That children and adults be revaccinated until the operation is declared successful. If after repeated vaccinations, a patient prove insusceptible, a certificate to that effect shall protect him from the penalty otherwise rigidly inflicted.
That Public Vaccinators be entitled to a fee of 2s. 6d. for every child or adult successfully vaccinated within two miles of the Vaccinator’s residence, and 3s. 6d. if beyond that limit. That Medical Practitioners, not public vaccinators, be entitled to 1s. for every person entered by them on the register as vaccinated.
That a certificate of successful vaccination be granted for the trifling fee of 6d.
That the Superintendent be empowered to institute rigid inquiry and to prosecute for penalties wherever he suspects the regulations of the Act have been neglected or violated.
Here, indeed, was a dose of despotism for Englishmen! Nothing being done in 1855, there was time for reconsideration. It was felt that the withdrawal of vaccination from local administration was too revolutionary; and another bill was introduced in 1856, under the direction of Mr. W. F. Cowper, President of the Board of Health (dropping the New Vaccination Office), with provisions for the inspection and vaccination of children in public schools, and of emigrants; for revaccination in the event of epidemics; and for coroners’ inquests on unvaccinated children dying of smallpox. There was no popular demand for such legislation. It was promoted by a group of medical place-hunters operating under the mask of the Epidemiological Society. The solitary petition in its favour was presented, 26th May, 1856, by Mr. James Furness Marson, a comrade of Dr. Seaton in the direction of the Society. Marson was resident surgeon of the Smallpox Hospital at Highgate, and as evidence of his unscrupulous advocacy, we may take the following assertions—
Your Petitioner has, in the course of twenty years, vaccinated upwards of 40,000 persons, and has never seen any evil results traceable to Vaccination, with the exception of a single instance in which measles occurred at the same time, and four or five examples of rather severely sore arms arising from lymph recently taken from the cow. He has never seen other diseases communicated from the Vaccine Disease, nor does he believe in the popular reports that they are ever so communicated.
The mortality from Smallpox in the Unvaccinated, of cases taken generally, is 35 per cent.; and among the Vaccinated attacked by Smallpox it is 7 per cent.
Among children under fourteen years of age who have been vaccinated, Smallpox hardly ever proves fatal.
As an example of what can be done by efficient Vaccination, your Petitioner begs to state that not one of the servants or nurses of the Smallpox Hospital has had Smallpox for the last twenty years. They have all been either vaccinated or revaccinated on coming to live at the Hospital.
The Petitioner omitted to mention how many of the said servants and nurses had entered the Hospital as patients, and were pleased to remain as officials. Prevarication throughout was the note of Marson’s petition: he might argue that what he stated was true—true under conditions and reserves unstated.