Since 1306 Smallpox has been epidemic in Iceland nineteen times, and has always been brought in either by French, English, Dutch, or Danish ships. In early times it frequently caused a terrible mortality, as in 1707, when 18,000 out of a population of 50,000 perished; and in 1430, when 8000 are said to have died. In later years its violence has diminished in consequence of the introduction of Vaccination. In 1785-6-7, its last attack in the eighteenth century, only 1425 persons died.
Very good; but in 1785-87, vaccination was unknown; and as the epidemics of 1742 and 1762 are recorded by Schleisner as “small” and “mild” respectively, while so early as 1580 one is described as “a kind of variolous disease,” it is evident that vaccination could have as little to do with making “smallpox milder” as with the long terms of immunity which Iceland has enjoyed.
In an appeal by Mr. William Morris on behalf of the Icelanders, threatened with famine in 1882 he observed—
Lastly, the Measles, which has not been in Iceland for thirty-six years, and which falling on a people not used to it, is a deadly and not a trivial disease, has attacked Reykjavik, where half the people are down with it, and many have died, and it is now spreading over the island.
Measles absent from Iceland for thirty-six years! Supposing there were some dodge against measles corresponding to vaccination against smallpox, would not the exemption in every year up to the thirty-sixth have been ascribed to its efficacy?
Dr. Garth Wilkinson relates that in 1866 when standing on the Lawrock, where the Althing was held, Dr. Hjaltalin, Medical Inspector of Iceland, told him—
When, in 1000 A.D., Christianity was first introduced into Iceland, the heathen party in the Althing credited the wrath of their gods with a volcanic eruption which broke out on a neighbouring farm. Snorri, the great Icelandic historian, being present, asked, “What then was it that made the gods angry when the older lava was on fire?” It clearly was not Christianity then. He carried the day against the gods by this common-sense question, and Christianity became the law of the land.
Somewhat parallel with this history is the claim made for the extirpation of Smallpox by Vaccination in Iceland. It is a case of ante hoc pricking the windbag of post hoc, and, a fortiori, of propter hoc.[265]
Whilst thus the Icelandic Vaccination Bubble is burst, it remains to be observed that if vaccination had saved the Icelanders from smallpox it could only have been vicariously—as in so many instances of similar salvation; for during the first half of the present century no more than 17,072 vaccinations were effected in a population of between fifty and sixty thousand in the flux of birth and death. The vaccinations are thus recorded—