CHAPTER VI

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

As the diverse aspects of the problem which has been discussed in the preceding pages are somewhat numerous and complex, owing to the vast mass of irrelevant but confusing matter with which it has been encumbered at every step of its progress for nearly a century, a brief summary of the main points here referred to, and a statement of their bearing on the essential problem, will now be given.

I have first shown the nature of the tests which seemed to the early enquirers to establish the protective influence of vaccination, and have given the facts which the two greatest living specialists on the subject—Professor Crookshank and Dr. Creighton—consider to prove the fallacy or insufficiency of all the tests which were applied. This is followed by a statement of the abundant evidence which in the first ten years of the century already showed that vaccination had no protective power (pp. 10-12). But the heads of the medical profession had accepted the operation as of proved value, and the legislature, on their recommendation, had voted its discoverer £30,000 of public money, and had besides, in 1808, endowed a National Vaccine Establishment with about £3,000 a year. Reputations and vested interests were henceforth at stake, and those who adduced evidence of the failure or the dangers of vaccination were treated as fanatics, and have been so treated by the medical and official world down to the appointment of the last Royal Commission.

I next give the reasons why doctors are _not_ the best judges of the effects, beneficial or otherwise, of vaccination, and follow this by proofs of a special capacity for misstating facts in reference to this question which has characterized them from the beginning of the century down to our day. The successive annual reports of the National Vaccine Establishment give figures of the deaths by small-pox in London in the eighteenth century, which go on increasing like Falstaff’s men in buckram; while in our own time the late Dr. W. B. Carpenter, Mr. Ernest Hart, the National Health Society, and the Local Government Board make statements or give figures which are absurdly and demonstrably incorrect (pp. 13-18).[23]

I then show the existence of so unreasoning a belief in the importance of vaccination that it leads many of those who have to deal, with it officially to concealments and misstatements which are justified by the desire to “save vaccination from reproach.” Thus it happened that till 1881 no deaths were regularly recorded as due to vaccination, although an increasing number of such deaths now appear in the Registrar-General’s Reports; while a few medical men, who have personally inquired into these results of vaccination, have found a large amount of mortality directly following the operation, together with a large percentage of subsequent disease, often lasting for years or during life, which, except for such private enquiries, would have remained altogether unknown and unacknowledged (pp. 18-22).

The same desire to do credit to the practice which they believe to be so important leads to such imperfect or erroneous statements as to the _vaccinated_ or _unvaccinated_ condition of those who die of small-pox as to render all statistics of this kind faulty and erroneous to so serious an extent that they must be altogether rejected. Whether a person dies of small-pox or of some other illness is a fact that is recorded with tolerable accuracy, because the disease, in fatal cases, is among the most easily recognised. Statistics of “small-pox mortality” may, therefore, be accepted as reliable. But whether the patient is registered as vaccinated or not vaccinated usually depends on the visibility or non-visibility of vaccination-marks, either during the illness or after death, both of which observations are liable to error, while the latter entails a risk of infection which would justifiably lead to its omission. And the admitted practice of many doctors, to give vaccination the benefit of any doubt, entirely vitiates all such statistics, except in those special cases where large bodies of adults are systematically vaccinated or revaccinated. Hence, whenever the results of these _imperfect_ statistics are opposed to those of the official records of small-pox _mortality_, the former must be rejected. It is an absolute law of evidence, of statistics, and of common sense that when two kinds of evidence contradict each other, that which can be proved to be even partially incorrect or untrustworthy must be rejected. It will be found that _all_ the evidence that seems to prove the value of vaccination is of this untrustworthy character. This conclusion is enforced by the fact that the more recent hospital statistics show that small-pox occurs among the vaccinated in about the same proportion as the vaccinated bear to the whole population; thus again indicating that the earlier figures, showing that they were proportionately five or six times as numerous, and the death-rate of the unvaccinated twice or thrice that of the average of pre-vaccination days, are altogether erroneous, and are due to the various kinds of error or misstatement which have been pointed out (pp. 25-30).

* * * * *

Having thus cleared away some of the misconceptions and fallacies which have obscured the main question at issue, and having shown that, by official admission, the only valuable evidence consists of “large masses of national statistics,” which should have been dealt with by a commission of trained statisticians, I proceed to show, by a series of diagrams embodying the official or national statistics brought before the Commission, or to be found in the Reports of the Registrar-General, what such statistics really prove; and I ask my readers to look again at those diagrams as I refer to them.

Diagram I. exhibits the most extensive body of national statistics available, showing at one view the death-rates from Small-pox, from the other chief Zymotic Diseases, and the Total Mortality, from 1760 to 1896. The first portion, from 1760 to 1836, is from the “Bills of Mortality,” which, though not complete, are admitted to be, on the whole, fairly accurate as regards the variations at different periods and between different diseases. The second part, from 1838 onwards, is from the Reports of the Registrar-General, and is more complete in giving all deaths whatever. Its lines are, therefore, as it were, on a higher level than those of the earlier period, and can only be compared with it as regards proportions of the different mortalities, not so accurately as to their total amounts. The main teaching of this diagram—a teaching which the Commissioners have altogether missed by never referring to diagrams showing comparative mortalities—is the striking correspondence in average rise and fall of the death-rates of small-pox, of zymotics, and of all diseases together. This correspondence is maintained throughout the whole of the first part, as well as through the whole of the second part, of the diagram; and it proves that small-pox obeys, and always has obeyed, the same law of subservience to general sanitary conditions as the other great groups of allied diseases and the general mortality. Looking at this most instructive diagram, we see at once the absurdity of the claim that the diminution of small-pox in the first quarter of our century was due to the partial and imperfect vaccination of that period. Equally absurd is the allegation that its stationary character from 1842 to 1872, culminating in a huge epidemic, was due to the vaccination then prevailing, though much larger than ever before, not being quite universal—an allegation completely disproved by the fact that the other zymotics as a whole, as well as the general mortality, exhibited strikingly similar decreases followed by equally marked periods of average uniformity or slight increase, to be again followed by a marked decrease. There is here no indication whatever of vaccination having produced the slightest effect on small-pox mortality.

