The first [diagram (No. VIII.)] shows in the upper part, by a dotted line, the total vaccinations, public and private, since 1850.[13] The middle line shows the mortality per million living from the chief zymotic diseases—fevers, measles, whooping-cough, and diphtheria—while the lower line gives the small-pox mortality. We notice here a high mortality from zymotics and from small-pox epidemics, during the whole period of nearly complete vaccination from 1854 to 1870. Then commenced the movement against vaccination, owing to its proved uselessness in the great epidemic when Leicester had a very much higher small-pox mortality than London, which has resulted in a continuous decline, especially rapid for the last fifteen years, till it is now reduced to almost nothing. For that period not only has small-pox mortality been continuously very low, but the zymotic diseases have also regularly declined to a lower amount than has ever been known before.
The second [diagram (No. IX.)] is even more important, as showing the influence of vaccination in increasing both the infantile and the total death-rates to an extent which even the strongest opponents of that operation had not thought possible. There are four solid lines on the diagram showing respectively, in five-year averages from 1838-42 to 1890-95, (1) the total death-rate per 1,000 living, (2) the infant death-rate under five years, (3) the same under one year, and (4), lowest of all, the small-pox death-rate under five years. The dotted line shows the percentage of total vaccinations to births.
The first thing to be noted is the remarkable simultaneous rise of all four death-rates to a maximum in 1868-72, at the same that the vaccination rate attained its maximum. The decline in the death-rates from 1852 to 1860 was due to sanitary improvements which had then commenced; but the rigid enforcement of vaccination checked the decline owing to its producing a great increase of mortality in children, an increase which ceased as soon as vaccination diminished. This clearly shows that the deaths which have only recently been acknowledged as due to vaccination, directly or indirectly, are really so numerous as largely to affect the total death-rate; but they were formerly wholly concealed, and still are partially concealed, by being registered under such headings as erysipelas, syphilis, diarrhœa, bronchitis, convulsions, or other proximate cause of death.
Here, then, we have indications of a very terrible fact, the deaths by various painful and often lingering diseases of thousands of children as the result of that useless and dangerous operation termed vaccination. It is difficult to explain the coincidences exhibited by this diagram in any other way, and it is strikingly corroborated by a diagram of infant mortality in London and in England which I laid before the Royal Commission, and which I here reproduce ([No. X.]). The early part of this diagram is from a table calculated by Dr. Farr from all the materials available in the Bills of Mortality, and it shows for each twenty years the marvellous diminution in infant mortality during the hundred years from 1730 to 1830, proving that there was some continuous beneficial change in the conditions of life. The materials for a continuation of the diagram are not given by the Registrar-General in the case of London, and I have had to calculate them for England. But from 1840 to 1890 we find a very slight fall, both in the death-rate under five years and under one year for England, and under one year for London, although both are still far too high, as indicated by the fact that in St. Saviour’s it is 213, and in Hampstead only 123 per 1,000 births. There appear to have been some causes which checked the diminution in London after 1840, then produced an actual rise from 1860 to 1870, followed by a slight but continuous fall since. The check to the diminution of the infant death-rate is sufficiently accounted for by that extremely rapid growth of London by immigration which followed the introduction of railways and which would appreciably increase the child-population (by immigration of families) in proportion to the births. The rise from 1860 to 1870 exactly corresponds to the rise in Leicester, and to the strict enforcement of infant vaccination, which was continuously high during this period; while the steady fall since corresponds also to that continuous fall in the vaccination rate due to a growing conviction of its uselessness and its danger. These facts strongly support the contention that vaccination, instead of saving thousands of infant lives, as has been claimed, really destroys them by thousands, entirely neutralising that great reduction which was in progress from the last century, and which the general improvement in health would certainly have favoured. It may be admitted that the increasing employment of women in factories is also a contributory cause of infant mortality, but there is no proof that a less proportion of women have been thus employed during the last twenty years, while it is certain that there has been a great diminution of vaccination, which is now admitted to be a vera causa of infant mortality.
Before leaving the case of Leicester it will be instructive to compare it with some other towns of which statistics are available. And first as to the great epidemic of 1871-2 in Leicester and in Birmingham. Both towns were then well vaccinated, and both suffered severely by the epidemic. Thus:
| Leicester. | Birmingham. | |
|---|---|---|
| S.P. cases per 10,000 population | 327 | 213 |
| ” deaths ” ” ” | 35 | 35 |
But since then Leicester has rejected vaccination to such an extent that in 1894 it had only seven vaccinations to ten thousand population, while Birmingham had 240, or more than thirty times as much, and the proportion of its inhabitants who have been vaccinated is probably less than half those of Birmingham. The Commissioners themselves state that the disease was brought into the town of Leicester on twelve separate occasions during the recent epidemic, yet the following is the result:
| 1891-4. | Leicester. | Birmingham. |
|---|---|---|
| S.P. cases per 10,000 population | 19 | 63 |
| ” deaths ” ” ” | 1·1 | 5 |
Here we see that Leicester had less than one-third the cases of small-pox, and less than one-fourth the deaths in proportion to population than well-vaccinated Birmingham; so that both the alleged protection from attacks of the disease, and mitigation of its severity when it does attack, are shown, not only to be absolutely untrue, but to apply really, in this case, to the absence of vaccination!