From childhood I had been trained to look upon Cowpox as an absolute protective from Smallpox. I believed in Vaccination more strongly than in any ecclesiastical dogma. Numerous and acknowledged failures did not shake my faith. I attributed them either to the carelessness of the operator or the badness of the lymph.
In course of time the question of Compulsory Vaccination came before the Reichstag, when a medical friend supplied me with a mass of statistics in favour of Vaccination, in his opinion, conclusive and unanswerable. This awoke the statistician within me. On inspection, I found the figures delusive; and closer examination left no shadow of doubt in my mind that the statistical array of proof represented a complete failure.
My investigations were continued, and my judgment was confirmed. For instance, Cowpox was introduced to Bavaria in 1807, and for a long time none, except the newly-born, escaped Vaccination; nevertheless in the epidemic of 1871, of 30,472 cases of Smallpox, no less than 29,429 were vaccinated, as is shown in the documents of the State.—From Letter to Mr. William Tebb, 22nd January, 1882.
FOOTNOTES:
[293] The Statistics of the Medical Officers to the Leeds Smallpox Hospital Exposed and Refuted in a Letter to the Leeds Board of Guardians. By John Pickering. Leeds, 1876.
[294] Mr. Constable’s publications have been as follows—
Medical Evidence in the Case of Dale v. Constable. York, 1872. Pp. 30.
Doctors, Vaccination, and Utilitarianism. York, 1873. Pp. 239.
Our Medicine Men: a Few Hints. Hull, 1876. Pp. 689.
Fashions of the Day in Medicine and Science. Hull, 1879. Pp. 300.
[295] Vaccination Tracts with Preface and Supplement. London, 1879. Pp. 348.
[296] Can Disease protect Health? being a Reply to Mr. Ernest Hart’s pamphlet, entitled The Truth about Vaccination. By Enoch Robinson, M.R.C.S. London, 1880. Pp. 38.
[297] A Review of the Norwich Vaccination Inquiry. London, 1883. Sir Lyon Playfair’s Logic. London, 1883. Specificity and Evolution in Disease. By W. J. Collins, M.D., B.S., B.Sc. (Lond.) London, 1884.