Spoken from whatever elevation, nothing divides talk like this from that of a quack at a country fair. Having struck the note, Mr. Bruce ran through the familiar gamut of assertion wherewith the rite of vaccination is supposed to be justified. The following is a sample of the advocacy imposed upon him—
A statement has been widely circulated that Syphilis has been communicated by Vaccination. Millions of children have been vaccinated in the last sixty years, but not a single case has occurred in which it has been proved that Syphilis has been communicated. A case is alleged to have occurred in France in which a child had been vaccinated from another which inherited Syphilis, but the surgeon in that case, in taking lymph from a child covered with syphilitic blotches, acted in monstrous disregard of common prudence and medical knowledge. No such case, so far as the most careful medical research can discover, has happened in this country.
Whilst this statement would now incur general discredit, yet even in 1866 the official prompters of Mr. Bruce presumed over much on public credulity. It was not probable that what vaccinators did not wish they would discover; or, if discovered, proclaim. Nevertheless, the denunciation of the “alleged” French instance was entirely inconsistent with the contention that syphilis could not be communicated from a syphilitic vaccinifer, blotched or unblotched. So much it was imperative to maintain, for it was obvious that the complete vaccination of any population must involve infants with latent syphilis whose virus might transfer the disease to the untainted. This peril, opponents of vaccination, from Cobbett onwards, had recognised; and as its recognition was prejudicial to vaccination, its possibility was stoutly outsworn until manifold and indisputable evidence compelled its admission, and shifted the question to the extent of its frequency.
Mr. Henley, following Mr. Bruce, spoke some homely sense—
We all know that when we want anything of the kind done, the medical man entertains us with a fine cock-and-bull story about waiting until he can get lymph from a healthy child. This caution implies risk; and though it is said that not a single case of injury has occurred in sixty years, yet nobody will persuade me that medical men take all these pains (where they are well paid and watched) if there are not grounds for the exercise of care. Undoubtedly it was an abomination to take vaccine from a diseased child, but how is a public vaccinator to know that any child is diseased? If he inquires too particularly, he will run the risk of a slapped face from the mother for his trouble.
Mr. Henley also drew attention to the claims made for vaccination, coupled with the admission that the greater part of it was good for little—
One remarkable statement has been made—that there has been an examination of 500,000 children belonging to the humbler classes chiefly affected by Compulsory Vaccination. Of the number so examined only one in eight was found to have been perfectly vaccinated, which fact involves the further fact that seven out of the eight were imperfectly vaccinated, or not vaccinated at all. If only one in eight has been perfectly vaccinated, great doubt will come upon many people’s minds as to the matter with which the others have been inoculated.
Much in the bill was crude and impracticable, and Mr. Ayrton expressed the sense of many in the House when he observed—
The bill before us is badly drawn, and bears too much the marks of its official origin. Great powers have been taken for the vaccinating department, but nothing is provided for the protection of the public. It seems to me that if Vaccination is to be enforced by penalties, public vaccinators should be subject to penalties for inefficient and injudicious work. I have been entrusted with a great many petitions against the bill, and I have been much impressed with the admission that the existing system of Vaccination has entirely failed in effecting its object. The bill will have to be referred to a Committee, and as many believe that Vaccination does as much harm as good, I trust the members will not be fettered in their inquiries.
It is needless to say the asserted failure of vaccination was an artifice to induce Parliament to pass the bill. The public vaccinations for 1863, 1864, and 1865, were as numerous as ever, and accompanied with a marked increase of smallpox. No doubt vaccination was a failure, but in a different sense from that in which the word was used to acquire increase of power and pay for the application of the rite. The bill was referred to a select committee, who reported; but the Conservatives having displaced the Liberals, it was withdrawn. Mr. Corry, in announcing the fact to the House of Commons, 23rd July, 1866, said—