The second diagram shows that, even taking the Commission’s favourite method of comparing the zymotics separately with small-pox, all of them except measles show a similar or a greater decrease during the period of official registration, and also agree in the periods of slight increase, again proving the action of the same general causes (which I have pointed out at p. 37), and leaving no room whatever for the supposed effects of vaccination.

Diagram III. shows that similar phenomena occurred in England and Wales as a whole, the other zymotics and the total deaths obeying the same laws of increase and decrease as small-pox. Comparison with diagram I. shows the much greater severity of small-pox epidemics in London, illustrating the fact, which all the statistical evidence of all countries strikingly enforces, that _small-pox mortality is, other things being equal, a function of density of population_, while it pays no regard whatever to vaccination. This is further shown by the short, thick dotted line which exhibits the total number of vaccinations since 1872, when private as well as public vaccinations were first officially recorded, and which proves that the continuous _decrease_ of vaccination since 1882 has been accompanied by a decided _decrease_, instead of an increase, in small-pox mortality.

Diagram IV. shows the statistics of mortality in Ireland and Scotland from small-pox and certain chosen zymotics, from the tables which were laid before the Commission by the official advocates of vaccination. These show two striking facts, which the Commissioners failed to notice in their _Final Report_. First, the smaller amount of small-pox mortality in Ireland than in Scotland, the latter being alleged to be well vaccinated, the former imperfectly so; and, secondly, the similar difference in the two chosen diseases and the general parallelism of the two. Here again we see clearly the influence of _density of population_, Scotland having a very much larger proportion of its inhabitants living in large manufacturing towns.

The next three diagrams, V., VI., and VII., show small-pox mortality in Sweden, Prussia, and Bavaria—countries which at previous enquiries were adduced as striking examples of the value of vaccination. They all show phenomena of the same character as our own country, but far worse as regards epidemics in the capitals; that of Stockholm, in 1874, causing a death-rate more than 50 per cent. higher than during the worst epidemic of the last century in London! The diagram of small-pox and zymotics in Bavaria is given merely because the statistics were brought before the Commission as a proof of the beneficial results of vaccination in well-vaccinated communities. It was _alleged_ by Dr. Hopkirk that almost the whole of the population were vaccinated, and _admitted_ by him that of the 30,742 cases of small-pox in 1871 no less than 95·7 per cent. were vaccinated! The epidemic was, however, less severe than in Prussia, again showing the influence of density of population, less than one-seventh of the Bavarians inhabiting towns of over 20,000, while one-fourth inhabit similar towns in Prussia; but we see that during the latter half of the period chosen small-pox greatly increased, and the other zymotics remained very high, indicating general insanitary conditions. And this case was specially brought before the Commission as a proof of the _benefits_ of vaccination! In their _Final Report_ the Commissioners omit to point out that it really indicates the very reverse.

We then come to the two cases that afford most conclusive tests of the absolute uselessness of vaccination—Leicester and our Army and Navy.

Diagram VIII. shows the death-rates from small-pox and from the other zymotics in LEICESTER during the period of official registration, together with the percentage of vaccinations to births. Up to 1872 Leicester was a fairly well-vaccinated town, yet for thirty-four years its small-pox mortality, in periodical epidemics, remained very high, corresponding generally with the other zymotics. But immediately after the great epidemic of 1872, which was much worse than in London, the people began to reject vaccination, at first slowly, then more rapidly, till for the last eight years less than 5 per cent. of the births have been vaccinated. During the whole of the last twenty-four years small-pox deaths have been very few, and during twelve consecutive years, 1878-89, there was a total of only eleven small-pox deaths in this populous town.

Diagram IX. is equally important as showing a remarkable correspondence, if not a causal relation, between vaccination and disease. From 1848 to 1862 there was a considerable decrease of both general and infant mortality, and also in infant mortality from small-pox. This, Mr. Biggs tells us, was when important sanitary improvements were in progress. Then the more thorough enforcement of vaccination set in (as shown by the dotted line), and was accompanied by an increase of all these mortalities. But so soon as the revolt against vaccination began, till the present time, when it has diminished to about 2 or 3 per cent. of births, all mortalities have steadily decreased, and that decrease has been especially marked in infant lives. It is very suggestive that the lines of infant mortality have now reached the position they would have had if the slow decrease during 1850-60 had been continued, strongly indicating that some _special cause_ sent them up, and the _removal of that cause_ allowed them to sink again; and during that very period _vaccination_ increased and then steadily decreased. I venture to declare that in the whole history of vaccination there is no such clear and satisfactory proof of its having saved a single life as these Leicester statistics afford of its having been the cause of death to many hundreds of infants.

Diagram X. exhibits the check to the decrease in infant mortality, both in London and for England, since the enforcement of vaccination (p. 57), and thus supports and enforces the conclusions derived from the preceding diagram.

THE ARMY AND NAVY

I next discuss in some detail what is undoubtedly the most complete and crucial test of the value or uselessness of vaccination to be found anywhere in the world. Since 1860 in the Army, and 1872 in the Navy, every man without exception, English or foreign, has been vaccinated on entering the service, though for long before that period practically the whole force was vaccinated or revaccinated. Diagrams XI. and XII. exhibit the result of the statistics presented to the Commission, showing for the Navy the death-rate from disease and that from small-pox for the whole force; and for the Army the death-rate from small-pox for the whole force, and that from disease for the home force only, foreign deaths from disease not being separately given.

