In these observations is revealed the movement of a new spirit—of a revived resolution to obtain for vaccination the force of law. Similar projects had from time to time been advanced by enthusiasts, and swept aside by statesmen. Canning, for instance, had declared that he could not imagine any circumstances whatever that would induce him to consent to the compulsory infliction of vaccination; and, at a later date, Sir Robert Peel expressed himself to like effect, saying, “To make vaccination compulsory, as in some despotic countries, would be so opposite to the mental habits of the British people, and the freedom of opinion wherein they rightly glory, that I never could be a party to such compulsion.”[280] But Peel died in 1850, and a strong public opinion in favour of sanitary reform had come into existence without much scruple as to methods. Diseases, hitherto regarded as supernatural inflictions, were traced to conditions of life, remediable or avertible; so that the submission and terror which sickness formerly inspired gave place to widely different sentiments—a temper of intolerance with illness, and a determination to extirpate its infectious forms with those who in ignorance or wilfulness should persist in their generation and diffusion.
FOOTNOTES:
[278] 3 & 4 Vict., cap. 59.
[279] 4 & 5 Vict., cap. 32.
[280] Report of Royal Jennerian and London Vaccine Institution, 1853.
[CHAPTER XXXVII.]
VACCINATION ENFORCED—1853.
Vaccination, it will be objected, had no connection with sanitary reform. True: it had none; but the dull public when possessed with a new enthusiasm is not apt to discriminate; and those who had an interest in pushing vaccination found their operations facilitated by the rising faith in the preventibility of disease; their promise of saving the country from smallpox seeming of a piece with much else that had become credible.
Yet, strange to say, the credit of vaccination had never fallen lower than prior to its enforcement. The proof is written at large in the reports of the National Vaccine Establishment from 1831 to 1850, which it is difficult to peruse without perceiving them to be the testimonies of half-hearted officials to a generation grown sceptical and indifferent. The medical literature of the time reflects the same uncertainty and doubt. Vaccination was admitted to be no sure defence against smallpox: it might, it probably did, mitigate the disease when it occurred; and, in the absence of anything better, its practice was advisable; but on such terms, what scope was there for its advocacy! In the writings of Dr. George Gregory, this scepticism is so pronounced, that he scarcely hesitates to recommend a reversion to inoculation with smallpox. A like scepticism as to the virtue of vaccination with a like disposition to return to variolous inoculation, is exhibited by Dr. Copland in his Dictionary of Practical Medicine, 1844-58—a work of high repute, and the standard of medical opinion for the time. In short, vaccination was subject to general distrust; every claim made for it had been belied; and except for its endowment by the State, and the determination of sundry adventurers to have that endowment enlarged, the practice would gradually have fallen into disuse.
The same absence of confidence in vaccination was conspicuous in the school of sanitary reformers. It was of the essence of their revelation that smallpox was as preventible as other fevers, and by the same methods. I might, indeed, challenge any one to produce aught from the utterances of the early apostles of sanitation in deliberate or explicit praise of vaccination. The prescription might not be formally condemned; it might even be cursorily approved; but it was foreign to the tenor of their doctrine, and its recommendation must have died in their throats. Dr. Southwood Smith delivered two lectures in Edinburgh in 1855 on the Prevention of Epidemics, but of smallpox as preventible by vaccination he said not a word. On the contrary, this was his testimony, his all inclusive testimony—