IS VACCINATION AN ABOMINABLE SUPERSTITION?

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXXIII, Issue 15923, 8 May 1912, Page 7

IS VACCINATION AN ABOMINABLE SUPERSTITION?

TO THE EDITOR: Sir, —I rejoice to see by your pages that, although vaccination is almost unknown in Now Zealand, and smallpox lias entirely ceased to trouble our, antipodean brethren, the people are at last beginning to reject the abominable Jennenan superstition' after duly considering the pros and cons of the ques-' tion. The fact that the pick of our population have Emigrated to your hospitable shores may account for the Mother Country clinging more conservatively to the antiquated nostrum and following tardily in the wake of her go-ahead colonists. I am ignorant of the origin' of the Yaccine lymph, used in New Zealand; but the stuff used in Britain is so. suspicious that I am surprised that any parent call be found willing to submit his offspring to an injection. Unvaccinated John Burns, the President of the Local Government Board, has unblushingly officially- confessed in Parliament that his department import fresh supplies occasionally from Germany, but are so little-interested in the welfare of the people that they do not. even trouble to ascertain whether it has originated in eowpox, smallpox, or my other pox. As smallpox matter is now preferred by- the majority of. Continental doctors, lie has been asked o guarantee that that disease is not :ho source of the “pure calf lymph,” as hat is specially prohibited by ; sevoral /Vets of Parliament; but “Honest folm,” as he has been nicknamed, rc- • uses point-blank to give any assurances whatever to anxious parents, ■ither as to the purity or efficiency of ho lymph. It- is amazing to behold this foreign diseased matter planted in the body of a Wretched calf, and then to find Bri- • tish babies polluted with tho loath-

U m some pus squeezed by iroivclamps, out of the festering sores on caL s belly. “Lord, what fools ;we ’mortals be!”—l am, etc., -Hi ;y: f GEORGE #EIRS Hon. Secretary, Leeds Anti-Vaccination. League. Leeds, England, March 1912,