Here we note, first, as in all the other communities we have dealt with, the general correspondence between the two lines of total disease mortality and small-pox mortality, resulting from the greater attention given to sanitation and to general health conditions of both forces during the last thirty or forty years. But, instead of small-pox mortality absolutely vanishing with the complete revaccination in the Army since 1860, it shows but a small improvement as compared with general disease mortality; just as if some adverse cause were preventing the improvement. In the Navy the improvement is somewhat greater, and more nearly comparable with that of general disease mortality. There is, therefore, as regards proportionate decrease, no indication whatever of any exceptional cause favourably influencing small-pox.

In diagram XII. I compare the small-pox mortality of the Army and Navy with that of Ireland from tables given in the _Final Report_ and the Second Report; and we find that this whole country (at ages 15-45) has actually a much lower small-pox mortality than the Army, while it is a little more than in the Navy, although the mortality during the great epidemic was higher than any that affected the Army or Navy, owing to its rapid spread by infection in the towns. But the proportionate numbers dying of small-pox in a series of years is, of course, the final and absolute test; and, applying this test, we find that these revaccinated soldiers and sailors have suffered in the thirty-one years during which the materials for comparison exist, to almost exactly the same extent as poor, half-starved, imperfectly vaccinated Ireland (p. 65)! Another and still more striking comparison is given. The town of Leicester is, and has been for the last twenty years, the least vaccinated town in the kingdom. Its average population from 1873 to 1894 was about two-thirds that of the Army during the same period. Yet the small-pox deaths in the Army and Navy were thirty-seven per million, those of Leicester under fifteen per million.

Thus, whether we compare the revaccinated and thoroughly “protected” Army and Navy with imperfectly vaccinated Ireland, or with almost unvaccinated Leicester, we find them either on a bare equality or _worse off_ as regards small-pox mortality. It is not possible to have a more complete or crucial test than this is, and it absolutely demonstrates the utter uselessness, or worse than uselessness, of revaccination![24]

In the face of this clear and indisputable evidence, all recorded in their own Reports, the Commissioners make the astounding statement: “We find that particular classes within the community amongst whom revaccination has prevailed to an exceptional degree have exhibited a position of quite exceptional advantage in relation to small-pox, although these classes have in many cases been subject to exceptional risk of contagion” (_Final Report_, p. 90, par. 342). And again: “The fact that revaccination of adults appears to place them in so favourable a condition as compared with the unvaccinated,” etc. (_Final Report_, p. 98, sec. 375). What can be said of such statements as these, but simply that they are wholly untrue. And the fact that the majority of the Commissioners did not know this, because they never compared the different groups of facts in their own reports which prove them to be untrue, demonstrates at once their complete incapacity to conduct such an inquiry and the utter worthlessness of their _Final Report_.

This is a matter upon which it is necessary to speak plainly. For refusing to allow their children’s health, or even their lives, to be endangered by the inoculation into their system of disease-produced matter, miscalled “lymph,”[25] hundreds and probably thousands of English parents have been fined or imprisoned and treated as criminals, while certainly thousands of infants have been officially done to death, and other thousands injured for life. And all these horrors on account of what Dr. Creighton has well termed a “grotesque superstition,” which has never had a rational foundation either of physiological doctrine or of carefully tested observations, and is now found to be disproved by a century’s dearly bought experience. This disgrace of our much-vaunted scientific age has been throughout supported by concealment of facts telling against it, by misrepresentation, and by untruths. And now a Royal Commission, which one would have supposed would have striven to be rigidly impartial, has presented a Report which is not only weak, misleading, and inadequate, but is also palpably one-sided, in that it omits in every case to make those comparisons by which alone the true meaning can be ascertained of those “great masses of national experience” to which appeal has been made by the official advocate of vaccination _par excellence_—Sir John Simon.

* * * * *

I venture to think that I have here so presented the best of these statistical facts as to satisfy my readers of the certain and absolute _uselessness_ of vaccination as a preventive of small-pox; while these same facts render it in the highest degree probable that it has actually increased susceptibility to the disease. The teaching of the whole of the evidence is in one direction. Whether we examine the long-continued records of London mortality, or those of modern registration for England, Scotland, and Ireland; whether we consider the “control experiment” or crucial test afforded by unvaccinated Leicester, or the still more rigid test in the other direction, of the absolutely revaccinated Army and Navy, the conclusion is in every case the same: that vaccination is a gigantic delusion; that it has never saved a single life; but that it has been the cause of so much disease, so many deaths, such a vast amount of utterly needless and altogether undeserved suffering, that it will be classed by the coming generation among the greatest errors of an ignorant and prejudiced age, and its penal enforcement the foulest blot on the generally beneficent course of legislation during our century.

To talk of amending such legislation is a mockery. Absolute and immediate abolition is the only rational course open to us. Every day the vaccination laws remain in force parents are being punished, infants are being killed. An Act of a single clause will repeal these vile laws; and I call upon every one of our legislators to consider their responsibilities as the guardians of the liberties of the English people, and to insist that this repeal be effected without a day’s unnecessary delay.

