VARIOLATION.

The chief resistance proceeded from the inoculators with smallpox; indeed, with the exception of apathy, there might be said to be no other resistance. Hence we read under the several dates—

1810.—During 1809, the surgeons vaccinated 1,493 persons. We are sorry to have to relate a decline of Vaccination in the Metropolis, and an apparent indisposition to the practice of it; and to express regret that there should be evil-disposed persons, who are endeavouring to frustrate His Majesty’s intentions by alarming the misinformed with stories which they know to be false.

1812.—We have reason to ascribe the increase of Smallpox in London during last year to the rash and inconsiderate manner in which great numbers are still inoculated for the Smallpox, and afterwards required to attend two or three times a week at the place of inoculation in every stage of their illness. The practice of Inoculation is the great means whereby Smallpox is kept in existence, and its infection propagated to persons and places where it would not otherwise be seen.

1814.—The Board has with great regret to observe that, although the punishment of three months’ imprisonment was awarded against Sophia Vantandillo, for carrying her child, whilst under the influence of Smallpox, through the streets, (which infected many others, eight of whom died) the unwary are still enticed by the hand-bills of shameless empirics to submit their children to Variolous Inoculation. It is, however, to be hoped that the above sentence passed by the Court of King’s Bench, which the Board has taken every method of promulgating, may produce considerable benefit. The Board selected Sophia Vantandillo as a proper example on account of the extent of the mischief occasioned by her misconduct; and that this prosecution, followed by a lenient punishment, may prevent any further wilful exposure of inoculated persons, is its fervent wish. The Board at the same time prosecuted Mr. Burnet, who inoculated the child, and who has long circulated most mischievous and offensive hand-bills, offering to inoculate persons with Smallpox gratis, and stigmatising Vaccination as productive of the most loathsome disease. This practitioner having suffered judgment to go by default, has been sentenced by the Court of King’s Bench to six months’ imprisonment.

The whole of the expenses incident to this Establishment for 1814 have been defrayed by the vote of last year, but the Board regrets that in consequence of the recent prosecutions and convictions, and the measures adopted for the more effectual extension of the practice of vaccination throughout the Empire, an addition of £500 to the annual grant will be necessary.

1815.—In Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Norwich, Inoculation is disused, and, in consequence, the Smallpox is scarcely known. In the country about Aberystwith in Wales, and Bawtry in Yorkshire, it has entirely disappeared. The reverse is, unhappily, the case in Portsmouth, Bristol, and London. In the Metropolis alone the mortality may be estimated at 1,000 annually; perhaps throughout the United Kingdom it is not less than ten times that number. It appears to us that this waste of human life can be prevented only by such legislative enactments as will entirely put a stop to Inoculation with Smallpox.

That smallpox was increased by variolation we have no reason to doubt, notwithstanding the fact that toward the close of the last century, when variolation was most practised, smallpox was steadily falling-off; but to ascribe the existence and persistence of smallpox to variolation was absurd. Smallpox was a widely-diffused disease before variolation was introduced to anticipate and minimise it.

1817.—The pernicious practice of Smallpox Inoculation, now very generally relinquished by the medical profession, is only persisted in by a very few of the least creditable class of practitioners, and is usually carried on clandestinely; yet the Board are concerned to state that this destructive operation is now performed for gain by itinerant Empirics, Farriers, Publicans, Nurses, low, cunning people of both sexes, and of various descriptions. And such is the infatuation of the poor and ignorant, that many of them carry their infants to be inoculated by those who only know how to inflict, but not how to assuage, the violence of Smallpox. The consequence has been that many have perished under their management; and the disease in particular districts has been widely disseminated. As this iniquitous conduct has prevailed much in London, an epidemic of Smallpox was last year excited among those who were not secured by Vaccination, and 1,051 persons died of the disease.

1836.—Only 300 died of Smallpox in London in the course of last year; and it is probable that this mortality, however comparatively small, is owing to the continued partial practice of Inoculation, which is liable to disseminate far and wide its contagious influence, to the imminent danger of all who have not been protected by previous Vaccination, or by having had Smallpox already.

Variolation was made a penal offence in 1840, and became less available as an excuse for the persistence of smallpox in defiance of vaccination.

FAILURE OF VACCINATION.

