Here what is wished to be taken for true is set forth as fact. Whatever the opponents of vaccination may be, they are neither ignorant or thoughtless, nor do they influence the ignorant and thoughtless. On the contrary, it is their exact acquaintance with the history and theories, the inutility and dangers of the multiform rite, designated vaccination, which renders them such dangerous and disagreeable antagonists. Further be it said, compulsory acquaintance with vaccination has been for thousands an introduction to vigorous intellectual life. It has demonstrated the fallibility of authority, and how it is possible for what is accounted established beyond dispute to be false to the core. Certain it is that ere long vaccination will be ranked among the crassest of human follies, and what force that exposure will lend to scepticism in conflict with other forms of conventional opinion, may be left to the consideration of the judicious reader.
The London Society for the Abolition of Compulsory Vaccination was formed in 1880 with objects thus defined—
1.—The Abolition of Compulsory Vaccination.
2.—The Diffusion of Knowledge concerning Vaccination.
3.—The Maintenance of an Office in London for the Publication of Literature relating to Vaccination, and as a Centre of Action and Information.
An office was opened in Victoria Street, Westminster, with Mr. William Young, as secretary, and The Vaccination Inquirer, established by Mr. William Tebb in 1879, was adopted as the organ of the Society. The executive committee, liberally assisted by the Countess de Noailles, Mr. P. A. Taylor, Mr. Tebb, and others, have been enabled to make many and visible marks on public opinion, which by all means possible they are ever intent to repeat. Mr. J. G. Talbot, M.P. for Oxford University, took early opportunity to stigmatise the London Society as a Murder League, and Dr. Barrow, president of the British Medical Association in 1881, as “a Disgrace to Humanity”—these and similar amenities being taken as badges of honour and tokens of success. The London Society has also actively co-operated in successive International Anti-Vaccination Congresses—at Paris in 1880, at Cologne in 1881, and at Berne in 1883.
Of late years the literature of anti-vaccination has been steadily increasing in volume, variety and power. A notable effort to bring the question within range of common apprehension was the publication in 1876 of Our Medicine Men, by Mr. H. Strickland Constable. Apart from vaccination, Our Medicine Men is a pleasant book, full of anecdote, good humour, shrewdness and excellent philosophy, not likely to be forgotten by those who make its acquaintance.[294]
A series of Vaccination Tracts,[295] fourteen in number, was commenced by Mr. Wm. Young in 1877 and completed by Dr. Garth Wilkinson in 1879. Fuseli, reproaching his contemporaries for their indifference to Flaxman, said, “You English, you see with your ears”; and Fuseli’s observation recurs as we think of the limited repute of Dr. Wilkinson; not that any more than Flaxman he is unknown, but because he is so inadequately known, probably because he is so frequently at variance with the fashionable science of the day, nor has paid court to its fashionable professors. Nevertheless, those who have sense and courage to recognise what is admirable without direction find in these Tracts not only vaccination made an end of, but thoughts new and deep, with felicities of diction and cadence that every connoisseur in words must appreciate and revert to with delight. However wide our acquaintance with English literature, a variety of singular affluence and originality remains until Dr. Garth Wilkinson has been discovered.
It is a mistake to suppose that all medical men believe in vaccination in one or any of its varieties. Those who use their eyes and are not bewitched by prescription or self-interest, recognise the failure and disasters of the practice, but may not care to set themselves at open variance with their profession. Many privately confess their vanishing or vanished faith in the rite, adding, perhaps, that its dangers are exaggerated, and that it does little harm with due precaution, whilst affording a comfortable sense of security to its recipients. Others go further, and wish the discredit of compulsion were removed from the practice, when they would leave it to their patients to decide for themselves to vaccinate or not to vaccinate, they disowning responsibility. A nobler few decline to hold any terms of compromise with the imposture, and among these Mr. Enoch Robinson is conspicuous. He has lectured and debated against vaccination, and by his temperate and competent advocacy has made converts of the most unwilling and prejudiced. Moved by a popular compilation in defence of vaccination, he published a reply to it in 1880, entitled, Can Disease protect Health?[296]—a polemic cogent and perspicuous, and ingenuous as its opposite was the reverse. As illustrative of the character of the medical press, it may be mentioned that advertisements of Mr. Robinson’s pamphlet were declined by The Lancet and The British Medical Journal, it being their rule to exclude announcements injurious to the interests involved in vaccination—surely in such quarters a superfluous precaution. Some people appear to fancy that intolerance is a peculium of theologians; but they would find abundant cause for a different opinion if familiar with the medical world.