_The successive Vaccination Acts were passed by means of allegations which were wholly untrue and promises which have all been unfulfilled. They stand alone in modern legislation as a gross interference with personal liberty and the sanctity of the home; while as an attempt to cheat outraged nature and to avoid a zymotic disease without getting rid of the foul conditions that produce or propagate it, the practice of vaccination is utterly opposed to the whole teaching of sanitary science, and is one of those terrible blunders which, in their far-reaching evil consequences, are worse than the greatest of crimes._

FOOTNOTES

[1] Professor Crookshank, in his evidence before the Royal Commission (4th Report, Q. 11,729) quotes Dr. De Haën, a writer on Inoculation, as saying: “Asthma, consumption, hectic or slow fever of any kind, internal ulcers, obstructed glands, obstructions of the viscera from fevers, scrofula, scurvy, itch, eruptions, local inflammations or pains of any kind, debility, suppressed or irregular menstruation, chlorosis, jaundice, pregnancy, _lues venerea_, whether in the parent or transmitted to the child, and a constitution under the strong influence of mercury, prevented the operation.” There is no evidence that those who applied the so-called “variolous test” in the early days of vaccination paid any attention to this long list of ailments, many of which were very prevalent at the time, and which would, in the opinion of De Haën, and of the English writer Sanders, who quotes him, have prevented the action of the virus and thus rendered the “test” entirely fallacious. With such causes as these, added to those already discussed, it becomes less difficult to understand how it was that the alleged test was thought to prove the influence of the previous vaccination without really doing so.

[2] The cases of failure of vaccination here referred to are given in Mr. William White’s _Story of a Great Delusion_, where fuller extracts and references will be found.

[3] These extracts from the Reports are given by Mr. White in his _Story of a Great Delusion_. The actual deaths from small-pox during the last century are given in the Second Report of the Royal Commission, p. 290. The above statements have been verified at the British Museum by my friend Dr. Scott Tebb, and are verbally accurate.

[4] As an example of the dreadful results of vaccination, even where special care was taken, the following case from the Sixth Report of the Royal Commission (p. 128) is worthy of earnest attention. It is the evidence of Dr. Thomas Skinner, of Liverpool:

_Q._ 20,766. Will you give the Commission the particulars of the case?—A young lady, fifteen years of age, living at Grove Park, Liverpool, was revaccinated by me at her father’s request, during an outbreak of small-pox in Liverpool in 1865, as I had revaccinated all the girls in the Orphan Girls’ Asylum in Myrtle Street, Liverpool (over 200 girls, I believe), and as the young lady’s father was chaplain to the asylum, he selected, and I approved of the selection, of a young girl, the picture of health, and whose vaccine vesicle was matured, and as perfect in appearance as it is possible to conceive. On the eighth day I took off the lymph in a capillary glass tube, almost filling the tube with clear, transparent lymph. Next day, 7th March, 1865, I revaccinated the young lady from this same tube, and from the same tube and at the same time I revaccinated her mother and the cook. Before opening the tube I remember holding it up to the light and requesting the mother to observe how perfectly clear and homogeneous, like water, the lymph was, neither pus nor blood corpuscles were visible to the naked eye. All three operations were successful, and on the eighth day all three vesicles were matured “like a pearl upon a rose petal,” as Jenner described a perfect specimen. On that day, the eighth day after the operation, I visited my patient, and to all appearance she was in the soundest health and spirits, with her usual bright eyes and ruddy cheeks. Although I was much tempted to take the lymph from so healthy a vesicle and subject, I did not do so, as I have frequently seen erysipelas and other had consequences follow the opening of a matured vesicle. As I did not open the vesicle that operation could not be the cause of what followed. Between the tenth and the eleventh day after the revaccination—that is, about three days after the vesicle had matured and begun to scab over—I was called in haste to my patient the young lady, whom I found in one of the most severe rigors I ever witnessed, such as generally precedes or ushers in surgical, puerperal, and other forms of fever. This would be on the 18th March, 1865. Eight days from the time of this rigor my patient was dead, and she died of the most frightful form of blood poisoning that I ever witnessed, and I have been forty-five years in the active practice of my profession. After the rigor, a low form of acute peritonitis set in, with incessant vomiting and pain, which defied all means to allay. At last stercoraceous vomiting, and cold, clammy, deadly sweats of a sickly odour set in, with pulselessness, collapse, and death, which closed the terrible scene on the morning of the 26th March, 1865. Within twenty minutes of death rapid decomposition set in, and within two hours so great was the bloated and discoloured condition of the whole body, more especially of the head and face, that there was not a feature of this once lovely girl recognisable. Dr. John Cameron, of 4, Rodney Street, Liverpool, physician to the Royal Southern Hospital at Liverpool, met me daily in consultation while life lasted. I have a copy of the certificate of death here.

_Q._ 20,767. To what do you attribute the death there?—I can attribute the death there to nothing but vaccination.

In the same Report, fifteen medical men give evidence as to disease, permanent injury, or death caused by vaccination. Two give evidence of syphilis and one of leprosy as clearly due to vaccination. And, as an instance of how the law is applied in the case of the poor, we have the story told by Mrs. Amelia Whiting (_QQ._ 21,434-21,464). To put it in brief, it amounts to this:—Mrs. Whiting lost a child, after terrible suffering, from inflammation supervening upon vaccination. The doctor’s bill for the illness was £1 12_s._ 6_d._; and a woman who came in to help was paid 6_s._ After this first child’s death, proceedings were taken for the non-vaccination of another child; and though the case was explained in court, a fine of one shilling was inflicted. And through it all, the husband’s earnings as a labourer were 11_s._ a week.

[5] See Table J, p. 201, 3rd Report, and the Minority Report of the Roy. Comm., pp. 176-7.

[6] The same view is taken even by some advocates of vaccination in Germany. In an account of the German _Commission for the Consideration of the Vaccination Question_ in the _British Medical Journal_, August 29, 1885 (p. 408), we find it stated: “In the view of Dr. Koch, no other statistical material than the mortality from small-pox can be relied upon; questions as to the vaccinated or unvaccinated condition of the patient leaving too much room for error.”

