[1876] THE STATISTICS OF THE MEDICAL OFFICERS TO THE LEEDS SMALL-POX HOSPITAL EXPOSED AND REFUTED

ANTI-VACCINATION.

THE STATISTICS
OF THE
MEDICAL OFFICERS TO THE LEEDS SMALL-POX HOSPITAL
EXPOSED AND REFUTED,
IN A LETTER TO THE
LEEDS BOARD OF GUARDIANS,
BY JNO. PICKERING, F.S.S., F.R.G.S.

"In all science error precedes the truth; and it is better that it should go first than last."—Horate Walpole.

"The course of philosophy is one great battle with mythology."—Max Muller.

"Other wars are toward death, but in this crusade the war is against death."—Dr. Garth Wilkinson

PRICE THREEPENCE.

McCORQUODALE & CO., PRINTERS.

1876.

"Every one who knows anything of public health questions will agree in your views as to the practical unity of epidemics, and their determining causes, and that exemption from all alike must be sought not by any one thing, such as vaccination, but by enquiring into and removing the causes of epidemic susceptibility generally."— FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE, in a letter to the author of this pamphlet, dated London, March 31,1871.

"The primary object to aim at is placing a healthy stock of men in conditions of air, water, warmth, food, dwelling, and work most favourable to their development. The vigor of their own life is the best security men have against the invasion of their organization by low corpuscular forms of life—for such the propagating matters of zymotic diseases may be held to be."—Dr. FABB, in Registrar General's Report for 1867, p. 219.

"Diseases of the zymotic class are all preventable diseases, and it is found, in proportion as towns improve their drainage, obtain purer water, and better house the people, in that proportion does the mortality diminish. Thus the same causes which reduce the mortality arising from Small-pox, equally operate in decreasing the mortality of other diseases of the same order, and it is to these causes that the comparative absence of Small-pox is to be attributed, and to these only."—Letter to the Leeds Mercury, by JNO. PICKERING.

"My experience of small-pox during those six years of bedside attendance has given me the right, or rather has imposed on me the duty, of taking part in the bold and spirited onslaught on Vaccination, which is now being carried on in Switzerland, Germany, England, and other countries ... I am convinced that Vaccination is the greatest mistake and delusion in the science of medicine; a fanciful illusion in the mind of the discoverer; a phenomenal apparition devoid of scientific foundation, and wanting in all the conditions of scientific possibility."—Dr. JOSEPH HERMANN, Head Physician to the Imperial Hospital, Vienna, from 1858 to 1864

[Extracts]

INTRODUCTION
TO THE LEEDS BOARD OF GUARDIANS
OBSERVATIONS AND NOTES ON THE STATISTICS OF THE MEDICAL OFFICERS TO THE LEEDS SMALL-POX HOSPITAL.
The Infant Death-Rate follows the Vaccination-Sate.
Vaccination has no true basis in science.
The Formulary of the Vaccinator.
Small-pox is a Filth-Disease; its Remedy is Sanitation.

INTRODUCTION.

The circumstances which occasioned the inquiry into the statistics of the Medical Officers to the Leeds Small-pox Hospital are briefly as follows, viz.:—At an anti-vaccination meeting, held in front of the Town Hall, on the 3rd August last, Mr. Councillor Kenworthy said:—" I do not believe in these statistics, because I know they are 'cooked.'" The Leeds Mercury of the 4th had a report of the meeting, and of the speech of Mr. Kenworthy. On the 11th August the Board of Guardians, in solemn conclave assembled, passed a resolution on the subject, and ordered a letter to be written to their former colleague. In due course, namely, on the 13th August, the official document was forwarded to Mr. Kenworthy, and, after reciting the meeting, and the offensive charge above alluded to, the writer concludes thus :—"As this reflects on both the Guardians and their officers, I am directed to ask you for an explanation of the assertions, and to request you will give proof to substantiate the charge, or that you will withdraw the statement and apologize."

Mr. Kenworthy consulted me on the following day, and I advised that we should accept the challenge of the Board, and I acquainted the Clerk to the Guardians with our determination. At a subsequent meeting, the Guardians appointed the members who constitute the Small-pox Committee of the Board to hear our evidence, and a day .was fixed, viz., Tuesday the 24th August.

From the 13th to the 20th August, having previously obtained the names and addresses of the 115 "not vaccinated" cases from the books at the Hospital, we spent several days in investigating the cases, and we satisfied ourselves, on the clearest and most convincing evidence, that the returns were untrustworthy and untrue.

On the 23rd August I wrote the following latter to the Clerk :-

[COPY.]

8, South Parade, Leeds, 23rd August, 1875. Enquiry as to Medical Statistics on Vaccination.

Dear Sir,—I ought to have been informed as to the powers entrusted to the Small-pox Committee by your Board. I presume they will hear and examine witnesses, and take such evidence as we shall offer—reporters being present. The Medical Officers will, of course, be there to give any information or explanation. I am, dear Sir, yours truly,

JNO. PICKERING.
Mr. Hy. Lampen, Clerk to the Board of Guardians, Leeds.

During the afternoon of the 23rd August, I received, a verbal message from the Clerk, saying that the presence of Reporters would not be permitted.

When the Committee were appointed to hear the evidence affecting the alleged incorrectness of the statistics on the above question, I very naturally expected that Reporters would be present. This vexata quaestio had become a matter of public interest, and I made up my mind that I would have nothing to do with an enquiry where Reporters were excluded; and when Mr. Lampen informed me that Reporters would not be admitted, I declined to appear before the Committee. I acted upon principle, and out of no disrespect to the Guardians. The charge of a want of "courtesy," urged by one of the Board, does not attach to me. As a rule, Reporters are not present at Committee Meetings, but this was not a Committee Meeting; the Board had put Mr. Ken worthy and myself upon our trial, and it was a manifest injustice to us to suppose that we should trust our case to any Committee, without the public having the means of knowing the character of the evidence upon which their report would be based.

The refusal of the Board to hear evidence, in the presence of Reporters, betrays a want of confidence either in their officers or themselves.*

[*On the 20th March, 1872, I attended, by appointment, before the Board, and challenged the statistics of the Medical Officers, and I gave in a report with names and addresses of patients whose names appeared among the "unvaccinated," but who had been "vaccinated." On that occasion the Board dared not, and did not, act straightforwardly. They had got before them a responsible man, and if they could have proved me in error, they would have accomplished a great thing: but experience taught them that I was a man who knew too well what I was about to allow myself to be tripped up.

In 1869,I charged one of the Board with having obtained his seat, and thrown me out, by means of forged votes. I made 200 allegations of such forgeries; and in an enquiry, extending over twenty days, held before an Inspector from the Poor Law Board, I proved every case. Nearly as many allegations were made by the other side against myself,—not a single case was proved.

I merely mention the above circumstance to show to the public, and my constituents in particular, that when I make an allegation, the facts that prove its truthfulness are in my possession. I have no interest but the truth; and why should I fear either Reporters, Guardians, or anybody else? Those who have a craze to support have but one enemy, and that is—truth.]

The Board should have said to their officers—" Gentlemen, You stand or fall by your own acts. If your statistics are true, fear not; if untrue, we shall not shield you."That was the only manly course—the Board did not follow it.

Another reason why I wished for the utmost publicity, was, that I desired to draw attention to some important considerations, arising out of this enquiry; which have not, and will not, come before the Board by any other means. The main reason why vaccination retains such a hold upon public men, is, that they shut their eyes, and close their ears, against light and knowledge, and more particularly when that information is offered by the opponents of the observance. I am as honest in opposing vaccination as they are in supporting it. I only desire to see an improvement in the public health, and in the mortality of the nation, and to that end all my thoughts and efforts on this subject are directed. I believe that sanitation, and sanitation alone, can prevent or modify all epidemics, whatever their form or character may be; and I believe that the Empiric who maintains that he can, by the Quackery of vaccination, check or modify any epidemic, is a mere Self-deceiver or an Impostor.

The reader may ask, "Are the facts obtained sufficiently important to justify their publication?" I answer, "Yes." If my object were to gain adherents from the members of the Leeds Board of Guardians, or to convince them or their medical officers of the incorrectness of the returns in question, then I should have hesitated before taking so much trouble, and incurring so great expense. My object in exposing the statistics is one that will not only justify, but repay me both for the labour and the cost. My constituents are spread all over the world, wherever the English language is spoken or can be interpreted.

When Jenner was trying to substitute the practice of Vaccination for Inoculation, he wrote:—"The great thing is to place every man in a questionable point of view who presumes to *inoculate for the smallpox." I have taken a leaf out of his book. I shall pay him back in his own coin. I have made up my mind to lose no opportunity of bringing vaccination into disrepute, by exposing every artifice put forth to uphold the practice.

[* In a sermon against inoculation by Theodore de la Faye, the preacher concludes by saying, "That inoculation is a self-destructive, inhuman, and impious machination; an unreasonable, unnatural, unlawful, most hazardous, ineffectual, fruitless, uncertain, unnecessary device; in a word, a practice which nature recoils at, which reason opposes, and which religion condemns."—Gentleman's Magazine, for 1754, pp. 342.

Now vaccination is inoculation in another form; the latter employed the poison of smail-pox to communicate small-pox; the former first used the "limpid fluid" from the horse's heel; when that practice got into disrepute, then the matter from the pustulous ulcer in the cow's teat was resorted to, misnamed the cow-pox (for this disease was said to have been inoculated on the cow, in the act of milking her, by the man-servant who had previously dressed the horse's heel); and of later years the virus of small-pox has been inoculated on the cow, and then the matter called vaccine, is passed from arm to arm. If inoculation is felony, then vaccination should be felony. The difference between the two rites is practically one without a distinction.]

