MR. ROBINSON’S OPINION.
Nevertheless, as Mr. Enoch Robinson has pointed out, there is something to be said for what Marson called good vaccination marks. The bit of reality that constitutes the basis of the marks illusion is this, that a well-formed vaccine cicatrix represents a strong vitality with vigorous healing power; whilst an ill-formed cicatrix represents a contrary habit of body; and, pari passu, those who heal well under vaccination stand likely to make the best recoveries in the event of smallpox. Good marks are simply notes of good constitutions, and the rest follows. Aught beyond is mere medical rubbish, on a par with faith in omens and divination in tea-cups.
CRUELTY OF MARKING.
Vaccination, in whatever form, is bad, but this faith in marks aggravates its cruelty. Mr. Claremont, vaccinator for St. Pancras, operates on infants by the thousand, and inflicts on each four marks. At a recent inquest on an infant, the victim of his handiwork, I heard him say, “The mothers nearly always protest.” Of course they do. What kind of mothers would they be if they did not protest! Apart from the venom, the shock to an infant’s life from such wounds is very serious. Mr. Young was called the other day to see a dying infant vaccinated by this Claremont. Previous to vaccination it was perfectly healthy, but never afterwards. From the time of the operation it fell under a blight. “In its coffin,” said Mr. Young, “it lay like a child’s doll—the poor babe had wasted away.”
I was glad to see in the Times about a year ago a letter from Dr. Allnatt of Cheltenham protesting against the cruelty of vaccination as practised upon the children of the poor. He recalled the days when he was a pupil of Dr. Walker, in 1825-26, and his instructions were to dip the point of the lancet into the fresh lymph, and insert it tenderly without drawing blood, under the cutis of the forearm, and protect the wound with a slight compress. “But the case is altered now,” he says. “Some of the vaccinators use real instruments of torture. Ivory points are driven into the flesh, and wounds ensue which become erysipelatous, and in the delicate constitutions of weakly children fatal.”
The case is altered now, says Dr. Allnatt; but why is the case altered now? Why, because, under the old terms vaccination was more and more seen to be no defence against smallpox; and to preserve the rite, and the gains from the rite, the marks doctrine was invented, or, rather, revived, and hailed as a sort of revelation from heaven.
REVACCINATION INTRODUCED.
When vaccination was seen to be no preventive of smallpox, it was conjectured that it might require renewal, a suggestion which distressed Jenner exceedingly. It was calculated, he said, “to do unspeakable mischief,” depriving his discovery “of more than half its virtues.” But as experience continued to belie the claim made for vaccination as a permanent defence, it was natural that those interested in its performance should endeavour to retrieve its waning credit. Thus revaccination began to be practised. Between 1830 and 1835 there were 13,861 revaccinations effected in the army of Wurtemburg. Dr. Holland (subsequently Sir Henry) after recording the accumulating proofs of the futility of vaccination in 1839, recommended revaccination as a probable resource, and the recommendation gradually acquired authority. The London Medical Gazette in 1844 boldly proclaimed, “Revaccinate, revaccinate!” But so late as 1851 the National Vaccine Establishment protested against the innovation, saying, “The restriction of the protective power of vaccination to any age, or to any term of years, is an hypothesis contradicted by experience and wholly unsupported by analogy.” Whatever the experience, however, and whatever the analogy, there was the indisputable fact, that vaccination in most unimpeachable form did not avert smallpox, and that if the public faith and the public money were to be retained, some fresh artifice was essential. It was hard to surrender the original claim of the equivalence of vaccination to smallpox; but it needs must when the devil drives; and so it has come to be admitted that Jenner was mistaken, and the vaccine rite to be effectual must be renewed.