It is frequently said that anti-vaccinators are fanatical, which may be more or less true; but if in quest of fanaticism, where shall we find it so ruthless, so untruthful, or so mercenary as among vaccinators? Take for example, Jenner, or Ring, or Seaton, or Marson, or Simon. The fury of anti-vaccinators stands excused by the strongest reason that can justify or ennoble fury. If a father has a child injured or killed by vaccination, and is threatened (as is often the case) with a second attack on his family life, with what temper may he be expected to regard the law? When Macduff’s children were slaughtered, it was only in Macbeth’s blood that he could ease his soul, and with Macduff goes the sympathy of every human heart. So it is with those bereaved by vaccination; only for them there is no personal Macbeth to receive his deserts, but a bodiless law.
It is not difficult to philosophise over other people’s wrongs, or advise forbearance where there is no sense of hurt; but fury and indignation constitute the natural reaction against outrage and injustice, and where feeble or absent denote defective moral sensibility. Nevertheless, fury and indignation are poorly spent if allowed to exhaust themselves in vituperation. Their proper use is to give vigour to action, and, invested in prudence, to achieve swift and sure redemption. Wise is the advice—
“Prune thou thy words, the thoughts control
That o’er thee swell and throng:
They will condense within thy soul,
And change to purpose strong.”
The National League holds an annual conference in some convenient centre, to which representatives from affiliated societies are appointed. Many of these societies co-operate for the defence of their members under prosecution; they organise public meetings and discussions; provide lectures; distribute tracts; bring to light vaccination disasters; frustrate the attempts of medical men to get up smallpox panics; and, in short, to do all in their power to turn confidence aside from a magical, misleading and mischievous prescription to trust in the common conditions of health, as verified by science and continual experience.
It is needless to say that these societies excite much annoyance and evoke much bad language from the practitioners whose craft they discredit and despoil. Thus, for example, the British Medical Association, in a petition addressed to Government in 1879, protesting against any relaxation of the compulsory law, and signed by several thousand members of the profession, gave voice to the trade grievance—
The outcry against Compulsory Vaccination is mainly due to certain interested persons [interested in what?] who, by the dissemination of inflammatory literature and distorted statements, stir up opposition to Vaccination on the part of ignorant and thoughtless people.