I know very well that the statistics as to the cases and deaths of the vaccinated and unvaccinated are published for a purpose—a purpose that is unworthy and contemptible—it is simply to deceive the public mind, and to withdraw all consideration from the rationale of vaccination, a phase of the subject to which medical men never dare to refer, so they "gloze" with "figures, and misrepresent facts."

The conclusion I wish to draw attention to here is this :—

1. The Statistics of the Vaccinator are not to be trusted.

And for this reason,—

2. The Vaccinator has a craze to support, and he will do it even at the sacrifice of truth.

I may be asked for collateral evidence in support of the last assertion, and I am prepared to give it. The magazine from which I quote is one that enjoys a good reputation; it circulates largely amongst the profession, not only in Birmingham and in the county of Warwick, but also in neighbouring counties, and in the Metropolis itself, and the writer is a man of some note, a health officer to an important union, the Aston Union, Birmingham. He is evidently a man who writes with authority, and also means what he says. In the Birmingham Medical Review, for January, 1874, Mr. Henry May contributes an article on "Certificates of Death," from which I quote as follows, viz :—

"In certificates given by us voluntarily, and to which the public have access, it is scarcely to be expected that a medical man will give opinions which may tell against or reflect upon himself in anyway, or which are likely to cause annoyance or injury to the survivors. In such cases he will most likely tell the truth, but not the whole truth, and assign some prominent symptom of the disease as the cause of death.

As instances of cases which may tell against the medical man himself, I will mention erysipelas from vaccination, and puerperal fever. A death from the first cause occurred not long ago in my practice, and although I had not vaccinated the child, yet in my desire to preserve vaccination from reproach, I omitted all mention of it from my certificate of death."

I leave this quotation to tell its own tale. The italics are mine.

Again, in the Rochdale Observer, for October 2nd, 1875, there is the report of a case of death from fits, supervening upon vaccination, and the coroner (it is said a medical man), no doubt with a "desire to preserve vaccination from reproach," and his medical brethren from blame, actually dispensed with an inquest.

Lastly, I could produce cases ad nauseam where enquiries have been held with regard to injuries and death after vaccination, and where medical witnesses have sworn that the blood-poisoning which resulted in death had nothing to do with the vaccination. We know better. The medical mind of the country is wholly demoralized with regard to this thing of monstrous birth—the fetich-like superstition under inquiry.

The strongest and most misleading argument that has been used against the anti-vaccinators, particularly during the last three years' agitation, is that official statistics proved that the unvaccinated died in greater proportions than the vaccinated. I have been persuaded all along that the statement had not a particle of truth in it, and to unravel that mystery was the one motive that induced me to go into the enquiry, and to spend the anxious days and nights I have in unthreading that tangled skein, in exposing the untruthfulness of the statistics, and in refuting the statements based thereon. The Medical Officers have said, and may say again, "we do all we can to get correct statistics, but if patients are sent to us in a high state of fever, unconscious, and without friends to inform us as to whether they are vaccinated or not, it is our rule in all such cases to enter them unvaccinated." My answer is, "well, I must not make rules for you, and it is equally certain you must not make up statistics for me. If you publish statistics as true, and draw deductions from them, all favourable to your views and to your business, you must not quarrel with me, if, in the execution of my duty, I enquire into the circumstances, and prove that your statistics and deductions are without a shadow of foundation in fact."

My suspicions, as to the untrustworthiness of Medical Statistics, were first roused in March, 1872, but my enquiries were confined to the small-pox deaths. It never once occurred to me that, either from carelessness or audacity, the Medical Officers would include among the "unvaccinated," living examples of the "successfully vaccinated." During that month I investigated the particulars as to 16 deaths which had taken place in the Hospital between the 29th January and the 9th March, 1872. Of these 16 deaths the Medical Officers had returned 9 unvaccinated, 6 vaccinated, and 1 unknown. After a full and careful enquiry, which occupied Mr. Kenworthy and myself for several days, I attended before the Board of Guardians and handed in a return showing that the 16 deaths were composed of 12 vaccinated patients, 2 unvaccinated, and 2 unknown. The two unvaccinated were two out of the three cases "certified unfit," being scrofulous from birth, and the two unknown were Irish vagrants, who had neither friend nor relative in the country who could give any account of them. Out of the 16 deaths there was, not one fair unvaccinated case. After all the trouble I took in this matter, neither the Board of Guardians nor the Medical Officers accepted my challenge to have a public enquiry. These cases form part of the 115 referred to in this enquiry.

I admit the difficulty, with regard to deceased patients, of proving their vaccination; but in all the cases I disputed I had near relatives ready to state, on oath, that the husbands and wives, the brothers and sisters, so deceased, had been "vaccinated" in infancy. The Board of Guardians knew I should prove my case, and they were afraid of the facts coming out. Conduct like this may retard, but can never stop, the onward march of truth.

In addition, therefore, to the six living examples, I am in a position to prove to the satisfaction of the Guardians that nine of the dead, returned by the Medical Officers among the "unvaccinated," had all been "vaccinated," and ought to have been so entered.

To show in a few figures the untruthfulness of the statistics, I may state that I have seen about half of the 115 cases and investigated them thoroughly, and with the following result:—

6 living witnesses entered “unvaccinated," all of whom had been "vaccinated."

9 deceased persons entered "unvaccinated," all of whom, had been "vaccinated."

8 examples entered "unvaccinated," which should have been entered "unsuccessfully vaccinated."

4 cases entered "unvaccinated" which should have been returned "certified unfit"

And these are collected out of about one-half of the 115 cases.

It is a most difficult task to find the patients. In one case, Mr. Kenworthy and myself spent a whole day in tracing out the patient's present residence; in other instances half a day was so occupied, and in some cases no traces whatever could be found of the missing patient.

I have delayed publishing this pamphlet in the hope that I might be able to complete the list, and work up the remaining half of the 115 cases, but the continued illness of my friend, Mr. Kenworthy, precludes the possibility of accomplishing any such feat.

One result of this enquiry, and to me it is worth all the trouble, all the time, and all the money, is that I have dispelled for ever the delusive idea that the unvaccinated die in greater proportions than the vaccinated. Such a statement as that never could be true in the very constitution of things. It would be a broad, palpable falsehood thrown in the face of God himself. A child untainted by "grease of horse," or "pus of cow," must be a healthier child than one tainted, and to that degree better able to cope with epidemic or other disease-influences. It is a cunning and monstrous device, in order to swell the mortality of the unvaccinated, to add to them the deaths of those who have been "vaccinated," the "doubtfuls," "unsuccessfully vaccinated," "certified unfit," diseased from birth, the syphilitic, the scrofulous, and unclean. I shall conclude upon this part of the subject by saying: Medical Officers are not business-men; they do not sufficiently recognise the importance of accuracy when dealing with statistics; they may take some pains even to be correct, but that is not enough. A statistic is either true or false; and if a man put his name to that statistic, we expect it to be true; if it afterwards turns out to be untrue, and the effect has been to mislead the public, which has been the case in this instance, depend upon it, for the future, while that public may accept a plea in palliation of the offence, they will never thereafter trust in a second statistic from that source.

The vaccination controversy, chameleon-like, has changed its colour and complexion as often as circumstances demanded. From the date of Jenner's discovery (i.e., the Horse's leg!) in 1798, up to 1838, there was little vaccination, and little small-pox mortality. It is admitted that the average small-pox deaths during those years did not exceed 5,000 per annum. The first serious epidemic of this century was in 1838, when 16,268 persons perished; the second and third visited us after seventeen years of compulsory vaccination, viz.:— in 1871 and 1872, when 23,126 and 19,094 victims were added to the death-roll of small-pox. What a protection vaccination has been to be sure! If the observance continues, and the law enforcing it were to be made even more stringent, the natural effect will be that smallpox epidemics will become more frequent and more fatal. The explanation is that vaccination deteriorates the public health, and renders the people more susceptible to epidemic influences in general, and to the small-pox in particular.

After the system of registration of deaths was inaugurated in England, which took place in 1838, public attention was directed to the blue-book, and it was found that a great proportion of smallpox cases and deaths occurred among the vaccinated. This circumstance led thinking men to question the wisdom of the rite. Many able pamphlets have appeared at different times, during the last thirty years, exposing the failures of vaccination. Up to 1870, dating from 1838, the numbers of the successfully vaccinated ranged from 30 to 50, and in later years to 60 and 70 per cent, of the births. For the last three or four years it is said that 95 per cent, of the births are successfully vaccinated. From 1870 a powerful agitation against vaccination has been carried on, and the vaccinist has been driven from pillar to post, from one vain refuge to another. It has been urged that periodical re-vaccination was necessary; that one mark was not enough, and two, three, and four, and even more have been suggested as the true protection point; and lastly, finding that the mark theory failed altogether, it has been shown by statistics, craftily constructed, that the unvaccinated died in greater proportions than the vaccinated. This last artifice has now been exposed, and what new phase the controversy will assume is not for me to divine.

This enquiry was conducted with the sole object of eliciting the truth. The result has utterly confounded the statistics of the Medical Officers, and the conclusions drawn therefrom, and shown that the figures and the facts are alike unworthy of public confidence. Let no one hereafter trust in them.

Every statement that has been made, and every argument that has been used, in support of vaccination has now been exposed and refuted, and the practice stands before the public, practically, without an advocate, without an excuse for its continuance.

TO THE LEEDS BOARD OF GUARDIANS.