[7] It is always stated that only the deaths of those persons belonging to the Church of England, or who were buried in the churchyards, are recorded in the “Bills.” This seems very improbable, because the “searchers” must have visited the house and recorded the death before the burial; and as they were of course paid a fee for each death certified by them, they would not enquire very closely as to the religious opinions of the family, or where the deceased was to be buried. A friend of mine who lived in London before the epoch of registration informs me that he remembers the “searchers’” visit on the occasion of the death of his grandmother. They were two women dressed in black; the family were strict dissenters, and the burial was at the Bunhill Fields cemetery for Nonconformists. This case proves that in all probability the “Bills” did include the deaths of many, perhaps most, Nonconformists.

[8] _Final Report of Roy. Comm._, p. 20 (85).

[9] As an example of the Commissioners’ statistical fallacies in treating the subject of changed age-incidence, see Mr. Alexander Paul’s _A Royal Commission’s Arithmetic_ (King & Son, 1897), and, especially, Mr. A. Milnes’ _Statistics of Small-pox and Vaccination_ in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, September, 1897.

[10] The highest small-pox mortality in London was in 1772, when 3,992 deaths were recorded in an estimated population of 727,000, or a death-rate of not quite 5,500 per million. (See Second Report, p. 290.)

[11] The small-pox deaths under one year in England have varied during the last fifty years from 8·6 to 27 per cent. of the whole. (See _Final Report_, p. 154.)

[12] This almost exactly agrees with the ages of the boys who are admitted between nine and eleven, and leave at fourteen. (See Low’s _Handbook of London Charities_.)

[13] From 1850 to 1873 the private vaccinations have been estimated according to their proportion of the whole since they have been officially recorded.

[14] Although the Commission make no mention of Mr. Biggs’ tables and diagrams showing the rise of infant-mortality with increased vaccination, and its fall as vaccination diminished, they occupied a whole day cross-examining him upon them, endeavouring by the minutest criticism to diminish their importance. Especially it was urged that the increase or decrease of mortality did not agree _in detail_ with the increase or decrease of vaccination, forgetting that there are _numerous_ causes contributing to all variations of death-rate, while vaccination is only alleged to be a _contributory_ cause, clearly visible in general results, but not to be detected in smaller variations (see Fourth Report, Q. 17,513-17,744, or pp. 370 to 381). Mr. Bigg’s cross-examination in all occupies 110 pages of the Report.

[15] It was introduced into the Navy in 1801, and in that year the medical officers of the fleet presented Jenner with a special gold medal!

[16] These figures (for the Army and Navy) are obtained by averaging the annual death-rates given in the tables referred to, and are therefore not strictly accurate on account of the irregularly varying strength of the forces. But the error is small. In the case of the Navy, from 1864 to 1888 the mortality accurately calculated comes out _more_, by nearly six per cent. than the mean above given, and in the case of the Army for the same years about one per cent. more. For Ireland the calculation has been accurately made by means of the yearly populations given at p. 37 of the _Final Report_, but for the Army and Navy materials for the whole period included in the diagrams materials are not available in any of the Reports.

[17] The figures for the Army are obtained from the Second Report, p. 278, down to 1888, the remaining six years being obtained from the _Final Report_, pp. 86, 87; but this small addition has involved a large amount of calculation, because the Commissioners have given the death-rates per 10,000 strength of four separate forces—Home, Colonial, Indian, and Egyptian, and have not given the figures for the whole Army, so as to complete the table in the Second Report. The figures for the Navy are obtained from the _Final Report_, p. 88.

[18] Neither Sir C. Dilke nor the Post Office medical officers of the period referred to gave evidence before the Commission, and it shows to what lengths the Commissioners would go to support vaccination when such unverified verbal statements are accepted in their _Final Report_.

[19] As regards the case of the nurses in small-pox hospitals, about which so much has been said, I brought before the Commission some evidence from a medical work, which sufficiently disposes of this part of the question. In Buck’s _Treatise on Hygiene and the Public Health_, Vol. II., we find an article by Drs. Hamilton and Emmett on “Small-pox and other Contagious Diseases,” and on page 321 thereof we read:

“It is a fact fully appreciated by medical men, that persons constantly exposed to small-pox very rarely contract the disease. In the case of physicians, health-inspectors, nurses, sisters of charity, hospital orderlies, and some others, this is the rule; and of over 100 persons who have been to my knowledge constantly exposed, some of them seeing as many as 1,000 cases, I have never personally known of more than one who has contracted the disease; but there are many writers who believe perfect immunity to be extremely rare. In this connection attention may be called to the exemption of certain persons who occupy the same room, and perhaps bed, with the patients, and though sometimes never vaccinated, altogether escape infection.”

And Mr. Wheeler shows that at Sheffield the hospital staff _did_ suffer from small-pox in a higher degree than other comparable populations (see 6th Report, Q. 19,907).

