Sir Jervoise Clarke Jervoise, Bart., formerly M.P. for South Hants, disputed the common notions of infection as confused with contagion, and pointed out that it was absurd to draw comparisons between the vaccinated and unvaccinated unless their pecuniary status were at the same time defined: cases of smallpox in Belgravia were not to be likened to cases in Clerkenwell. Smallpox was not mitigated by vaccination: he had two relatives vaccinated by Jenner himself who subsequently had confluent smallpox so severely that “their own father did not know them.” Nor if smallpox had diminished was there any reason to ascribe it to vaccination: Jenner’s cowpox had ceased out of the land, and the cause of its cessation might equally apply to smallpox.
Dr. Garth Wilkinson gave evidence with the characteristic wisdom of the physician of genius who sees with his own eyes. He showed how, endowed and lucrative, the futility and mischief of vaccination were concealed or denied, and how, considered all sufficient against smallpox, the causes of the disease were overlooked, and the introduction of improved methods of treatment were unattempted or discouraged.
Mr. George S. Gibbs contested the right of the State to inflict vaccination, or to interfere between parent and child. Having a faculty for statistics, he had applied himself to the records of smallpox before and since the practice of vaccination, at home and abroad, and showed that smallpox was the same at present as in the past, neither more mortal nor less mortal, while there was reason to believe that vaccination was a breeder of smallpox as well as a source and excitant of other maladies.
Mr. Aaron Emery related in vigorous English how an infant of his had been vaccinated from a healthy-looking child on 31st May, 1869; how erysipelas followed; how it gradually got worse; how “the little fellow had no rest night nor day from 9th June to 4th July, when death put an end to his sufferings.” Then he told the difficulty he had to obtain a true certificate of death from the vaccinator; how he forced an inquest; how a verdict was returned, “Died from erysipelas caused by vaccination”; and how its terms were subsequently altered by Coroner Lankester and registered as altered at Somerset House. Up to the time of this fatality, Mr. Emery had been an unsuspicious believer in vaccination; but his sorrow led him to acquaintance with numerous cases like his own, screened from public recognition, any artifice being accounted laudable which seemed necessary to preserve vaccination from reproach.
Mr. F. Covington, secretary of the Northampton Anti-Vaccination League, described injuries from vaccination in his family and among his acquaintance; the distrust and dislike of the practice in Northampton with widespread resistance to the compulsory law.
Mrs. E. Kemp brought her baby, and told how it had been vaccinated without examination, although there was a sore on the side of its head. As the vaccination began to take, the child’s face and ears broke out, until through the mass of eruption “you could only see its little eyes.”
Mr. Thomas Baker, barrister, had been engaged in the Board of Health from 1849 to 1854, and officially connected with several sanitary inquiries. In his opinion what were called epidemics were fevers with a common origin, against which cleanliness was the efficient prophylactic, and to which his friend, Dr. Southwood Smith, held smallpox was equally amenable. As a shareholder in the Metropolitan Association for the Improvement of the Dwellings of the Industrial Classes, he knew that residents in wholesome houses, even in insanitary neighbourhoods, enjoyed remarkable exemption from epidemic maladies.
Mr. W. J. Addison testified that his perfectly healthy child had had syphilis invaccinated, and had died in consequence after horrible suffering. The facts of the case were beyond question. One hospital doctor had the temerity to ask the mother, “Whether is it not better for one in a thousand to die like this than have smallpox raging about our towns.” “Possibly,” replied the poor woman, “but it is strange that my child should be the thousandth.”
The Rev. Wm. Hume-Rothery said his attention was first drawn to vaccination by the operation on his own child, his wife observing instinctively, “This is an unnatural and wrong thing.” Investigation confirmed his wife’s judgment, and he became an open opponent of the practice, writing and lecturing against it. His acquaintance with the people in Lancashire had led him to the conviction that the majority disliked and distrusted vaccination: they were coerced to its observance, and evaded it when possible. He himself was opposed to vaccination because there was nothing in nature, human nature, or revelation to justify it. This assertion of principle over and above practice led to considerable discussion as to divine law, providence, and the nature of things, and the right of conscience to withstand corporate dictation.
Mr. R. B. Gibbs, secretary of the Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League, referred to the origin of vaccination, as attested by Jenner, in the production of cowpox from the contagion of horsegrease, and subsequently to the use of horsepox, by which equination was substituted for vaccination; the diverse virus thus derived from Jenner continuing in official arm-to-arm currency to the present day. What vaccination was had never been determined; and consequently there had been no proper basis for legislation. Nor had legislation been preceded by impartial and adequate inquiry: it had been promoted by certain medical men, supported by the press, and especially by The Times, the editors of which jealously suppressed all communications which impugned the efficacy of the rite. Interrogated as to the amendment of the law, Mr. Gibbs said he had no amendment to propose: the State should withdraw all assistance from the practice, and leave its use or disuse to individual discretion.