GENTLEMEN,

Vaccination Statistics of the Medical Officers of the Smallpox Hospital

I enclose you herewith twenty-two examples, all tending to show how unfair and untrustworthy are the returns furnished by your Medical Officers upon this subject: there is a just cause of complaint, otherwise you would not have heard from me. In all such matters as this I am scrupulous and conscientious, knowing full well the consequences of any recklessness or inaccuracy of statements made in connection with statistics that admit of verification or disproof.

Now, what is the object of collecting and publishing the statistics of small-pox cases as regards their being "vaccinated", or "un-vaccinated?" Mr. Lampen told me on Saturday last that the medical officers were not bound to furnish these statistics, and that they were private property. I asked him who paid for the books; he said, "the Board:" and I answered, "if the ratepayers pay for the stationery, surely they have a right to the statistics." There is, there can be, but one object in collecting and publishing these statistics, and that is to make out a case for vaccination, and to throw discredit upon the statements and statistics of their opponents. I shall show you how that conclusion forces itself upon my mind. Firstly, because of the unfair manner in which the cases are now, for very questionable reasons, divided and distinguished into "vaccinated," " said to be, but no visible evidence, "and" imperfectly vaccinated." This classification is a modern innovation, and intended to disguise the truth. They should all be classed "vaccinated," — imperfect marks are no proof of imperfect vaccination, and "said to be, but no visible evidence" is no proof of the cases being unvaccinated or doubtful.

The merest tyro in physiology knows that if three persons were vaccinated to-day, by the same hand, with the same virus, the vaccine running its usual course, yet, in twenty years' time, ay, or in half that period, one might show a good mark, the second an indistinct mark, and the third no mark at all. An apt illustration was furnished in your own rooms the other day, when three Guardians submitted their arms to inspection,—the first had good marks,—the second imperfect marks,—and the third no marks at all, and yet they all knew they had been *successfully vaccinated. To sub-divide the vaccinated into three classes is merely to reduce the percentage of what the medical officers now choose to call the successfully vaccinated, and to relieve them, in some measure, from the grievous charge we bring against them, when we say that nearly all the cases brought to the Hospital are "vaccinated." Secondly, because the medical officers make no distinctions with regard to the "unvaccinated" they throw into the scale all the "unsuccessfully vaccinated" the "certified unfit," the virus-poisoned, the scrofulous, the syphilized, and the unclean of every description. Is that fair and honest? I leave it to you to say if I have not thus far proved my case.

[* Another singular case is at hand. Mr. Haigh, the late Manager at the Hospital, was vaccinated in infancy. Since that time he has been re-vaccinated two or three times, and yet he bears no mark; if he were to die of Small-pox in any place where he was unknown, and had had no opportunity of giving an account of himself, he would be classed with the "unvaccinated."

The very fact that the victims of Small-pox and other zymotics are found among the lowest classes of society is, as a rule, proof positive of their vaccination; for show me a vaccinator that will let one of these escape him? Why, they are hunted down, "like a partridge in the mountains," and not more than one in twenty is sent out into the world untainted—unpoisoned.

Another circumstance may be mentioned, and it is this—viz., that among the classes above-named, there are no conscientious objectors to the observance. They are educated in it, and cling to it with all the superstitious tenacity of ignorance and credulity.

It is the intelligent, the thinking working-man that objects to vaccination.

I hesitate not to say that nineteen-twentieths of the lower classes are all vaccinated, and these are they who fill our hospitals, and die of small-pox and other zymotics.]

The charge made by Mr. Kenworthy was that he knew the returns of your medical officers were "cooked." The charge that I have made, from time to time, is that your statistics are "untrustworthy and untrue." After a fair and candid perusal of the examples now submitted, your Board should say "proven" or "not proven."

From the 29th January, 1872, to the 24th October, 1874, there have been 715 cases passed through the Hospital, the particulars of which appear in the ledger; out of the 715 cases there were 600 "vaccinated," and 115 "not vaccinated." Now, from the immense pains taken to swell out the "not vaccinated," by adding well authenticated cases of vaccination, the unsuccessfully vaccinated, and the certified unfit, it is not to be presumed the medical officers would add to the "vaccinated" any "not vaccinated," therefore the 600 are all fair and bona-fide cases. On the other hand, how are the 115 "not vaccinated" reduced by deducting the "vaccinated," the "unsuccessfully vaccinated," and the "certified unfit," &c. I do not believe that of the whole 115 cases entered "not vaccinated," after deducting the three classes above mentioned, there would be left 40 fair cases of "not vaccinated." Besides the examples now supplied, I can, in a short time, furnish you with a second batch. I mention this to convince you that if any plea is now set up that there may have been "a few mistakes" or "errors," the "mistakes" and "error " are so numerous as to show that the statistics have no value whatever, and are totally unreliable. That point established, I care little for what may follow.

Examples one to six, inclusive, give the particulars of cases entered "not vaccinated," and which ought to have been included in the "vaccinated."

No. . EXAMPLE 1. Entered "not vaccinated."

Feb. 20th, 1872.—Walker, Mary (aged 14), Buslingthorpe, (now William Henry Street, Saltaire). Note.—Vaccinated in infancy. Good marks.

No. 73. EXAMPLE 2. Entered " not vaccinated."

Mar. 8th, 1872.—Walker, Fanny (aged 13), Buslingthorpe (now William Henry Street, Saltaire). Note.—Vaccinated in infancy. Good marks.

No. 314. EXAMPLE 3. Entered " not vaccinated."

June 15th, 1872.—Heywood, Henry, 19, Princes Street, New Wortley (now 46, Wallace Street, New Wortley).

Note.—Vaccinated at 7 years of age by James Birman, surgeon, Wath-upon-Dearne. Re-vaccinated 14 days before he went into the Hospital.

No. 340. EXAMPLE 4. Entered "not vaccinated."

June 29th, 1872.—Sanders, Samuel (aged 23), 6, Garr's Ter., Moor Crescent Road, Hunslet, (now of 7, Greenland Place).

Note.—Vaccinated at 7 years of age, at Derby. See copy of certificate attached:—

" 9, Greenland Place, Holbeck, "23rd August, 1875.

"This is to certify that my son, Samuel Sanders, was vaccinated when a child at Derby, where I then resided.

"HENRY SANDERS."
To Mr. Jno. Pickering, Leeds.

No. 512. EXAMPLE 5. Entered "not vaccinated."

Jane 12th, 1873.—Auty, John (aged 10), Delhi Street, Canal Road, Mew Wortley. Note.—This boy is vaccinated; has good marks.

No. 607. EXAMPLE 6. Entered "not vaccinated."

Dec. 31st, 1873.—Naylor, Emily (aged 8), 4 Victoria Street, York Road (now Viceroy Street).

Note.—Yes; indistinct. Mother told "the Medical Officers she could not say as to vaccination." She was only stepmother, and did not know.

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Examples seven to fourteen, inclusive, give the cases entered "not vaccinated," which ought to have been described in the form adopted by the late Poor Law Board (now the Local Government Board), "unsuccessfully vaccinated."

No. 150. EXAMPLE 7. Entered "not vaccinated."

April 8th, 1873.— Foulds, Anne (aged 18), 20, Wood Street. Note. — Vaccinated twice in infancy, but says did not take.

No. 553. EXAMPLE 8. Entered "not vaccinated."

Oct. 25th, 1873. — Richardson, Elizabeth Ann.

Note. — Vaccinated by Dr. Gisburn, Hunslet. Child never well after. Dr. Nicholson said it was a case of "blood poisoning " — took small-pox and died. Mother says vaccination "did not take " by Dr. Gisburn.

No. 646. EXAMPLE 9. Entered "not vaccinated."

Mar. 17th, 1874. — Knight, John Hy. (aged 4), Lacy Buildings, Hunslet Hall. Note. — Vaccinated three times by Dr. Ellerton, of Tadcaster, but never took.

No. 664. EXAMPLE 10. Entered "not vaccinated."

April 20th, 1874. — Harriman, Ann Elizabeth, Markham Place, Beckett Place. Note. — Twice vaccinated, but did not take.

No. 686. EXAMPLE 11. Entered "not vaccinated."

June 2nd, 1874. — Cunningham, Ellen (aged 14), 48, Saint Street, Regent's Street. .—Vaccinated four times at George Street Station, but says "never took."

No. 713. EXAMPLES 12, 18, & 14. Entered "not vaccinated."

Oct. 24th, 1874. — Heaton, Charles (aged 15), Hartley Terrace, Mann's Field, Holbeck.
No. 714. Oct. 24th, 1874.— Heaton, Moses (aged 8), do
No. 715, Oct 24th, 1874.— Heaton, Sarah Ann (aged 13), do

Note. — All vaccinated by the Medical Officer for the Township of Batley, but said "did not take." Three children, all of the same parents, aged respectively 3, 6, and 7 months, 'all died of " diarrhoea after vaccination." In these cases the small-pox virus invaccinated was driven upon the intestines, and produced "diarrhoea" and death. In the latter cases the invaccinated virus produced its like in another form, i.e, the small-pox. Deaths from "diarrhoea" after "vaccination" may be counted by their "tens of thousands."

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Examples fifteen to eighteen, inclusive, show instances of entries which have undergone correction, and prove that such entries were originally made without due care being exercised.

No. . EXAMPLE 15.

Feb. 26th, 1872.—Pattison, Caroline (aged 11), Old Infirmary Yard, " said to be, but no visible evidence." Note,—Distinct marks:

No. . EXAMPLE 10.

May 30th, 1878.—Dean, Emma (aged 26), 4, Ludlow Street

Note.—First entry—"Said to be vaccinated" in admission sheet, "but no mark." Corrected in second entry—"Two indistinct marks."

No. 580. EXAMPLE 17.

Nov, 1873.—Gillingham, Martha Ann (aged 19), 19, Greenwood Street, Hunslet.