[20] It is a common practice of vaccinists to quote the German Army as a striking proof of the good effects of revaccination; but as our own Army is as well vaccinated as the Army surgeons with unlimited power can make it, it is unlikely that the Germans can do so very much better. And there is some reason to think that _their_ statistics are less reliable than our own. Lieut.-Col. A. T. Wintle, (late) R.A., has published in the _Vaccination Inquirer_ extracts from a letter from Germany stating, on the authority of a German officer, that the Army statistics of small-pox are _utterly unreliable_. It is said to be the rule for Army surgeons to enter small-pox cases as skin-disease or some other “appropriate illness,” while large numbers of small-pox deaths are entered as “sent away elsewhere.” We had better therefore be content with our own Army and Navy statistics, though even here there is some concealment. In 1860 Mr. Duncombe, M.P., moved for a return of the disaster at Shorncliffe Camp, where, it was alleged, 30 recruits were vaccinated, and six died of the results, but the return was refused. A letter in the _Lancet_ of July 7, 1860, from a “Military Surgeon” stated that numbers of soldiers have had their arms amputated in consequence of mortification after vaccination; and a Baptist minister and ex-soldier, the Rev. Frederick J. Harsant, gave evidence before the Commission of another Shorncliffe disaster in 1868, he himself, then a soldier, having never recovered, and having had unhealed sores on various parts of his body for more than 20 years. Eighteen out of the twenty men vaccinated at the same time suffered; some were months in hospital and in a much worse condition than himself (6th Report, p. 207). In the same volume is the evidence of twenty medical men, all of whom have witnessed serious effects produced by vaccination, some being of a most terrible and distressing character.

[21] Brief statement of the argument:

The chances of a person having small-pox a second time may be roughly estimated thus: Suppose the average annual death-rate by small-pox to be 500 per million, and the average duration of life forty years. Then the proportion of the population that die of small-pox will be 500 × 40 = 20,000 per million. If the proportion of deaths to cases is one to five, there will he 100,000 cases of small-pox per million during the life of that million, so that one-tenth of the whole population will have small-pox once during their lives.

Now, according to the law of probabilities alone, the chances of a person having small-pox twice will be the square of this fraction, or _one-hundredth_: so that on the average only one person in 100 would have small-pox twice if it were a matter of pure chance, and if nothing interfered with that chance. But there are interferences which modify the result. (1) Those that die of the first attack cannot possibly have it a second time. (2) It is most frequent in the very young, so that the chances of having it later in life are not equal. (3) It is an especially _epidemic_ disease, only occurring at considerable intervals, which reduces the chances of infection to those who have had it once. (4) It is probable that most persons are only liable to infection at certain periods of life, having passed which without infection they never take the disease. It seems probable, therefore, that these several conditions would greatly diminish the chances in the case of any person who had once had small-pox, so that perhaps, under the actual state of things, chance alone would only lead to one person in two hundred having the disease a second time.

The above is only an illustration of the principle. Professor Vogt goes more fully into the question, and arrives at the conclusion that out of every 1,000 cases of small-pox the _probability_ is that ten will be second attacks. Then by getting together all the European observations as to the actual number of second attacks during various epidemics, the average is found to amount to sixteen in 1,000 cases, showing a considerable surplus beyond the number due to probability. Further, the proportion of deaths to attacks has from early times been observed to be high for second attacks; and it has also been observed by many eminent physicians, whose statements are given, that second attacks are more common in the case of persons whose first attacks were very severe, which is exactly the reverse of what we should expect if the first attack really conferred any degree of immunity.

Now the whole theory of protection by vaccination rests upon the _assumption_ that a previous attack of the disease is a protection; and Professor Vogt concludes his very interesting discussion by the remark: “All this justifies our maintaining that the theory of immunity by a previous attack of small-pox, whether the natural disease or produced artificially, must be relegated to the realm of fiction.” If this is the case, the supposed _probability_ or _reasonableness_ of an analogous disease, vaccinia, producing immunity wholly vanishes.

[22] It is not alleged that overcrowding, _per se_, is the direct _cause_ of small-pox, or of any other zymotic disease. It is, perhaps rather a condition than a cause; but under our present social economy it is so universally associated with various causes of disease—impure air, bad drainage, bad water supply, unhealthy situations, unwholesome food, overwork, and filth of every description in houses, clothing, and persons—that it affords the most general and convenient indication of an unhealthy as opposed to a healthy mode of life, and, while especially applying to zymotic diseases, is also so generally prejudicial to health as to produce a constant and very large effect upon the total mortality.

[23] To the cases I have already given I may now add two others, because they illustrate the recklessness in making assertions in favour of vaccination which scorns the slightest attempt at verification. In the first edition of Mr. Ernest Hart’s _Truth about Vaccination_ (p. 4), it is stated, on the authority of a member of Parliament recently returned from Brazil, that during an epidemic of small-pox at the town of Ceara in 1878 and 1879, out of a population not exceeding 70,000 persons there were 40,000 deaths from small-pox. This was repeated by Dr. Carpenter during a debate in London, in February, 1882, and only when its accuracy was called in question was it ascertained that at the time referred to the population of Ceara was only about 20,000, yet the M.P. had stated—with detailed circumstance—that “in one cemetery, from August 1878, to June 1879 27,064 persons who had died of small-pox had been buried.” Gazetteers are not very recondite works, and it would have been not difficult to test some portion of this monstrous statement before printing it. Jenner’s biographer tells us that he had a horror of arithmetical calculations, due to a natural incapacity, which quality appears to be a special characteristic of those who advocate vaccination, as the examples I have given sufficiently prove.

Another glaring case of official misrepresentation occurred in the Royal Commission itself, but was fortunately exposed later on. A medical officer of the Local Government Board gave evidence (First Report, Q. 994) that the Board in 1886 “took some pains to get the figures as to the steamship _Preussen_,” on which small-pox broke out on its arrival in Australia. He made the following statements: (1) There were 312 persons on board this vessel. (2) 4 revaccinated, 47 vaccinated, 3 who had small-pox, and 15 unvaccinated were attacked—69 in all. (3) The case was adduced to show that “sanitary circumstances have little or no control over small-pox compared with the condition of vaccination or no vaccination.”

