On this head, it will be sufficient for me to remark that to arrive at a knowledge of the amount of mischief such doctrine has brought upon mankind, it would be necessary to learn how much the promulgators gained by their unlimited favour for Vaccination.
Professor Waller, of Prague, has proved that syphilis may be inoculated by means of a patient’s blood; and as blood is often drawn with the virus of vaccination, no doubt can exist as to the possibility of doing in this manner a vast amount of mischief. Monteggio taught at Milan in 1814, that when a syphilitic child is vaccinated, the result is a vesicle containing both kinds of virus; and Carioli expressed the same opinion in 1821. Marcolini relates that, on 16th June, 1814, ten children were vaccinated from a syphilitic infant, who died at the end of a few months, and five of the ten children syphilised from her.
In answer to the Fourth Question, whether vaccination should be universally performed at early periods of life? Hamernik replied, that he obviously could not recommend a practice which put health, and even life itself, in jeopardy for no certain advantage. Any efficient examination of virus was impracticable. Vaccinators may set to work with zeal and care, but their energy soon cools, and they settle into perfunctory routine. Government should assume a passive attitude toward vaccination; or if people will be vaccinated, something might be done to minimise the danger. If the practice is assigned to salaried functionaries, they are sure to create evidence to justify and perpetuate their official existence. Left to common option—
Vaccinations would every year become fewer, until at last we should read with astonishment in old newspapers how much attention was once paid to the practice.
Whilst the majority of Simon’s correspondents conjured up arguments for vaccination, their facts, apart from their rhetoric, conveyed much that was instructive. For instance, a register was produced of the deaths in Christ’s Hospital, London, for the century, 1751-1850. The boys in that charity boarding-school numbered about 550; and in twenty-five years, 1751-75, there died of smallpox 22, and in twenty-five years, 1776-1800, there died 9. In the fifty succeeding years, 1801-50, there died 1, and he in 1820. Thereon we are asked to recognise the efficacy of vaccination! But what reduced the mortality from 22 in 1751-75 to 9 in 1776-1800? And if 550 boys in the centre of London, in the flux of constant coming and going, escaped with so few fatalities from smallpox, what comes of the asserted omnipresence and havoc of the disease in London before the introduction of vaccination? Across the street from Christ’s Hospital stands Newgate, which, during the same years, was haunted with jail fever; which fever was gradually suppressed, and by what charm? Certainly by no rite analogous to vaccination. Why, then, should we be required to admit an agency in the reduction of smallpox which played no part in the reduction of a cognate disease? In times when smallpox was frequent in Christ’s Hospital, about as little regard was paid to stench and ventilation as in the prison over the way. In later years a more wholesome atmosphere prevailed, and concurrently the diet of the scholars was altered and improved—changes in themselves as sufficient to account for the disappearance of smallpox from the school as for typhus from the jail.
The like indifference to variations of circumstance vitiated throughout the generalisations of Simon and his correspondents. Assuming that the conditions of life and the characters of disease remained unaltered, smallpox was treated as uninfluenced by aught but vaccination. It needs no words to condemn such procedure as radically unsound; and men, otherwise sane, only persist in it as they persist in similar hallucinations. Even the matter of vaccination they left undefined, or differently defined. Whatever was called vaccination was taken for vaccination, and the reduction of smallpox ascribed to it. In Jenner’s hands it was first horsegrease cowpox, then cowpox, and lastly horsepox. According to Simon true vaccination was effected with smallpox inoculated on the cow. Which, we demand, was the virus that wrought the numerous miracles we are summoned to believe? Is it indeed true that there is nothing certain about vaccination save the vaccinator’s fee? Is it that, as in other thaumaturgical performances, virtue resides in the performer, described by Simon as “the duly educated medical practitioner?” Is it argued that vaccination is a species of incantation, and that it matters little what is the vehicle of the rite, its efficacy being dependent on the credentials of the administrator? Or that what is believed to be good against smallpox is good against smallpox, the charm consisting in the faith wherewith it is received?
The belief in vaccination and its proofs is much akin to the belief in witchcraft and its proofs. To argue about witchcraft, and to answer its proofs, was to become a sort of partner in the delusion. Deliverance lay in the unqualified denial of the imposture; and from that firm ground difficulty was solved and the inexplicable disappeared. As soon as the position of absolute disbelief is taken up, the plausibilities in favour of vaccination resolve themselves into the element of phantasy, so powerful and yet so evanescent. The arts of its advocates then become manifest with all the dodges, conscious and unconscious, whereby the light of truth is shut out, and the gloom requisite for visions provided. The story of vaccination is the story of many other impostures which have bewildered and afflicted mankind, and the study of one is the revelation of others.
FOOTNOTES:
[288] Papers relating to the History and Practice of Vaccination. Addressed to the President of the General Board of Health, and presented to both Houses of Parliament by command of Her Majesty. London, 1857. Pp. lxxxiii. and 188.