Note.—Entered in admission sheet—"Said to be, but no visible evidence." At the Hospital, from information received by Mr. Haigh, the manager, after death, he examined the girl in the dead-house, and found one large mark; afterwards entered in book, "imperfectly."

No. EXAMPLE 18.

April 3rd, 1874.—Stannard, Edward, Kirkstall.

Note.—First Entry—"Said to be vaccinated," was struck out; second entry— "Two indistinct marks."

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Examples nineteen to twenty-two, inclusive, give the particulars of cases entered "not vaccinated," and which should be described as "certified unfit."

No. . EXAMPLES 19,20, & 21. Entered " not vaccinated."

Feb. 9,1872.—Cross, Blanche (aged 3), 14, South Mount St,
Cross, Ada, ( „ 6), do. do.

Do. Cross, Jesse, ( „ 10), do. do.

Note.—All certified "unfit." Scrofulous from birth. Blanche and Jessie died.

No. EXAMPLE 22.

Feb. 10th, 1872.—Bailey, Mary (aged 16), "not vaccinated."

12, Wharfe Street. Note—Certified "unfit" from birth, by Dr. Teale. Scrofulous.

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The first six examples are genuine instances of gross and serious blundering, and are sufficient in themselves to condemn the returns, and to take away from them any value they might otherwise possess.

The first and second examples, Mary Walker and Fanny Walker, were both vaccinated in childhood,—two sisters,—sent in by the same medical man (Dr. Clayton), and both entered "not vaccinated." The explanation offered by your medical officers in today's Mercury of the above two cases is not satisfactory, and is as far from the truth as the statistics themselves. The fifth example, that of Jno. Auty, is another most conclusive case, and the explanation in to-day's Mercury is self-condemnatory in the highest degree. Your medical officers say that because they "could find no marks, and his sister, the only relation at hand to whom we could apply, stated that she did not know that he had ever been vaccinated, we therefore concluded that the operation had never been performed, and he was accordingly entered 'not vaccinated.'" And is this the way, gentlemen, that medical statistics are got up? Yes, it is, confessedly,—pray tell the medical officers to leave statistics alone. After the above specimen of statistic collecting I need no enquiry to convince me of the wanton and wicked manner in which the mortality of the "not vaccinated" is made to appear so disproportionately excessive.

Medical men are always changing their ground. Jenner said that vaccination rendered the patient "for ever secure" against the small-pox. We have exposed the fallacy of that argument. Look at your own Hospital Statistics, 600 cases out of 715 all stamped with Jenner's patent:—"Secure." It is now said that vaccination does not give perfect immunity from an attack of small-pox, but it modifies the disease. Does it? I challenge your medical officers to find me two worse cases of disfigurement in the ranks of the "not vaccinated," than those presented by the two "vaccinated" girls, Mary and Fanny Walker.

Then, again, it is said the "not vaccinated" die in greater proportion than the "vaccinated." Well they may, when the "not vaccinated" are credited with "vaccinated" cases, the "unsuccessfully vaccinated" the "doubtfuls," the scrofulous, and the syphilitic.

"Statistics," as Professor Newman says, "can be made to support anything when they address the uninformed."

Your medical officers say that their Returns give "conclusive evidence of the protection afforded by vaccination." It is positively painful and humiliating to read such reckless statements. " Protection," what protection when 600 out of 715 patients are " vaccinated," every one of them having been certified "successfully vaccinated"! If the protection had been worth the name, not one of the 600 ought ever to have seen the inside of the Hospital, and yet there they are, blooming in disease, disfigured and dead, side by side with a few "unprotected " neighbours. Furthermore, your medical officers say, in to-day's paper, "it may be confidently stated that the vaccination is the most efficient from which the most and the best marks result." Jenner was content with one mark, and so long as there was a mark at all that was enough, he knew the utter impossibility of getting "the best mark " in every case. If Messrs. Hall and Libbey have made another discovery, viz.: if "the most and the best marks" are "the most efficient," why not begin at once and vaccinate each patient from head to foot. It is Protection here, Protection there, Protection everywhere, and yet when really needed it is Protection nowhere. If the vaccination of to-day is imperfect and inefficient, who does it, and are they not criminally responsible? Messrs. Hall and Libbey are doing this very thing every day of their lives, they certify each operation "successfully vaccinated," and get paid for it as such, and in after years, when bad marks turn up, they will register it "imperfect" and "inefficient"

Gentlemen, members of the Leeds Board of .Guardians, how long will it take, and what other arguments will be necessary, to convince you of the imposture of vaccination?

1.* There is no protection but in cleanliness.

2. ** Vaccination, like inoculation, is a monstrous piece of superstition.

3. *** Vaccination is blood-poisoning, and is little better than cool and deliberate murder.

In a future communication I will show you how the death-rate from zymotic diseases has increased correspondingly with the vaccination-rate and the pay-rate.

[* In these days, thanks to our sanitary regulations, and to all the other healthy conditions which exist—such as better habitations, more perfect drainage, pure water, good food, and personal and domestic cleanliness, the epidemic is robbed of its terrors and its power; and it is a fact easy of demonstration that, if all the miserable hovels and cellar dwellings which still abound in densely peopled districts of our large towns were rooted out, and our sanitary and hygienic arrangements made as perfect as they might be—if the inhabitants were sober, industrious, and cleanly in person and home, such a thing as an epidemic would only be known as a matter of history. Zymotic diseases can only thrive and mature where there is a soil ready prepared for them.

When there is an outbreak of any epidemic, how easy it is, in nearly every case, to trace it up to its source, and put our finger on the plague spot—bad drainage, impure water, accumulations of filth, crowded dwellings, or dirty habits of the people.
One-half of the children that are born in the land die before they reach their tenth year! What! can it be true? The days of the years of our pilgrimage are "threescore years and ten," but exactly one-half of the children born to us are robbed of the " threescore years " and perish at the "ten.'' The land is filled with human blood, but at whose hands God shall one day require it, is a question to which I should not like to suggest an answer. The annual sacrifices which Prescott tells us took place in Mexico under Montezuma pale into insignificance before a statement like this; and that there must be somewhere some frightful interference with the ordinary course of nature, some direct disturbance of the healthy conditions of life is a fact which cannot be denied or controverted.
We may talk of crime, poverty, pauperism, and of all their attendant evils, such as irregularity of life, intemperance, insufficient food, crowded habitations, and neglected homes, and so we may go on adding evil to evil, and mischief to mischief, but all combined are insufficient to account for this terrible mortality. There is a destroying angel desolating our homes, and demanding his tribute of death at every door; we see him not nor do we hear his footfall, but day by day he pursues his work of destruction, and the annual blue-book records how busy he has been—the nursling at its mother's breast, the prattling child gambolling on the lawn, the little girl who was the life of the house, the merry boy with his trundling hoop, and the scholar at his daily task, are now no more. All that is left is a huge sorrow, which casts its shadow upon the after-life of those who survive.
The truth of the whole thing lies in a nutshell. This "vaccination" charm has come down to us upon credit for seventy years past, and neither the people nor the profession have questioned its pretensions; it is an institution; but, now that we are awakening out of sleep, is it a matter of surprise that we should quarrel with our own doubts? For seventy years this giant upas-tree has spread its poisoned branches over us, but at length the axe is laid to the root of the tree" and it must fall, nothing now can save it.]

[** Anti-Vaccinators have some show of reason for distrusting the medical men of the present day with reference to vaccination, when they recall the frightful havoc which their predecessors caused for nearly a century, in connection with small-pox inoculation. We entertain as great an objection to one practice as to the other—they are both bad and ought to be discountenanced. From 1722 to 1798 small-pox inoculation was practised, and, if there is any truth whatever in the statements of early vaccinators, it could be said throughout the length and breadth of this land, as it was said in that night when the destroying angel passed through the land of Egypt, "There was not one house in which there was not one dead," so universal was the devastation caused by small-pox inoculation. And with respect to the evils attending vaccination, there is scarcely a house in the land without its tradition of disease and death more or less recent.]

[***It would be almost criminal to shut our eyes to the fact that vaccination is a fruitful source of disease, misery, and death. We know so little of the wonderful capabilities of these zymotic poisons, and of their amazing powers of development, that no thoughtful man will doubt that the point charged with "virus" from the vaccine vesicle may have concealed upon it a seed-atom of another disease, which, sooner or later, may develop itself, and produce a disease in the person vaccinated, which may make even life itself a burden. Dr. Farr gives a quotation from a work by C. Darwin, M.A., F.K.S., on "Animals and Plants under Domestication," vol. ii., pp. 368 to 378, where the following sentence occurs:—"It has recently been ascertained that a minute portion of the mucous discharge from an animal affected with rinderpest, if placed in the body of an healthy ox, increases so fast that in a short time the whole mass of blood, weighing many pounds, is infected, and every small particle of that blood contains enough poison to give, within less than forty-eight hours, the disease to another animal." All poisons of this description appear to be invested with an indefinite power of reproduction when placed under favourable conditions. The Anti-Vaccinators may be excused, therefore, for believing that vaccination is a sin against the Creator, and a crime against humanity, when the vaccinator burglariously invades the healthy organism of a God-sent child, and dares to insert into its life-blood the scrofulous poison taken from the diseased heels of a horse suffering from "the grease." It does not require any knowledge of the laws of science to guide the people in condemning this practice when they are told from what source the vaccine matter is obtained.

