The Glasgow victims were gathered together from all quarters, from the Highlands, from Ireland, and from elsewhere; they were lodged in conditions unsuitable to human life.... To render them unassailable by the matter of Smallpox was not enough, for it left them exposed to the other forms of disease. Thus in a garden where the flowers are neglected, to keep off thistle-down merely leaves the ground open to the world of surrounding weeds.
To operate on mortality, protection against every one of the fatal zymotic diseases is required; otherwise the suppression of one disease-element opens the way to another.
Dr. Farr thus exactly expresses what I wish to enforce. Whether smallpox prevail or disappear is of little importance. What is of importance is the prevalence of disease and death, and not the presence or absence of any of their special factors when the total result is constant and the measure of violated physiological laws. It is true that Dr. Farr recognises a virtue in vaccination, but on much the same terms that obeisance is rendered to a fetish. Vaccination might be struck out of his arguments without affecting his conclusions. How, for example, could the facts with their rationale be better stated than in these his words?—
Out of 1000 born in Liverpool, 518 children were destroyed in the first ten years of their life; some by Smallpox, many by Measles, Scarlatina, Whooping Cough, many by Typhus and Enteric Fever; one disease prevailing in one year, another disease prevailing in another; but still yielding the like fatal results. This represents what Dr. Watt found in Glasgow long ago. Out of 1000 children born in London, 351 died under ten years of age by zymotic diseases and other causes; the deaths are less by 167 than the deaths in Liverpool. How much less is the loss of life by these diseases in the healthy districts of England! There, out of 1000, only 205 children die in the first ten years of life. The enormous difference cannot be ascribed to Vaccination, as common in town as in country; the protection of life against Smallpox alone leaves it still at the mercy of the dangerous diseases of the insalubrious city.
Death from disease in insalubrious circumstances is but part of the mischief. Those who survive find their energies enfeebled and depressed in the struggle for survival. The time must surely come when smallpox and all allied forms of disease will be accounted discreditable and intolerable, and when their occurrence will be taken for notes of warning and command to search for and root out their causes. Then, too, magical preventives and palliatives and medical cures will have a very different place in the popular imagination.
Jenner read Watt’s pamphlet, and, more suo, the wretched creature failed to discern its scope and significance, seeing in it a malevolent aggression upon his interest in vaccination. He wrote to Moore from Cheltenham, 6th December, 1813—
You probably may not have seen a pamphlet lately published by Dr. Watt, as there is nothing in its title that develops its purport or evil tendency. Measles, it seems, has been extremely fatal in Glasgow for the last four or five years among children, and during this period Vaccination has been practised almost universally. Previously to this, Measles was considered a mild disease. Hence Dr. Watt infers that Smallpox is a kind of preparative for Measles, rendering the disease more mild. In short, he says, or seems to say, that we have gained nothing by the introduction of Cowpox; for that Measles and Smallpox have now changed places with regard to their fatal tendency. Is not this very shocking? Here is a new and unexpected twig shot forth for the sinking Anti-Vaccinist to cling to.[273]
Observe, the truth of Dr. Watt’s evidence was passed over! Inasmuch as it did not tend to the glory of vaccination, it was “evil,” and it was “shocking.” At a later date Baron assumed the same line, saying—
Notwithstanding the proofs of the power of Vaccination in diminishing the mortality from Smallpox, it has been a question whether infantile mortality has been diminished; it having been supposed that the beneficial effects of Vaccination were countervailed by a greater mortality in the other diseases of children. This very discouraging statement was published by Dr. Watt, of Glasgow; and the opinion, which was hastily adopted and unwisely promulgated, has unquestionably had a great effect in retarding the progress of Vaccination. It, unfortunately, gave countenance to some of the worst prejudices of those who were opposed to the practice.[274]