Mr. James Neighbour, vaccination officer of St. Luke’s, Middlesex, a district of 60,000 inhabitants, chiefly poor, described the operation of the Vaccination Acts. He met with little resistance to the law; the births were vaccinated up to the registration point, but he had no check on those who might neglect or evade registration, or leave or settle in St. Luke’s.
Dr. E. C. Seaton, as select representative of the official vaccine ring, was reserved for the consummation of the inquiry. To review his evidence, delivered with much elaboration, would be to repeat much of our story. Vaccination was afresh set forth as “a perfectly safe and efficient prophylactic against smallpox, which might be as reasonably disputed as the demonstrations of Euclid.” Nevertheless, the perfectly safe and efficient variety of vaccination was neither defined by the witness, nor demanded by the Committee—whether with horsegrease cowpox, cowpox, horsepox, or smallpox cowpox; an omission that illustrates the slovenly and credulous habit of those concerned—a 19th century miracle and mystery, being under discussion, and matter and mode being taken for granted under cover of a word!
Throughout Seaton’s evidence, smallpox was treated as an isolated disease, which might be dealt with specifically and exterminated without reference to other fevers, the common mortality being reduced to the extent of its reduction: no relation being recognised between fever and fever, epidemic and epidemic—
5344.—Epidemics of Smallpox, like epidemics of other diseases, come and go according to laws which we have not made out. They vary in their intensity, and vary in their power of diffusion. I have no explanation to offer why the present epidemic (1871) should be so much more intense than the epidemic of 1863, any more than I can tell why the epidemic of 1863 should have been more severe than the subsequent epidemic of 1866-67; or why one Cholera or Scarlet Fever epidemic should be so much more fatal than another Cholera or Scarlet Fever epidemic—
Yet when explanation was offered, namely, that the febrile disease of a community is a measure of its sanitary aberrations; that whilst the forms of fevers may vary, the activity of one form is balanced by the quiescence of others, the tale of death being equal—the explanation was waved aside; and why? Because it did not make for the glory of vaccination!
Curiously, and for a different reason, Malthus argued, as we now argue, that if vaccination could exterminate smallpox, not a life would be saved—supposing, let us add, no change effected in the conditions out of which smallpox and cognate maladies arise. Thus Malthus wrote—
I am far from doubting that millions of human beings have been destroyed by Smallpox; but were its devastations, as Dr. Haygarth supposes, many times greater than the Plague, I should still doubt whether the average population of the earth had been diminished by them by a single unit. Smallpox is certainly one of the channels, and a very broad one, which Nature has opened for the last thousand years to keep down population; but had this been closed others would have become wider, or new ones would have been formed. For my own part I feel not the slightest doubt, that, if the introduction of Cowpox should extirpate Smallpox, we shall find a very perceptible difference in the increased mortality of some other diseases.[292]
Like Simon and Marson, Seaton had his insult for the opponents of Smallpox. Simon charged them with ignorance and dishonesty; and Marson, with the desire to have their families reduced by smallpox. Seaton held that they enjoyed martyrdom and courted imprisonment, in order to get silver watches from their admirers on their release! Here imputation was self-revelation. Seaton had won place and pay by his promotion of State vaccination; and absurdly ascribed to his antagonists his own venality. Indeed, his evidence throughout was pervaded by the temper and tactics of the quack, with an end to promote per fas et nefas. Asked what would happen if compulsion were withdrawn from vaccination, he answered—
5510.—Simply an awful increase in the mortality from Smallpox, and a considerable increase therefore in the amount of mortality in the kingdom.
The typical answer of the quack when his dupe hesitates over his prescription is, “You’ll see then what will happen!” When vaccination was not compulsory prior to 1853, nothing “awful” happened; it had been compulsory for fourteen years in 1871, and yet in 1871 the kingdom was under experience of the severest smallpox epidemic of the century! Nevertheless, the anticipation of Malthus was fulfilled: there was no proof that the average mortality was increased by a single unit.