We affirm, and with no small show of reason, that if it be true (and true it undoubtedly is) that the vaccine lymph carries with it the seeds of hereditary disease existing in the patient from whom the virus is taken, whether scrofula, bronchitis, syphilis, tuberculosis, or any other of the grim sisterhood of diseases, then we say that we have found a cause equal to the production of the excessive mortality of which we justly complain.
It is a fact which, to the Anti-Vaccinators, is proof enough that there is amongst us a mighty disturbing force which is interfering with the national health, and which claims its annual heritage of woe and death. We say, that potent force is vaccination.]

In conclusion, I disclaim any ill-feeling with regard to either of your medical officers. I merely look upon them as the officials appointed to carry out the law with reference to an observance to which I object, an observance that I know is of no benefit whatever, save to those pecuniarily interested, but which is the source of untold misery, disease, and death, to thousands of my fellow-countrymen. It is not the men, it is the system I hate and despise, and which I shall continue to oppose.

I have the honour to be,

Gentlemen,

Your obedt. Servant,

JNO. PICKERING.

SOUTH PARADE, LEEDS, 8th September, 1875.

OBSERVATIONS AND NOTES ON THE STATISTICS OF THE MEDICAL OFFICERS TO THE LEEDS SMALL-POX HOSPITAL.

Here let me answer a question which may be put.—Is there unfairness in these returns, and where is it? I answer—

1. Six examples are proved where the "vaccinated " are entered "unvaccinated."

No apology can be accepted for such carelessness. In every case the fact could easily have been ascertained. Not one single blunder ought to have been made, but admitting, in any one instance, that no satisfactory evidence could be obtained, common prudence would have suggested that the case should be entered "doubtful." Of the 115 "unvaccinated" I have six living witnesses to prove the unfair and untruthful character of the statistics. Out of the whole 115 cases I have not seen above one-half, and if one-half has yielded results that are so fatal to medical statistics, it is fair to presume the other half would be of the same character.

2. Eight examples are given as entered "unvaccinated" which should have been returned "unsuccessfully vaccinated." All these are cases where the patients had been vaccinated, one, two, three, and four times, but, because the characteristic vesicle was not produced, they are entered "unvaccinated." Can anything be more dishonest? It has been held that in all such cases there is evidence of the best protection, inasmuch as a patient whose constitution is proof against the vaccine virus will be the best able to resist its like,—the poison of small-pox. The virus of vaccine must do its work. It can only produce a diseased condition. If the virus does not manifest itself upon the arm, depend upon it there is worse mischief behind it. The poison is "shut in" upon some of the vital organs, the brain, the lungs, the heart, the intestines, &c., and thus we reap the consequences in convulsions, atrophy and debility, from injuries to the brain ; pneumonia, bronchitis, from like injury to the lungs and neighbouring functions; clots of blood upon the heart by sanguineous extravasation; diarrhoea, from the blood-poisoning driven in upon the intestines. All these consequences from what they term "unsuccessful vaccination," are shelved and disowned by returning the cases "unvaccinated." We will have none of them, they do not belong to us. We believe in cleanliness, not in filth; in God, not in Jenner. When we look upon the "thimble" mark on the child's arm, we ask, "Whose image and superscription is this!" and the answer is—"It is Jenner's." Our reply is, "Render to Jenner the things that are Jenner's; and to God the things that are God's." Give to Jenner his beastliness, his disease of horse and cow, back again, and give to God obedience to one principle, "Cleanliness is next to Godliness," or in other words, "Be clean, and live."

3. Three examples are given that show previous errors, and subsequent corrections.

The late manager at the Small-pox Hospital, Mr. Haigh, was an able, self-sacrificing, and worthy man. I speak from what I have seen at the Hospital. Several wrong entries were corrected mainly us the result of his enquiries and truthfulness. Example 17 was a remarkable instance. The patient was entered "said to be, but no visible evidence," and she would have been buried out of sight, among the "doubtfuls," had it not been for Haigh. From information he received, he took a nurse with him, and they examined the body after,death, and found one large mark. On this being reported to the medical officers, they ordered the entry to be altered to "imperfectly" vaccinated. Does not this correction exhibit a lamentable want of fairness? The poor woman was dead, and they would not have her among the ''vaccinated," although she had "one large mark" (it ought to have been enough in all conscience), but the vaccination, no doubt as good as any since the time of Jenner, is yet branded "imperfectly " in the records of the Small-pox Hospital.

4. Four cases are shown where the patients were scrofulous from birth, and should be entered " Certified unfit."

The medical men may say, "We have no such distinction." My answer is, "the sooner you have one, the better."They have a column for "unsuccessfully vaccinated," for "said to be, but no visible evidence," for "imperfectly," and for "indistinct marks," and why should they not be honest and give us one little column for "certified unfit?" If statistics of vaccination are to be furnished at all, let them be on a fair basis. The public, when perusing the mortality statistics of the "unvaccinated," conclude the cases are the healthy unvaccinated, and do not include the scrofulous, syphilitic, virus-poisoned, and unclean of every shade and type. Vaccination was a fraud in the hands of Jenner, and it has been an imposture ever since, and the public do not yet know what sort of thing it is. Statistics are published that seriously reflect both upon "Guardians and their officers;" the medical mind is taught not to divulge any facts that tell against themselves in their practice, and to give certificates of death hiding the cause by the substitution of a symptom ; and when official enquiries are demanded or instituted with regard to deaths stated to have been caused by blood-poisoning, or erysipelas, after vaccination, the coroner (a medical man) refuses an inquest; or if the inquiry is held in a police court, evidence is given to save vaccination from reproach, or the vaccinator from the consequences, denying that the vaccine virus had anything to do with the death ; and so, from beginning to end,

Vaccination, and all that belongs to it, is an imposture and a lie!

It may be urged,—Does it not after all seem a small matter to take objection to a few cases, seeing that the total number of patients is 715? That is not the point. There is no dispute about the 600 cases, all of whom bore upon their arms the protection of Jennerism! The sole matter in dispute is,—Are the returns true which represent that there were 115 cases of unvaccinated? I answer, No, the returns are materially untrue. I question if there were, out of the total of 715 patients, so many as 40 fair unvaccinated cases ; and if the Medical Officers, or the Board of Guardians, put me to the test, I am prepared, on terms I am ready to submit, to prove the statement. Statistics, to be of any value, must be true. If medical returns, generally, are made up in this very loose manner, then I say they are all equally valueless.

The Infant Death-Rate follows the Vaccination-Rate.

* The Medical mind has always clung to specifics, charms, and crazes of one kind or other. If vaccination were a craze as harmless as the wearing of an amulet, I should allow them to play with the nursling to the end of time. Unfortunately, there is nothing harmless about it. The purest beastliness which they can find, whether of horse's leg or cow's teat, is an animal poison which, when infused into the living blood, can only impart a diseased condition to the whole body; and the effect, occasionally temporary, is more frequently permanent in its character. I call one fact to witness, and it is the ever-increasing mortality in spite of all our sanitation in the shape of houses better constructed, better ventilated; in our improved streets, and the destruction of the ancient rookeries that infest large towns ; in the

[* Medical men of our day believe in vaccination just as they recently believed in bleeding in cases of fever, and now believe in mercury and other mineral poisons, because they have been educated therein and know no better. No more appropriate illustration can be given than the following incident supplies: in 1878, Dr. Symes was a candidate, along with Dr. Goldie, for the appointment of Health Officer for Leeds; as I was then a member of the Corporation, he called to see me on the subject, and introduced himself as follows:—"I know your views are adverse to the appointment of a medical man as Health Officer. You have said in the Council that you think that a civil engineer or architect would do better; furthermore, I know your opinions on the Vaccination question, and as my opinions are directly opposed to them, I have not much faith in securing your vote." "Well," I said, "as the law gives me no alternative, I shall vote to the best of my judgment, and shall, therefore, select the more intelligent man of the two, and as I believe Dr. Symes is that individual, I shall vote for him." Not wishing to lose the opportunity of catechising a living member of the faculty, I said, "Tell me now why you believe in Vaccination." He replied," To tell you the real truth I have never studied the subject, I am, therefore, not able to argue the question with you, but I was born and bred a vaccinator, and I suppose I shall die one." "Oh no, you won't," I answered. "How so," said the Doctor, "do you think I shall change my opinion ? " "Certainly not," I observed, " We shall change it for you. In a few years it will be felony to vaccinate, as it is now felony to inoculate; you will change your opinion then, but not till then." At this point the conversation ended.
I should say that eight out of ten of the pro-vaccinators in the country have no better philosophy in their knapsacks, and the remaining two out of every ten would not be able to improve upon it to any very appreciable extent Dr. Symes believed in Vaccination because he was born and bred in it. Mr. Scattergood, Mr. Hall, and Mr. Libbey, nay, the whole army of Vaccinators in Leeds, have given us no better reason, nay, nor one so good, for they have declined to commit themselves to any opinion on the subject. They simply, yet dogmatically, say "I believe in Vaccination, and so shall you if I can make you." In this, they will fail, as they ought to do. Vaccination ought to be able to give the best of reasons, and to satisfy the scruples of the most suspicious objector, and even then it should not be compulsorily enforced. Instead of this, it is a dumb dog, it has no answer to give, so it resorts to the public informer, and enforces obedience by pains and penalties.]

completeness of our system of drainage, and the defecation of sewage; in the better quality of our water supplies, and in the closing of wells; and in all those other improvements and advantages which science is ever forcing upon our attention, and during the last thirty years have cost this nation a sum of money so great as to set all calculation at defiance; notwithstanding this, the infant death-rate gains upon us year by year.

