privy Council and Local Government Board, after visiting Paris, Brussels, Kotterdam, and Amsterdam in 1869, with the view of investigating vaccination direct from the calf, reported unfavourably of the practice as being impracticable and uncertain. Dr. George Gregory, physician to the Small-pox Hospital, declared that “ true vaccine lymph, as taken from the cow, is frequently very acrid, producing glandular swellings and local inflammation.” Dr. Shorthouse, M.ll.C.S. England, LL.D., a well-known contributor to medical and other journals, has also shown, in a sarcastic letter to the Croydon Chronicle, how dangerous is the practice of vacci- nation direct from the calf, and what folly its adoption would be. Drs. Wilson and Wyld say “some ignorantly suppose that calf lymph is produced by inoculating heifers with Small-pox.” Now a much higher authority, the late Dr. Sir Corjy Burrows, of Brighton, declared on the bench of magistrates so recently as Eebruary, 1876, that he himself had inoculated seventeen cows with Small-pox, and from these cows had sup- (9) Vaccination a Cause of the prevalent decay of the Teeth; and a Scourge to Beauty, Digestion, and Soundness. An experience from many lands. By Albert Carter. (10) This very Dr. Wilson, medical officer of the Alton Union, declared in the Lancet of December 29, 1877, that “ it is useless to deny that vaccination by human lymph involves danger of scrofulous and erysipelas inoculation. The difficulty of securing with absolute certitude subjects for furnishing vaccine lymph free from constitutional taint is simply insuperable, as few, rather I should say no, scientific physiologist, no thoughtful medical practitioner of wide-spread experience con- tests.” On the showing of Dr. Wilson, therefore, the present system stands condemned.