VACCINATION.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 11191, 13 August 1898, Page 8

VACCINATION.

TO TIIE EDITOR. Sir, —Now that Parliament is taking ay active part in considering the advisability or otherwise of amending the Compulsory Vaccination Act, and the peculiar statement of Dc Grtce, it is an opportune time to lay before your readers a few facta connected with the subject. I will therefore review the smallpox plague. What is smallpox ? The medical faculty admit it is blood-poisoning. Cause: Personal filth and.bad sanitary surroundings. Cure and treatment: A doctor immediately insists that-the patient must have cleanliness and better surroundings (we have this in-New Zealand). The next difficulty doctors of medicine had to find was a' medicinal agent that would assist the patient to throw off the disease and become convalescent. This was .so difficult to discover that Dr Jenner thought he would introduce otber means, and mix the conditions of the human system when affected by smallpox, ao he introduced the system of vaccination or inoculation of the cowpox virus, thereby mixing the nature of the smallpox affecting the human patient, attended by the results that some had the disease in a milder form and some had other diseases resulting from indiscreet vaccination. Now, assuming that the tendency of vaccination did this to any extent, it met the demand of the times for some relieving agent, aDd, therefore, was a boon to humanity at that time so far as smallpox was concerned. - But we do not want a!ny smallpox—mild or severe, —and .the niarCh of, science has not stopped since theD. We have now within pur power to choose,by natural means whether we will or will not.have"smallpox.in one midst; but, alas !it is not' so with our social law. We are still forced by this law to consent to our offspring being poisoned by the medical faculty with tho virus of smallpox—the greatest social outrage of our century at the present time, and a squandering of public money for this .purpose ; and I feel confident if there was no money connected with it we would not have this outrage perpetrated much longer. "He tbat is healthy needs no physician." Whether persons are vaccinated or not in any vicinity where smallpox is raging, thie socjal and sanitary conditions remaining the same, they will not be prevented from contracting tho disease more.thari once if their systems ate not strong enough to throw off the effects of the cause above stated. Dr Grace stated in the House of Representatives that if anything was proved with mathematical certainty it was that vaccination was both a preventive and a modifier of the disease. Then why do vaccinated persons contract.the disease if it was a preventive? JSuch statements , should not be taken seriously' by hon. members when by inquiring they will find vaccination is not a preventive. Farther, why dd large cities spend very large sums of money improving the sanitary conditions with such beneficial result ? Aud why does the public health officer fumigate all one's clothing,'&c, in quarantine if vaccination' iras a preventive ? The public health officer will not depend on the vaccination farce, with all Dr Grace's mathematics, and is conclusive proof that the doctor's figures are against facts, and instead of members bsiog ignorant it seems that is What is wrong with Dr Grace. >i..wili conclude-with a celebrated physician's statement, i Dr.F. W. Williams reports that Farraconia purpurea is. a; papaveraceous plant, and will care smallpox in all its form's within 12 hours after the patient haa, ta^en the decoction. .The medicine has been successfully tried in thehJspitals'.in Nova'Scotia.^ It would ba prudent and economical to abandon vaccination altogether^ and lay. in, each, hospital a stock of thiß plant at about the coat .of £100 ai year instead bf the thousands spent on v&ecjination.-^-I am, keif Dunedin, August 6. -Pahent.