I can understand the thing now better, than I could a few years ago. All the good that should have accrued upon the expenditure of so much money is spoiled and blasted by the quarter of a million annually spent in public and private vaccination. The vaccinator by inoculating the healthy blood of the nation with virus that is the very essence of the filthy conditions of the dark ages, whether in the horse, cow, or man himself, practically carries us back to those times, and we are made to live them over again, surrounded by conditions that ought to extend, and not limit the duration of human life. Thus the same exchequer that pays for public cleanliness in one shape, pays for public filthiness in another; the same purse that offers pay and rewards to health-officers, gives pay and rewards to poison-officers; and the same statesmen who provide and pass public health-acts, propose and carry public disease-acts; they hold out one hand to save, and with the other they smite. This is the fair and legitimate interpretation of the position in which the Vaccination Acts place us. Thus the infant death-rate follows the vaccination-rate and the pay-rate.

It is the general opinion that the comparative freedom from smallpox which the nations of Europe now enjoy, at any rate when contrasted with the mortality from that disease in centuries gone by, is attributable "to the wonderful discovery of the immortal Jenner!" I say men really and conscientiously believe that; statesmen, philosophers, literary and scientific men of all countries, the public and the press, the Queen and the subject, have all lost their heads in this matter. The wonderful discovery consists in this, viz., the grease of the horse,* the filth-pox of the cow, is an antidote for the small-pox. What an execrable craze is this same vaccination? The world has literally gone mad about it.

[*In baron’s Life of Jenner, vol 1, p135, the following incident is given:--“His nephew, George Jenner, went into the stable with him to look at a horse with diseased heels. “There,” said he, pointing to the horse’s heels, “is the source of smallpox.”

Query.—Was Jenner sane? I think not. This little scene, so neatly got up, that his greed for gold had obscured his judgment. Jenner’s philanthropy began and ended with himself. Better for him had he never been born than that science, in his hands, should have established a craze—a craze whose dire mischief has now cursed the earth for seventy-five years.

Dr. Birch, a contemporary of Jenner, and physician to the then Prince of Wales, (afterwards George IV.), foresaw all this calamity, and foretold that England would one day find that the vaccine dogma was "a public infatuation." His grave-stone, to this day, hands down that opinion to posterity.]

The immortal Jenner was a poor, ignorant, superstitious, hair-brained fanatic, a small country apothecary, a man who was totally destitute of scientific accuracy; a man who adopted a craze* that immediately transformed itself into a curse, and whose followers, to this day, are making as great a blunder as he by perpetuating a rite whose "sweltered venom" is destroying the best blood of the nations.

[* The wildest and most unfounded theories were propagated with regard to the benefits of inoculation. Here is one—A writer who signs himself "Norvicus" says, " 'Tis in some measure, though not fully proved, that they who have had the smallpox, and they who are never to have it in the natural way, can't be infected so as to receive it by inoculation."—Gentleman's Magazine, for 1752,p. 127.

Norvicus" little dreamed that in 100 years his pet prophylactic would be a felony, and subject the practitioner to fines and imprisonment Vaccination will follow suit in due course.]

Vaccination has no true basis in science.

Do not let it be supposed that in disputing the statistics of the Medical Officers I attach much importance to the bare statistic: VACCINATION is EITHER GOOD OR BAD IN ITSELF, QUITE INDEPENDENTLY OF ANY STATISTIC. The observance should have a true basis in science, otherwise it is a craze, a delusion, an imposture. What is that basis? It is this, viz.:—

The same conditions that produce "the Grease" in the horse, the pox in the cow or the swine, will produce small-pox in man; so that to give protection, or, latterly, an immunity from a severe attack, it is best to vaccinate and produce a modified form of the same disease ; and this reasoning is founded upon the assumption that all men are fated to have the small-pox once in their lives, and therefore it is advisable to communicate it in infancy by means of the vaccine.

The vaccine virus has been procured at different periods, in three different ways, viz. :—

1. Direct from the "limpid " juice of horse's heel,—"the Grease."

2. By passing "the Grease" virus through the cow, then called cow-pox; or from a "spontaneous eruption" (?) in the cow, called cow-pox.

3. By passing human small-pox virus through the cow, then called cow-pox.

The first two sources are now no more; the horse and cow, in consequence of the better sanitary conditions of the stable and the byre, have ceased to contract "the grease" and the "cow-pox," so that we are now shut up to one manufactured product,—vaccine obtained from small-pox virus, first passing it through the cow, and then from arm to arm. Hence the invaccinated small-pox produces its like— small-pox.

At an Anti-Vaccination Meeting at Boston, in Lincolnshire, held on the 17th November last, Dr. Small, J.P., of Boston, addressed the meeting. Amongst other observations he stated that "from being a vaccinator he had, from his own personal experience and observation, been convinced of the terrible evils of vaccination." He stated an extremely interesting fact, viz. : that "on an occasion when four vaccine points were obtained from London, and four children vaccinated with them, all four cases resulted in small-pox." This is only one of hundreds of instances which have come before my notice during the last twenty years, where the inoculated vaccine produced the small-pox, facts which have led me to denounce Vaccination as being the principal propagator of small-pox. I have known many instances of this kind in Leeds, one occurred only very lately. The base of the virus of vaccine is small-pox matter, absolutely taken from the human subject, then inoculated on the cow, and passed on from one child to another. The voluntary evidence of a gentleman, in the social position of Dr. Small, entitles him to be heard when he speaks of the "terrible evils of Vaccination."

The fact that the horse and the cow are no longer subject to the filth diseases of past times, is a circumstance that speaks volumes in favour of our theory, for the clear inference is that sanitation would have accomplished for man that which it has effected for the animal.

Again, the philosophy of vaccination, or rather its want of philosophy, involves the doctrine that like prevents like, filth prevents filth, the "grease," the "cow-pox," and the "small-pox," are each of them remedies for either of the others. Whereas the fact is that cleanliness has rid the horse and cow of their diseases, but filth, the vaccine, has not removed the small-pox from man. Man has been more merciful to his animals than he has been to himself. His filth, his vaccination, and his trust in Jenner, have left him a prey to the filth-disease of the dark ages, a disease that would have disappeared long ago had it not been for his own mischievous interference.

Once more, the small-pox was one of the four filth-diseases of the middle ages. Three of them, the plague, black death, and sweating-sickness, have entirely gone, and left not a trace behind. There was no vaccination for them. They have disappeared in response to the improved sanitary condition of the nations. Small-pox is a constant visitor yet, and it is clearly due to the fact that it has been continued amongst us by artificial means, firstly, by inoculation,* and secondly, by vaccination. It cannot possibly die out. It is to-day a self-inflicted pestilence, the leprosy of Jenner, and his disciple the vaccinator. Vaccination must be stamped out before we can stamp out the small-pox. It is cause and effect. To expect small-pox to disappear, whilst we retain vaccination, is the vain expectation of a madman or a fool—do grapes come of thorns, or figs of thistles? when they do, then expect small-pox to be stamped out whilst the vaccinator is busy stamping it in.

[* A Mr. Bavins writes to the Gentleman’s Magazine as follows, viz.—"The doctrines of the Bow-string, and of inoculating in the small-pox, are both of Mahometan origin, and can never suit a freeborn English constitution. As to inoculation, if it be said that many of the learned, the noble, and the wise are for it, I answer many are against it too. But if all such were for it, if it be not lawful, that would not justify the practice; and till the advocates for this sort of manslaughter can produce some text of scripture to warrant our giving ourselves a distemper we might never have, or not till a more proper season, they do nothing. Would these gentlemen, if the plague were amongst us, inoculate for that? The same reason holds good in both."
"Did none inoculated ever die ? Or if an inoculation from a distinct sort always produced its like, and not an ugly confluent kind, as is commonly the case; or if with the small-pox, no other distemper was inoculated (as the grand-pox, leprosy, the evil, &c.), which cannot be avoided if the patient, from whom the pocky virus was taken, was infected therewith, and which has been communicated to the patient inoculated, then indeed something might be pleaded for the practice. But how many lives have been lost this way, let the mourning, unconsolable parents declare, who have drunk of this bitter cup! 'Tis true, the intention constitutes the act of murder: but if lives, lost by inoculation, be not manslaughter (be the intention never so innocent), I am at a lo«s to know what name to give it."—Gentleman’s Magazine, 1733, p. 514.
Vaccination rests upon the same crazy notions as those advanced by the advocates of inoculation, and the reader, after the first sentence, might substitute vaccination for inoculation, and the objections urged in the above communication are practically those we employ to-day in opposing the theories of Jenner. 1. If many wise and noble are in favour of vaccination, there are many who are opposed to it. 2. It is a piece of human folly to give a distemper (vaccine), to save us from contracting a disease (small-pox) we may never have. 3. Other diseases such as leprosy, scrofula, syphilis, and other blood diseases are inoculable with the vaccine. 4 Vaccination, or blood-poisoning, is man-slaughter to say the least of it, and he who performs such an operation, whatever may be his intention, is guilty of a crime against nature, science and religion.]

Just think how simple and how true to nature is the theory of the anti-vaccinator. He teaches that the same sanitation which has driven away the plague,* the black-death, the sweating-sickness and the cholera, will also destroy the small-pox, and all its "kith and kin." There is but one prophylactic against all epidemic influences, and that consists in "cleanliness," in sanitation. God will not share his glory with another. Between cleanliness and filth there is an impassable gulf. Law and order govern the universe as a whole, and in all its parts. Vaccination is a "strange fire." In the very nature of things it cannot protect, it can only destroy, the vital force of life. If I could believe in vaccination, I should argue thus—there is no God, and if there be no God, then vaccination may be true. But as I believe in God, and that "cleanliness is next to Godliness," I cannot believe in Jenner, nor Jenner's filth.