Accepting Jenner’s revelation, the heads of the medical profession in London assured the public, in a manifesto in 1800, that “those persons who have had Cowpox are perfectly secure from the future infection of Smallpox.” It was a rash assertion. Proofs of its untruth were not slow to appear. At first they were denied, then explained away, and then admitted under qualifications more or less adroit. When, in 1808, the National Vaccine Establishment was constituted, the fact of the failure of Vaccination to answer to its original promise was generally recognised. Nevertheless, the reports of the Establishment exhibit much ingenious wriggling and attempts to out-lie Nature. For example—

1811.—That in some instances Smallpox has affected persons who have been most carefully vaccinated, is sufficiently established; nor ought we to be surprised at this, when we consider that Inoculation for Smallpox sometimes fails, and that several cases may be produced in which persons have been affected with the natural disease more than once in the course of life. The Board have infinite satisfaction in stating the two following important and decisive facts in proof of the efficacy and safety of Vaccination, namely, that in the cases which have come to their knowledge, Smallpox after Vaccination, with a very few exceptions, has been a mild disease, and that out of the many hundred thousand persons Vaccinated, not a single authenticated instance has been communicated to them of the occurrence of fatal Smallpox after Vaccination.

The Board have great pleasure in stating that the money granted by Parliament during the last session has been sufficient to defray the expenses of the year 1811, and they are of opinion that the same sum will be adequate to the expenditure of the current year.

There were 3,148 vaccinations effected under the Board in 1811, which was at the rate of about £1 a-head.

Moore, after reporting some cases of smallpox after vaccination, at St. Osyth, in Essex, went on to say—

1816.—Some very rare instances of failures in Vaccination, as exceptions to a general law, may be expected as long as Smallpox is prevalent; since it has been fully ascertained that when the air is strongly impregnated with the infectious vapour of Smallpox, some of those who have had the disease are attacked a second time.

1818.—From the foundation of this Establishment in 1808 to the present year there have been vaccinated 52,253 persons at the stations in London. Only four of these are yet known to have had Smallpox afterwards, and these were never very seriously ill.

1819.—The testimonies of some of our correspondents concur in showing that great numbers of persons who had been vaccinated have been subsequently seized with a disease presenting all the essential characters of Smallpox; but that in the great majority of such cases, the disease has been of comparatively short duration, unattended by symptoms of danger. In several of these cases, however, the malady has been prolonged to its ordinary period, and in eight reported cases it has proved fatal. It appears to us to be fairly established that the disposition in the vaccinated to be thus affected by the contagion of Smallpox does not depend upon the time that has elapsed after Vaccination, since some persons have been so affected who had recently been vaccinated, whilst others who had been vaccinated eighteen and twenty years have been variolated, and exposed to contagion with impunity.

1820.—It is true that we have received accounts from different parts of the country of numerous cases of Smallpox having occurred after Vaccination, and we cannot doubt that the prejudices of the people against this preventive are assignable (and not altogether unreasonably, perhaps) to this cause. These cases the Board have industriously investigated, and though it appears that many of them rest only on hearsay evidence, and that others seem to have undergone the Vaccine Process imperfectly, yet after every reasonable deduction, we are compelled to allow that too many still remain on undeniable proof to leave any doubt that the pretensions of Vaccination, to the merit of a perfect and exclusive security in all cases against Smallpox, were at first admitted too unreservedly.

1825.—That a considerable number of persons have had Smallpox after having been vaccinated, we are ready to admit; although of cases of this kind, a large majority are found on examination to be without that test of the operation being performed successfully and effectually, which all agree to be necessary to perfect security. Vaccination, therefore, it will be said, does not afford an absolute and perfect security. We do not present it to the world with that pretension, but we declare it to be the least imperfect of the resources we possess for encountering the disease.

1827.—It is true, cases are reported to us very often of the occurrence of Smallpox after Vaccination; but we have reason to believe that the number of those who fall into this safe, though sometimes severe disease, after Vaccination, is not greater than that of those who formerly died by Inoculation whilst that practice prevailed.

1833.—Of an equal number of persons vaccinated and variolated, only so many of the former will be capable of taking the Smallpox afterwards, and that in a safe degree of the disease, as are found to die by the latter.

1836.—If 300 children be vaccinated, one will be susceptible of Smallpox afterwards, but only in a mild and perfectly safe form, whereas if 300 be variolated, one will surely die.

As evolutions from inner consciousness, the statistics of Variolation and Vaccination under 1827, 1833, and 1836 are noteworthy. They illustrate the facility of the Board at the discovery of what was thought ought to be true.