This official statement was quoted in the House of Commons as strikingly showing the value of vaccination. But, like so many other official statements, it was all wrong! The reports of the Melbourne and Sydney inspectors have been obtained, and it is found: (1) That there were on board this ship 723 passengers and 120 crew—843 in all, instead of 312; so that the “pains” taken by the Local Government Board to get “the figures” were very ineffectual. (2) There were 29 cases among the 235 passengers who disembarked at Melbourne, of whom only 1 was unvaccinated. The crew had _all_ been revaccinated before starting, yet 14 of them were attacked, and one died. All these in addition to the cases given by the Local Government Board. Thus 18 revaccinated persons caught the disease, instead of 4, as first stated, and 69 vaccinated, instead of 48; while among the 15 cases alleged to be unvaccinated _three_ were infants under one year old, and _two_ more between five and ten years. (3) The official reports from Melbourne and Sydney stated that the vessel was greatly overcrowded, that the sanitary arrangements were very bad, and the inspector at Sydney declared the vessel to be the “filthiest ship he had had to deal with”!

Here, then, we have a case in which _all_ the official _figures_, paraded as being the result of “taking some pains,” are wrong, not to a trifling extent, but so grossly that they might be supposed to apply to some quite different ship. And the essential fact of the filthy, overcrowded, and unsanitary condition of the ship was unknown or concealed; and the case was adduced as one showing how unimportant is sanitation as regards small-pox. What the case really proves is, that under unsanitary conditions neither vaccination nor revaccination has the slightest effect in preventing the spread of small-pox, since the proportion of the cases among the revaccinated crew was almost exactly the same as that of the whole of the cases (omitting the three infants) to the whole population on the ship.

With this example of officially quoted _facts_ (!) in support of vaccination, coming at the end of the long series we have given or referred to in the first part of this work, it is not too much to ask that all such unverified statements be, once and for ever, ruled out of court. (See _Final Report_, pp. 205-6; and Second Report, Q. 5,942-5,984.)

[24] So late as 1892 (Jan. 16) the _Lancet_ declared in a leading article: “No one need die of small-pox; indeed, no one need have it unless he likes—that is to say, he can be absolutely protected by vaccination once repeated.” Surely, never before was misstatement so ignorantly promulgated, or so completely refuted!

[25] “LYMPH, a colourless nutritive fluid in animal bodies” (Chambers’ Dictionary). How misleading to apply this term to a product of _disease_, used to produce another _disease_, and now admitted to be capable of transmitting some of the most _horrible diseases_ which afflict mankind—syphilis and leprosy!

INDEX

A.

Air, importance of pure, 42.

Army and Navy afford a conclusive test, 62. statistics of small-pox in, 63.

B.

Bavaria, small-pox and vaccination in, 49. proves uselessness of vaccination, 50.

Berlin, severe epidemics in, 49.

Biggs, Mr. T., statistics of Leicester mortality, 55. cross-examination of, 61.

Bills of mortality and dissenters, 32.

Birch, John, on failure of vaccination, 10.

Birmingham and Leicester small-pox, 58.

Brown of Musselburgh, on small-pox after vaccination, 1809, 11.

C.

Certificates of death, often erroneous, 18.

Commissioners should have been statisticians, 24. on decline of small-pox after 1800, 38. on Scotch and Irish small-pox, 41. not use the diagrams, 42. why conclusions wrong, 44. not compare small-pox and general mortality, 47. illogical reasoning of, 52. neglect the method of comparison, 53, 65. on case of Leicester, 60. on small-pox in Army and Navy, 62. on treatment of Army and Navy small-pox mortality, 68, 69. put opinions above facts, 75.

Conclusion, plain speaking justified, 91.

Continental small-pox, teaching of diagrams of, 86.

Creighton, Dr., history of epidemics, 33. on substitution theory, 36. on variolous test, 8, 9.

Crookshank, Prof., on Inoculation, 7, 9.

D.

Davidson, Mr., on injurious effects from vaccination, 20.

Death from vaccination, a dreadful, 21.

Death certificates, inaccurate, 18.

Deaths stated to be of the vaccinated or unvaccinated, why untrustworthy, 83.

Dewsbury, Leicester, and Warrington small-pox, 59.

Diphtheria and Scarlatina in London, 37.

Doctors are bad statisticians, 13. often misstate figures, 13.

E.

English small-pox, 1838-1895, 40. teaching of diagram of, 86.

Epidemics, theory of substitution of, 36.

Experiments adverse to vaccination, 54.

F.

Farr, Dr., on decrease of infant mortality, 57.

Fevers in London, 37.

“Final Report” valueless and misleading, 69. critical remarks on, 70. on advantage of revaccination, 72. hesitating tone of, 74. on Army and Navy, 90.

Fox, Mr. C., on 56 cases of illness or death following vaccination, 18.

G.

Gloucester epidemic due to insanitation, 60.

Goldson, William, on small-pox after vaccination, 1804, 11.

Guy, Dr., figures alone can prove value of vaccination, 23.

H.

Hart, Mr. E., on small-pox at Ceara, 81.

Hospital statistics prove vaccination to be useless, 30.

I.

Infant mortality in London and England, 57.

Inoculation, diseases which prevented, 7.

Ireland, imperfect vaccination in, 43. compared with Army and Navy, 65.

J.

Jenner awarded £10,000, 9. £20,000 voted by House of Commons in 1807, 12.

Jenner’s _Inquiry_, 7.

L.

_Lancet_ on vaccination disasters, 73. the, on revaccination, 90.

Leicester affords a test experiment, 55. vaccination and infant mortality in, 56. how dealt with by Commissioners, 60. compared with Army and Navy, 67.

Leprosy and plague in England, 36.

Local Government Board’s misstatements as to the steamship _Preussen_, 81.