[ *In speaking of the Plague of London, Richd. Price, Esq., F.R.S., in a letter to Benj. Franklin, Esq., F.B.S., says,—" Among the peculiar evils to which great towns are subject, I might further mention the plague. Before the year 1666, this dreadful calamity laid London almost waste once in every 15 or 20 years; and there is no reason to think that it was not generally bred within itself. A most happy alteration has taken place, which perhaps, in part, is owing to the greater advantages of cleanliness and openness, which London has enjoyed since it was rebuilt, and which lately has been wisely improved."—Philosophical Transactions, vol. o9, p. 89, dated May 4th, 1769.
The plague, the black death, the sweating sickness, and small-pox are all of the same severe type of disease, having their origin in general unsanitary conditions; they come and go in obedience to a fixed and beneficent law,—a law that is beyond the reach of specifics, of quackery, of Jennerism,—a law that knows no charm but that of cleanliness, of sanitation. “Be clean, and live; be filthy, and die." The remedy for one is the remedy for all. Vaccination is a fraud and a lie; it has no place in science.
God has never wanted a man to stand before him and denounce the twin rites, the twin superstitions of inoculation and vaccination. It is not a little surprising how close is the resemblance between the arguments used by the opponents of both practices. Anti-inoculists and anti-vaccinists have regarded both observances from the same standpoint; the dogmas originated in superstition and ignorance; they were supported by extravagant and fraudulent representations. Of inoculators and vaccinators it may be said, with equal truth, that their facts were exaggerated by their fears.]

If I were a Jennerite, I should say to the Creator, that is, if I could persuade myself of his existence, " You may be the Creator, but Jenner is greater than you, for you sent man into the world without a protection against the small-pox ; but Jenner found out the omission, and rectified it when he discovered vaccination." And I can imagine I hear a voice in reply, soft as that which accosted the prophet by Cherith's Brook, saying to me, "GOD ALONE is GREAT. Man was made in the image of God, and thinkest thou that to infect the living blood of a new-born child with the degrading diseases of the beast can result in anything but disease, misery and death? Go, tell the people that there is but one remedy against all Epidemics, which in themselves are filth-diseases, and that consists in cleanliness." For nearly thirty years I have taught the principles enunciated in the last sentence, and I now see before me the beginning of the end. I have waited patiently through evil and good report, laboured zealously, given freely, like all my fellow-workers, and there is now the promise of an immediate and plenteous reward. Personally, I have every cause for gratitude to the great Author of all being, that I have had health, strength and perseverance in assisting to carry on this agitation, and that neither persecution nor the fear of man, which to many is so often a spare, have deterred me from uttering the truth, the whole truth, in this matter. An old English poet has said :—

Unless a man he can
Above himself erect himself,
How poor a thing is man.

He who allies himself with truth will find that his path is not strewn with flowers; but what matters it? The road may be dark, lonesome and weary, the end will come at last. All I care for, all my desire, is to save the next and future generations from the debasing and degrading influence of the abominations of Jennerism.

I am not fighting against the Guardians or their Medical Officers, I am up in arms against vaccination. The Syrian King instructed his captains, saying, "Fight neither with great nor small, save only with the King of Israel," so in this agitation, anti-vaccinators fight neither with great nor small, save only with the rite itself, and with the law, which in an evil hour, lent its sanction and its power to enforce the senseless, wicked, and blasphemous craze of Edward Jenner.

After the House of Commons had voted Jenner £30,000 for his Horse's Leg Swindle, Sir Francis Burdett said, in the House, "Cursed was the day in which vaccination was discovered." That discovery was a calamity indeed; a calamity to the nation, to Jenner, and to the faculty,—to the nation, because it paid good money for an accursed thing; to Jenner, because it linked his name to a fallacy that future ages will know better than we how to estimate; to the faculty, be cause that body were committed to a blunder that was worse than a crime—it left them prostrate before a craze which they mistook for a discovery ! There is, however, one speck of light amidst the darkness and gloom that surrounded the inauguration of vaccination. Jenner communicated a paper to the Royal Society embracing his discovery, and his theory of the modus operandi of the vaccine, and to their everlasting honour be it recorded, they declined to listen to it, they advised him not to risk his reputation by pressing his dogma upon their notice, and to this hour the Society never committed itself to the theory that blood-poisoning with vaccine could be a prophylactic against the small-pox. The Royal College of Physicians fell into the trap, and have not yet seen their way out of it.

I say to the Board of Guardians that the Medical Officers, who sit in the room with you from day to day, are simply fooling you, flaunting in your faces the grease of horse, the pox of cow, the humanized virus of small-pox, and saying to you, as they count the coin, "These be your gods, ye Boards of Guardians!" And what gods truly—fit deities are they not when money obtains their gifts? God, the living God, whose I am, and whom I serve, he wants none of our cash. His benefits are free to all the race. All he asks is that the people should be clean. Believe me, when I say that if the Guardians would obtain the best health for the nation, your prominent duty is to stamp out, first of all, the virus epidemic, the vaccinators' pestilence. Shut up the cash box, close the stations where plagues are manufactured and distributed, and I will answer for it with my life, that the small-pox will disappear on the spot, and the health-rate of the nation will return and improve far beyond any estimate we can form. With a poison-disseminator, and a disease-distributor, like the vaccinator, in our midst, with the "whips and scourges" of the law to enforce his nostrums, I say we know not to what extent infant-diseases and infant-mortality are intensified. Vaccination is an agent whose power for evil is equally beyond our control as it is beyond our computation. It is like the prairie fire, once lighted, it burns all up before it.

The Formulary of the Vaccinator.

Is there a believer in vaccination to be found in the three kingdoms, who would either voluntarily, or compulsorily, append his signature to the following formulary, viz.:—

"I conscientiously and religiously believe,—

"First, that every man is fated to hare the small-pox once during life.

"Secondly, that it is best, therefore, to inoculate the disease in infancy, by vaccination, rather than the disease should be taken later in life, in the natural way.

"Thirdly, that the 'limpid fluid' from the horse in the grease is the source of small-pox, and that if the virus is passed through the cow, the product, vaccine, or cow-pox, will communicate a modified form of small-pox.

Fourthly, that vaccination thus carried out will prevent, or modify, a future attack of small-pox."

The practice of vaccination is based upon these four cardinal points, and unless the pro-vaccinator is ready to affirm his belief therein he is no believer in Jenner, he is no true vaccinator, he is supporting a practice in ignorance of the principles upon which it is founded.

Small-pox is a Filth-Disease; its Remedy is Sanitation.

Epidemics, and in fact, all Zymotic diseases may be said to be filth-diseases. There is no exception to that rule. Whom do they attack? The unclean.*

[* In confirmation of the above remark there is a descriptive paragraph in the Report of the Leeds Social Improvement Society, for 1874. It reads thus:—"For, while much work, doubtless very necessary, has been done in improving the business parts of Leeds, many of the streets and courts in which cholera prevailed in 1832, which were the principal seats of fever during the years 1834-1839, of fever and cholera in 1847 and 1848, of fever throughout the five years 1860 to 1865, and in 1867, of diarrhoea and fever in 1870," and from that time to this, continue, even now, to be haunts of filth, vice, disease, and death. No doubt these evils must, in any case, be specially found in the parts of a town inhabited by the poor; but the complaint is that they are here immensely in excess of what they might be, and that, in the present condition of things, it is difficult to see how decency, morality, and health can be expected at all."

What a stimulus is given to disease and death, when, to the above mentioned conditions, which surround the poor in the eastern districts of Leeds, there is added the filth of Vaccination. How the King of Terrors must revel as he follows the wake of the public blood-poisoner! How he gloats over this annual Herodian massacre, which is perpetrated for the sake of two shillings a life!

The scarlet and typhoid fevers, cholera, diarrhoea, and small-pox, fetch all their victims, or nearly so, out of the districts referred to in the Society's report. Food for epidemics, in every stage of manufacture, can be seen at work there at any time. I have been in these small-pox haunts day and night, at all hours from ten a.m. to eleven and twelve p.m., and even into early morning, and I have watched and noted every process.]

What neighbourhoods do they visit? The filthiest. What towns do they select? Those where sanitary conditions are the most neglected. Note the last small-pox epidemic, and take Leeds as an example. Who were the victims? The very lowest classes of society, children that were filthy, neglected, and ill fed, others living in houses that were overcrowded, destitute of proper ventilation, and in courts and alleys where sanitation is a term unknown; adults who are tramps, drunkards, prostitutes, men and women without homes, wanderers,—with a very modest sprinkling of the very lowest sections of the working classes; these formed 7-10ths of the patients who passed through the hospital of the Leeds Union, and these are the very self-same people, resident in the same houses, streets, and neighbourhoods, who would have fallen the first victims to any other epidemic which had sprung up. If they had not yielded to the small-pox they would have succumbed to scarlet fever, typhoid, or the like. If the unsanitary surroundings are there, and the physically deteriorated in health within reach, then the conditions for producing an epidemic are present, and the result cannot fail to be disastrous. The strong and healthy do not take the small-pox. If we divide Leeds in the centre due north and south, nearly all the cases occurred in the eastern half of the town,—the healthiest half, the western, was free from the scourge. Belgravia and May Fair had no small-pox, but there was plenty of it in the narrow streets and the courts and alleys situate in the east of London. Again, our healthiest towns, such as Leamington, Cheltenham, Brighton, Hastings, and Scarbro', had little or no small-pox during the recent epidemic, whilst Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, and similar large centres of industry suffered severely. Do not these facts confirm our previously expressed opinions that small-pox is a filth-disease, and like all filth-diseases, of the zymotic order, the only protection is in general and wide-spread cleanliness?

The small-pox epidemic of 1871-2 has come and gone, and left us little the wiser.