DEVELOPMENT OF A FABULOUS SALVATION.

1811.—Previous to the discovery of Vaccination, the average number of deaths by Smallpox within the London bills of mortality was 2,000 annually; whereas during 1811, only 751 died of the disease, notwithstanding the increase of population.

1818.—During the year, 6,289 have been vaccinated in London and the vicinity; and the Board have much satisfaction in adducing unequivocal evidence of the increasing advantages of the Jennerian discovery; for it appears from the bills of mortality of London that, instead of 2,000 deaths by Smallpox, which was the annual average previous to the practice of Vaccination, there died in 1818 only 421.

That, previous to the introduction of vaccination, 2,000 was the average annual death-rate from smallpox in London is a statement that requires definition. At an early date the number is under the mark, and at a later it is over the mark. Dr. Farr delivers the truth in these words—

Smallpox attained its maximum mortality after Inoculation was introduced. The annual deaths from Smallpox in London, from 1760 to 1779, were on an average 2,323. In the next twenty years, 1780 to 1799, they declined to 1,740. The disease, therefore, began to grow less fatal before Vaccination was discovered, indicating, together with the diminution of fevers, the general improvement of health then taking place.

Bearing Dr. Farr’s figures in mind (and not forgetting the 2,000 adduced by the Board in the reports for 1811 and 1818), what does the reader think of the following audacious attempts on public credulity?—

1826.—From the quantity of vaccine lymph distributed, we are led to presume the practice of Vaccination is becoming daily more general; and the inference is still further confirmed by the fact that in 1826, only 503 deaths have occurred from Smallpox within the bills of mortality; whereas in the preceding year, 1,299 persons are recorded as having fallen victims to the loathsome disease. The whole of this difference ought not, perhaps, in candour to be attributed to the influence of Vaccination; for Smallpox during 1825 assumed a peculiarly malignant character; and there were more instances of the distemper occurring twice in the same individual than had ever been reported to us before. But when we reflect that before the introduction of Vaccination the average number of deaths from Smallpox in London was annually about 4,000, no stronger argument can reasonably be demanded in favour of the value of this important discovery. Nor can any more striking proof be given of the paternal care of the Government to protect the people at home and abroad from this destructive disease than the establishment and maintenance of this Board.

The bouncing falsehood, having passed muster, was repeated with enlargement at a suitable interval—

1834.—Only 334 deaths by Smallpox have been reported, a number considerably less than have died in any year since the introduction of Vaccination, and falling short by at least 4,000 of the average of deaths annually by Smallpox in London before the protecting influence of Cowpox was discovered and promulgated.

And again it appeared with a fresh touch of exaggeration—

1836.—The annual loss of life by Smallpox in the Metropolis before Vaccination was established exceeded 5,000, whereas, in the course of last year, only 300 died of the distemper.

Impunity being apparently assured, the fable came to be delivered as matter-of-course, thus—

1839.—Formerly 5,000 died annually of Smallpox within the London bills of mortality; but since Vaccination superseded Variolation, the number has gradually decreased, until it amounted to only 200 in the year 1837. In the course of the year that has terminated (during which Smallpox prevailed epidemically), there died 800; not one more, after all, than one-sixth of the number who died annually [that is to say, 4,800] during the prevalence of Variolation, notwithstanding the increased population of London and its environs. By a careful retrospect, we are, therefore, justified in stating that 4,000 lives are saved every year in London, since Vaccination so largely superseded Variolation.

The fall in smallpox that set in toward the close of last century was not confined to London, but extended to many European populations. It began before vaccination was heard of, and continued independently of it, though the vaccinators eagerly claimed the phenomenon as the result of their superfluous efforts. The claim was absurd as concerned London, for it plainly appears that vaccination during the years in question never overtook, or even approached, the metropolitan birth-rate. Here is the record of the vaccinations effected by the Establishment in five years—

18181819182018211822Total.
—————————————
5,4907,8746,0546,6278,230=34,275

The entire vaccinations in five years not equalling the London births in any one year! There were, we dare say, as many more vaccinated by voluntary effort; but the figures, however extended, cannot be got to cover the immense mass of lower-class Londoners, who then, as now, were the chief factors of smallpox. What I say emphatically is, the National Vaccine Establishment had as much influence on London smallpox as the Holy Alliance.