If Vaccination really possessed the properties ascribed to it, a change must long ere this have taken place in the character of Smallpox, both of the sporadic and epidemic kind. Smallpox has been minutely described by pathologists before Vaccination was introduced, and in such a manner that one would think they had seen the disease in the wards of our hospitals. Indeed the best pathologists of our time, who have paid special attention to Smallpox, agree that they could add nothing to the descriptions of Rhazes (who died at Bagdad A.D. 930), of Sydenham, 1675, of Richard Mead, 1754, and of John Huxham, 1764. Mead admits a light and severe Smallpox, and Huxham observed such slight epidemics that no fever appeared in the whole course of the disease. At present, pathologists would hardly class such cases with Variola Vera; they would, perhaps, call them Variola Modificata; or let them figure in their tables as Varioloid and proofs of the good results of Vaccination.
It may be that in former centuries Smallpox assumed more frequently the malignant or hæmorrhagic type; but this circumstance can in nowise be explained by the intervention of Vaccination. Even as many individuals of the animal and vegetable kingdoms have disappeared, so also have great changes taken place in the number and severity of diseases. When scurvy, putrid fevers, dysentery, etc., were commoner, Smallpox was likely to be more malignant: so much was due to the prevalent poverty and scarcity throughout Europe. Pauperism, want and hunger, are always characterised by a proportionate frequency, gravity and diffusion of various diseases.
Then, too, much of the mortality of smallpox in former times was attributable to maltreatment; and Hamernik illustrated what was possible under good treatment, by adducing his own experience when the smallpox wards in Prague were under his care. “The recoveries were, very speedy, and the deaths less than five per cent.”
Third, he held that the doctrine of Jenner was opposed to recognised pathological principles. Observation has taught us that two severe diseases cannot affect an individual at the same time. Thus typhus cannot go on with scarlet fever or smallpox, nor tuberculous with cancerous disease. The rule, however, only holds good with diseases that affect the whole organism. It does not apply to trifling or local affections, to which latter category cowpox belongs. The best marked diseases pursue their course contemporaneously with cowpox; and the scars of the punctures through which it has been inoculated have no more influence in averting smallpox than any similar scars resulting from analogous cutaneous lesion—
I consider it as a general pathological law that morbid actions which have entirely run their course can have absolutely no influence whatever upon the subsequent pathological reactions of the individual. Hence it is possible to suffer repeatedly from smallpox, scarlet fever, typhus, pneumonia, tubercular disease, etc. Nay, Smallpox has been observed five different times upon the same patient. Keeping these incontestable facts in view, it becomes a matter of indifference what was Jenner’s doctrine relative to Cowpox, whether identical with Smallpox, or whether antagonistic to Smallpox or anything else. Nor can Variolation be advocated, if we pay attention to the same pathological law. A variolous attack, when once passed away, has no more influence, as regards future events, than any other disease. The reason why many escape Smallpox altogether, why some have it twice, why the inoculation of the disease has sometimes no effect, or why some can inhale its effluvia with impunity, is entirely concealed from us. As Cowpox is a disease foreign to man, it is particularly for graziers that further investigations can be interesting.
In answer to the Second Question, whether vaccinated persons, being less susceptible to smallpox, become more susceptible of any other infective disease, or of phthisis, Hamernik answered that the interrogation implied what, for reasons given, he disputed, namely, that the vaccinated were less liable to smallpox—
The assumption is perfectly gratuitous. Epidemics of Smallpox occur at widely varying periods, with different degrees of intensity, prevalence, and duration. The Vaccinated and the Unvaccinated suffer in every epidemic; and the influence of Vaccination cannot be determined from the character and progress of the disease in individual cases.
I am aware that the beneficial influence of Vaccination is inferred from the registers of public vaccinators; but I freely confess I consider these books as perfectly valueless; and I may add that the most intelligent of the gentlemen who keep them fully concur in my opinion. In this country we know full well how vaccinators are situated; and that little confidence can be placed in them is generally acknowledged.
To the Third Question, whether syphilitic, scrofulous, and other constitutional affections are communicable in vaccination, Hamernik answered with regret in the affirmative. It was true that the contrary opinion was written at large. Taupin testified that he had taken virus from children suffering from typhus, scarlet fever, measles, smallpox, itch, inflammation of the brain, the lungs and the intestines; from chorea, epilepsy, scrofula, tuberculosis, and ring-worm, and no harm had resulted to the vaccinated; and Launauzy agrees with Taupin, that it is mere prejudice and groundless to suppose that cowpox taken, from unhealthy children can inflict any hurt—