It is strange after all that this land should have been visited with such a fearful pestilence, so general and so fatal. Well vaccinated, well protected, secure from harm, glorying in bur wisdom, and yet the disease comes, shorn of none of its terrors, spreading disfigurement and death in our streets, laughing at our prophylactics and quackeries, and proclaiming in deafening tones, enough to wake the very dead, "Vaccination is a lie," and pointing with its shrivelled hand to the only prophylactic there is against all epidemic influences, all zymotic diseases, it said to us, " Be clean, and live ; be filthy, and die." Is it not absurd, then, if there were any protection in vaccination, to vaccinate the clean and healthy, inasmuch as they want no protection against a disease they will never contract, the cleanliness of their persons and homes is their protection; and as for the filthy and unclean, vaccination is no protection to them, as is abundantly shown by the recent epidemic? In the absence of cleanliness, of sanitation, there is no protection against epidemic influences in the whole realms of nature. Vaccination, then, is simply a vile, useless, mischievous, unnatural, and barbaric piece of quackery; a trade for fools, for sorcerers, snake-charmers, rain-makers, fakirs, and fetich worshippers,—not for men of education, not for men who profess acquaintance with the laws of nature.

Notwithstanding all the unfairness, prejudice, and ignorance exhibited by Medical Officers and Health Officers, there is occasionally a man here and there who stands out and boldly speaks his mind. In a newspaper sent me the other day is a report from Dr. E. Robinson, Medical Officer of Health for Dukinfield. It is addressed to the Local Board of Health of that town, and in speaking on the high death-rate among the infant part of the population he writes as follows, viz.:—

"Before the child is three months old it meets with another influence that is calculated to strengthen any infective process which may be already at work in the system; and originate such a process in a child otherwise healthy and vigorous. The most powerful infective substances are the various forms of purulent matter (a low condition of living animal matter, and essentially a phase of disease). One of these purulent forms of matter is the fluid of the vaccine vesicle. When inserted and absorbed into the living blood by an unnatural method, it exerts an influence of an infective character, opposed to the healthy vital power, and weakening to the extent of its influence the natural vigour of the body. That the natural vital powers are too strong for it in many cases, is recognized in the supposed necessity for re-vaccination. But in ascertaining the causes of the high rate of infant mortality, the degrading influence of vaccine matter must be considered."

If Dr. Robinson were an Anti-Vaccinator he could not have expressed my views more closely than he has done in the above quotation. He teaches—

1. That vaccine is purulent animal matter.

2. That its natural effects when inoculated into the living blood is to strengthen any infective process that may be in the system.

3. That where there may be no infective process already at work, the vaccine will of itself originate and develop that condition.

4. That vaccine can only exert an influence that is opposed to the healthy vital power, and the natural vigour of the body.

5. That in ascertaining the causes of the high rate of the infant mortality, the degrading influence of vaccine matter must be considered. The Health Officer for Dukinfield has got hold of the thing by the horns. It is as clear to him as it is to me that the disease of horse's leg, or pox of cow, can never be regarded by the sanitarian with any other feelings than those of dismay and disgust. How can a man, by any ordinary process of reasoning, bring himself to believe—when he reflects upon the subject dispassionately—that the vaccine point, charged with virus from horse, cow, or man himself, is a fit compound to be used in the interests of sanitation? It would be next to impossible, if we were to search creation through, to find a matter so loathsome, so conspicuously vile as the vaccine lymph of Jenner, and yet the faculty have no more common sense than to impregnate the pure blood of a healthy child with a morbid and malignant poison. Now when the people see Vaccination in the same light as Dr. Robinson, they can never come to any other conclusion than this, viz.:—that men will perform an operation for money which no other consideration in the world would permit them to do. The "degrading influence" of vaccination is degrading in two aspects, first—to the medical profession who trade in it, and then to the infant population who have to submit at so early a period of life to an observance that is senseless, cruel, heathenish, and demoralizing. Statesmen, philanthropists, and public men, may descant upon the fact that the health of the nation is deteriorating, and well it may—it could not be otherwise— when the state gives pay, rewards and promotion, to men whose time is devoted to the wholesale distribution of the disease-conditions of man and beast amongst every individual member of the infantile population upon whom they can lay their hands. The first lesson that the nation has to learn is the great fact that the natural vigour of the constitution ensures the best protection against all disease-conditions, and that the small-pox is only one of many filth-diseases that will disappear before sanitation, like the plague and other filth-epidemics of the middle ages, but will never yield to any such crazy specific as vaccination.

Another great worker in the cause of sanitation, Miss Nightingale, agrees with our teaching on the Vaccination question. In a letter to the author she says:—" Every one who knows anything of public health questions, will agree in your views as to the practical unity of epidemics, and their determining causes, and that exemption from all alike must be sought, not by any one thing, such as vaccination, but by enquiring into and removing the causes of epidemic susceptibility generally."

Now to get at the full meaning of that quotation, just let us enquire what the writer inculcates, and I think the following inferences may be fairly drawn, viz. :

1. Epidemics are filth-diseases, having a common origin, viz.: in unsanitary conditions.

2. That exemption from all alike must be sought, not by any one thing, such as vaccination, but by enquiring into and removing the causes of epidemic susceptibility generally— in fact, by sanitation.

Then again, in the like direction, Dr. Farr enforces our principles in a paragraph of singular force and beauty, when he says:—"The primary object to aim at, is, placing a healthy stock of men in conditions of air, water, warmth, food, dwelling, and work, most favourable to their development. The vigour of their own life is the best security men have against the invasion of their organization by low corpuscular forms of life—for such the propagating matters of zymotic diseases may be held to be."

To put his teaching into axiomatic form will best illustrate my views, viz.:—

1. The propagating matters of zymotic diseases are low corpuscular forms of life.

2. The best security men have against diseases of that type is the natural vigour of their own life.

3. The primary object to aim at, is, to place healthy men under proper sanitary surroundings most favourable to their development.

The Anti-Vaccinator teaches no doctrines that are at variance with those of Miss Nightingale and Dr. Farr; it may be said the teaching of one is that of the other, that of all, viz.:—1. Zymotic diseases are filth-diseases. 2. Sanitation is the only remedy. 3. The best protection consists in the natural vigour of life. Vaccination then is shut out, and not before its time. The Vaccine can never be admitted by thinking men as a sanitary agent; it is a low and morbid poison, and its influence is exerted in one direction, viz.: to propagate disease, to impart a diseased condition, and no persuasive art can succeed in making people believe that an infective virus can be, at the same time, a protective virus. Filthiness and cleanliness can never be convertible terms, nor convertible conditions, any more than a fountain can, at the same time, send forth waters that arc sweet and bitter, cleanly and filthy. It is clear then that Vaccination can only be one of two things—a natural or unnatural practice, a protective or an infective agent. Which of the two is it? Let the reader be candid with himself, and, after he has settled the point, let him ally himself with one of the two parties, both of whom, apparently, have determined to carry the question to the bitter end. Men have worshipped strange deities at times, stocks and stones, birds and beasts, and sun and moon, but the nineteenth century god, whose agency is invoked to stop the ravages of the small-pox, is a diseased horse's leg and the pustulous teat of a cow! Gentle reader, need I continue the argument?

To expose and refute the statistics of the Medical Officers of the Leeds Hospital may be, and doubtless is, an important matter, but it was never my sole object in publishing this pamphlet. The discredit henceforth attaching to similar statistics is a fact accomplished by these pages, but it was to me a subject of greater anxiety that I should give a general and more extended view of the case between the Anti-Vaccinator and the Pro-Vaccinator. In this war we seek not only to destroy the outworks of the enemy, but to raze the fortifications, to plant our standard on the ruins, and to subjugate the entire country, even to the speaking of our language.

The letter to the Leeds Board of Guardians was written very hurriedly, and was not intended to appear in any other shape than as a communication to the Leeds Mercury, but when that illiberal paper declined it, I determined upon its publication in the present form. The reader will see that, in these observations, I was obliged— in some measure—to go over the same ground again, and in doing so I have been careful to draw the attention—to some extent—from-the statistic, and to fix it more upon the subject, a matter of infinitely greater moment.

In concluding this paper I wish to urge upon the reader's notice some important considerations. To some minds the only charm in them will be that of novelty, whilst others will be able to see in them foreshadowings of facts and principles that will come uppermost during our future agitation, the general recognition of which will hereafter assist in determining the question at present upon its trial.

1. Vaccination is a medical craze.

2. Vaccination has no true basis in science.

3. Vaccination is opposed to the "common sense" of the nation.

4. Cleanliness, or sanitation, in its widest signification, is the only protection against all epidemic influences.

5. Nature knows nothing of SPECIFICS. Small-pox is a filth disease, its antidote is sanitation.

6. Vaccination is blood-poisoning, it is an infective process, and can only originate or intensify disease-conditions.

7. Vaccination cannot, in the very nature of things, give an immunity from, or even modify, an attack of small-pox.

8. Vaccination can only produce its like, the small-pox and other diseased conditions; and the small-pox epidemics of to-day are mainly attributable to that source.

9. Vaccination, therefore, PER SB, never prevented, or modified, a single case of small-pox from the days of Jenner until now.

10. Vaccination has been credited with effects, such as protection from, or modification of, the small-pox, and smallpox epidemics, which ought to have been credited to sanitation and to sanitation only.

11. Vaccination, as a prophylactic, is false in principle, false in practice, and ought to be discontinued at once.

12. The disease-rate and the infant death-rate follow the vaccination-rate and the pay-rate.

13. Jenner was a self-deceiver; and he succeeded in deceiving the whole nation.
14. The faculty accepted Jenner's theory of vaccination for a discovery in science, instead of which it was a blunder and a craze.

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