Precisely what Dr. Watt proved of Glasgow in 1813, and Dr. Farr at a later date confirmed; and what the comparison of the statistics of mortality in epidemic and non-epidemic years everywhere illustrates.
With the examination of Mr. Danby Palmer Fry, head of the legal department of the Poor Law Board, the Committee reverted to its proper function. Questioned as to the state of the law and the difficulties connected with its administration, Mr. Fry showed that whilst vaccination was nominally compulsory, any resolute parent might disregard it. To make vaccination really compulsory, it would be necessary to legislate for its application by force, which legislation public opinion would not tolerate. For himself, he thought that parental conviction adverse to vaccination was entitled to respect, and he therefore suggested—
3845.—That it might, perhaps, be worthy of consideration whether a man might not be exempted from the penalty who takes an oath or makes an affirmation that he has a conscientious objection to the vaccination of his child. It seems to me that this would be similar in principle to the statutes which prohibited the Ecclesiastical Courts from issuing execution against the person of a Quaker, though they might do so against his goods, on the express ground that the people called Quakers were known to entertain conscientious objections to the payment of tithes and church rates.
Sir Dominic Corrigan, M.D., a member of the Committee, next gave evidence, and the defence of vaccination was resumed. So little did Sir Dominic apprehend the purpose of the Committee that he observed—
3992.—I think the great question before us is whether vaccine poison can contain within itself syphilitic poison or any other poison.
As to the invaccination of syphilis, he was clear: it was impossible. Vaccination induced no disease. Virus was nothing but pure lymph, even when taken from an impure subject. Vaccination was regarded with favour throughout Ireland. It was enforced, but it required no enforcement: there was no disposition to resist the law. He disliked penalties, and would rather operate by excluding the unvaccinated from schools, factories, and public employments, on the ground that “they might become a mine of disease and injure others,” namely, to the vaccinated fortified against smallpox!
Smallpox had been gradually declining in Ireland under the influence of vaccination, and the disease was then, 28th April, 1871, practically extinct. Foolhardy was the assertion. Even while Sir Dominic was testifying, smallpox had reappeared: 665 died of it in 1871 and 3,248 in 1872. From 1871 to 1875 there perished 5,521 of smallpox in a land from which it was claimed vaccination had banished the disease!
Mr. James Furness Marson followed Sir Dominic—a fanatical vaccinator and promoter of compulsion. For thirty-five years surgeon of the Highgate Smallpox Hospital, he had there elaborated the whimsical notion that the efficacy of vaccination was measured by the number and character of the cicatrices; holding that—
4149.—A large number of the people in this country are very badly vaccinated, having but one cicatrix hardly perceptible, and have Smallpox as bad as if they had never been vaccinated at all.
Confronted by Mr. Jacob Bright with the fact that Dr. Gregory, of wide experience and admitted authority, had expressed the contrary opinion in his work on Eruptive Fevers, saying—