1817.—The pernicious practice of Smallpox Inoculation, now very generally relinquished by the medical profession, is only persisted in by a very few of the least creditable class of practitioners, and is usually carried on clandestinely; yet the Board are concerned to state that this destructive operation is now performed for gain by itinerant Empirics, Farriers, Publicans, Nurses, low, cunning people of both sexes, and of various descriptions. And such is the infatuation of the poor and ignorant, that many of them carry their infants to be inoculated by those who only know how to inflict, but not how to assuage, the violence of Smallpox. The consequence has been that many have perished under their management; and the disease in particular districts has been widely disseminated. As this iniquitous conduct has prevailed much in London, an epidemic of Smallpox was last year excited among those who were not secured by Vaccination, and 1,051 persons died of the disease.
1836.—Only 300 died of Smallpox in London in the course of last year; and it is probable that this mortality, however comparatively small, is owing to the continued partial practice of Inoculation, which is liable to disseminate far and wide its contagious influence, to the imminent danger of all who have not been protected by previous Vaccination, or by having had Smallpox already.
Variolation was made a penal offence in 1840, and became less available as an excuse for the persistence of smallpox in defiance of vaccination.
FAILURE OF VACCINATION.
Accepting Jenner’s revelation, the heads of the medical profession in London assured the public, in a manifesto in 1800, that “those persons who have had Cowpox are perfectly secure from the future infection of Smallpox.” It was a rash assertion. Proofs of its untruth were not slow to appear. At first they were denied, then explained away, and then admitted under qualifications more or less adroit. When, in 1808, the National Vaccine Establishment was constituted, the fact of the failure of Vaccination to answer to its original promise was generally recognised. Nevertheless, the reports of the Establishment exhibit much ingenious wriggling and attempts to out-lie Nature. For example—
1811.—That in some instances Smallpox has affected persons who have been most carefully vaccinated, is sufficiently established; nor ought we to be surprised at this, when we consider that Inoculation for Smallpox sometimes fails, and that several cases may be produced in which persons have been affected with the natural disease more than once in the course of life. The Board have infinite satisfaction in stating the two following important and decisive facts in proof of the efficacy and safety of Vaccination, namely, that in the cases which have come to their knowledge, Smallpox after Vaccination, with a very few exceptions, has been a mild disease, and that out of the many hundred thousand persons Vaccinated, not a single authenticated instance has been communicated to them of the occurrence of fatal Smallpox after Vaccination.
The Board have great pleasure in stating that the money granted by Parliament during the last session has been sufficient to defray the expenses of the year 1811, and they are of opinion that the same sum will be adequate to the expenditure of the current year.
There were 3,148 vaccinations effected under the Board in 1811, which was at the rate of about £1 a-head.
Moore, after reporting some cases of smallpox after vaccination, at St. Osyth, in Essex, went on to say—
1816.—Some very rare instances of failures in Vaccination, as exceptions to a general law, may be expected as long as Smallpox is prevalent; since it has been fully ascertained that when the air is strongly impregnated with the infectious vapour of Smallpox, some of those who have had the disease are attacked a second time.