Dr. Farr in the 30th annual report of the Registrar General says, quoting Dr. Watt, of Glasgow, a child had a better chance of reaching its tenth year in the last eighteen years of the last century when small-pox formed 20 per cent. of the whole mortality than it has now, when small-pox mortality is only two per cent.
No one disputes that small-pox is less prevalent now than it was a century ago, but what gain is there? Dr. Farr says, “it is useless to bar the door against one form of zymotic disease, as small-pox by vaccination, while the causes of zymotic disease are suffered to remain.”
In 1863 scarlatina destroyed 30,000 in England, a mortality of 1,800 to each million persons living. In 1869 and 1870 the probability is that the mortality from scarlatina will reach 40,000 annually, shewing a death rate per million of 2,000, while small-pox will probably not exceed 70 to a million.
Small-pox was a scourge in Europe a century ago. Now, scarlatina is the scourge, and this will continue. One or other form of zymotic disease will continue to exist while the causes which develope them remain. You gentlemen, who advocate vaccination as a preventive measure are in error—you begin at the wrong end—you aim not at taking away the cause, but prefer to contaminate the body with one disease, to prevent the subject from taking another, which is the result of filthy habitations, unclean towns, and bad sanitary arrangements.
It has been disputed to-night that diseases are induced by vaccination; will it be denied that erysipelas is a common—a frequent result of the process? What are the facts? Erysipelas, which, prior to vaccination, was a disease incident to adult life, especially to middle age, is now a disease of infant life. In the Registrar General’s returns, you will find in the six years 1862 to 1867, there died of this disease 10,635, including all ages from birth to 80 years; of that number no less than 3,261 died in the first year of life, the year of vaccination, while 3,904 died under five years of age. This frightful mortality of infants is the direct consequence of vaccination; a natural result; indeed, Jenner tells us that, that vaccination is alone protective, which is attended by erysipelas; while the spontaneous cow-pox, which is unattended by erysipelas, is not protective. Yet when children die of erysipelas following vaccination, the deaths are certified “death from erysipelas,” while the truth is concealed. The death should be certified properly, DEATH FROM VACCINATION. But when an inquest is held in this parish, under the coronership of Dr. Lankester, on a child of Mr. Emery of Great Portland-street, although the evidence adduced to the jury clearly shewed that the child died in consequence of vaccination, efforts are made to conceal the fact; for while the jury unanimously returned a verdict “died from erysipelas caused by vaccination,” the coroner’s copy deposited at the Registrar General’s office, Somerset-house, certifies the additional words “death by misadventure.” [19] And with what object were those words added, but to screen the operator, by whose vaccinating hand another child also lost its life (probably with the same lancet) on which the coroner for Westminster, Mr. Bedford, held an inquest. I do not say that Dr. Lankester intentionally suppressed the truth, to save his professional brother, but I do say, that it is highly dangerous to the community, to have a medical coroner, whose leanings in favor of his profession may lead him into partial verdicts. The duty of a coroner is to hear evidence, and direct the jury as to the law, not to give opinions with a professional bias. Compulsory vaccination may be defined to be manslaughter by Act of Parliament.
So much for one disease, Erysipelas. Let us now come to another frightfully increasing disease of infant life, Diarrhœa. I have, during the last twenty years in which I have given my attention to this subject—vaccination and its effects—observed the frequency with which vaccination of infants is followed by a fatal kind of diarrhœa. Enteritis of infants has without doubt increased and is increasing.
I was not surprised, therefore, to find in the twelfth report of the medical office of the Privy Council, just published, a paper by Dr. Seaton on vaccination in Paris, in which at page 176, occurs the following passage:—
“In some cases the vaccinated calves have suffered from diarrhœa.”
At page 178, “In Depaul’s seventh and eighth experiments, for example, the calves suffered severely from diarrhœa.”
Another passage, page 178, shows that diarrhœa is an accompaniment of the process; “the health of the calf, however, affects the character of the eruption, for it has been observed that when diarrhœa happens in the course of its evolution, the pustules, although they rise as in the healthy calf, are smaller in size, and less full.”