London small-pox, 32. small-pox mortality discussed, 33. zymotic diseases in, 36. growth from 1845, 37. main drainage of 1865, 37. sanitary advance from 1800, 38. small-pox teaching of the diagram of, 84. zymotics teaching of diagram of, 85.

Lymph, erroneous use of the term, 91.

M.

MacCabe, Dr., on vaccination in Ireland, 43. on the unvaccinated in tenement houses, 71.

Maclean, Dr., 535 cases of small-pox after vaccination, 97 of them fatal, 11.

Measles, the Commissioners on, 35. in London, 36.

Milnes, Mr. A., estimated deaths from vaccination, 19.

Misstatements of National Vaccine Establishment in Reports, 13. by Dr. Lettsom, 15. by Sir Lyon Playfair, 15. by Dr. W. B. Carpenter, 15. by Mr. Ernest Hart, 16, 81. by the National Health Society, 16, 17. as to small-pox at Ceara, 81. as to steamship _Preussen_, 82.

Moseley, Dr., on failure of vaccination in 1804, 10.

N.

National Health Society’s misstatements, 16.

Navy, causes of reduction of mortality in, 64.

Nurses in hospitals, immunity of, 72.

P.

Population, density of, affecting disease, 42. in Scotland and Ireland, 43.

Post-office, no real statistics of small-pox mortality in, 68.

Preston, staff-surgeon on improved health of Navy, 64.

_Preussen_, steamship, small-pox on, 81.

Prussia, small-pox in, 48.

R.

Revaccination, officials on the value of, 62. alleged benefits of, 72.

Rowley, Dr., on injury and death after vaccination, 1805, 10.

Royal Commission accepts the variolous test, 9.

Royal Commissioners should have been Statisticians, 24.

S.

Scarlatina and diphtheria in London, 37.

Seaports, cause of unhealthiness of, 53.

Simon, Sir John, evidence for vaccination must now be statistical, 23.

Small-pox in London, 32. mortality in London, 33. in England during registration, 39. in Scotland and Ireland, 40. on the Continent, 44. in Sweden after vaccination, 45. mortality not reduced by vaccination, 47. in Prussia, 48. in Bavaria, 49. in seaports, 52. and zymotics follow same laws, 53. in Leicester, 55. in Leicester and Birmingham, 58. in German army, statistics unreliable, 73. no immunity against second attack, 76. liability to, increased by vaccination, 78. and overcrowding, 78. in Sweden, Prussia, and Bavaria, 86. in Leicester, a test case, 87. in army and navy, a crucial test, 88.

Squirrel, Dr., on injury and death after vaccination, 1805, 10.

Statistics alone can show value of vaccination, 23. of vaccinated and unvaccinated worthless, 25. Scientific treatment of, 31.

Stockholm, first vaccination in 1810, 46.

Summary of argument, 80.

Sweden, vaccination and small-pox in, 45. shows uselessness of vaccination, 48.

T.

Tebb, Mr. W., on 535 cases of small-pox, after vaccination before 1810, 11.

U.

Unvaccinated a different class from the vaccinated, 29. evidence as to, not trusted in Germany (note), 29.

V.

Vaccinated and unvaccinated, how determined by doctors, 25. persons wrongly registered, 26. and unvaccinated death-rates of, as given by doctors, 27. and unvaccinated death-rates of, as given by doctors in last century, 28. and unvaccinated, how they differ, 70.

Vaccination, early history of, 6. injury and death from, 10. and the medical profession, 12. doctors not best judges, 13. deaths caused by, 17. illness and death from, 19. estimated deaths from, 19. official evidence of, not trustworthy, 21. a dreadful case of death from, 21. how it affects the poor, 22. evidence for, often worthless, 23. can only be proved useful by statistics, 23. marks not permanent, 26. marks hidden by eruption, 26. proved useless by modern hospital statistics, 30. in England 1872-95, 40. on the Continent, 44. in Stockholm from 1810, 46. in Stockholm not especially deficient, 47. false assertions as to value of, 50. uselessness of, proved, 51. and small-pox in Leicester, 55. and infant mortality in Leicester, 56. injuries from increase death-rate, 57. disasters at Shorncliffe camp concealed, 73. increases liability to small-pox, 78.

Vacher, Dr., on registration of vaccinated and unvaccinated, 25.

Variolous test, fallacy of, 7, 9.

Vogt, Prof. A., on vaccination increasing small-pox, 51. no immunity from a previous attack of small-pox, 76.

W.

Warrington and Leicester small-pox, 59.

Whooping-cough in London, 37.

Z.

Zymotic diseases in London, 36. in Leicester, 55.

Zymotics in bills of mortality, 33.

Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London.

_To be Published in April, 1898_

_In One Volume, Crown 8vo_

The Wonderful Century

Its Successes and Failures

BY

ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE

_LL.D., Dubl.; D.C.L., Oxon.; F.R.S., etc._

The object of this volume is to give a short descriptive sketch of the more important mechanical inventions and scientific discoveries which are distinctive of the nineteenth century; and especially to enable those who have lived only in the latter half of it to realise its full significance in the history of human progress.

The author maintains that our century is altogether unique; that it differs from the eighteenth or the seventeenth centuries, not merely as those differed from the centuries which immediately preceded them, but that it has initiated a new era, and that it may be more properly compared with the whole preceding historical period.

His estimate of the advances made during the present century is, therefore, higher than that of previous writers; but he points out that it is almost wholly a material and intellectual progress, and that, even intellectually, it is very imperfect. The second part of the work discusses the intellectual and moral failures of the century, which are shown to be as conspicuous and deplorable as its successes are admirable and unprecedented.

SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO., LTD., LONDON.

End of Project Gutenberg's Vaccination a Delusion, by Alfred Russel Wallace