VACCINATION OF CHILDREN

Otago Daily Times, Issue 14447, 13 February 1909, Page 14

VACCINATION OF CHILDREN

DR MASON'S REPORT. A PROFESSIONAL CRITICISM. (From Our Own Corhespondf.kt.) LONDON, December 24. lnc Hospilal says Dr Mason's remarks on vaccination cannot fail to bo interesting to the profession in Kugland, for it shows" moro forcibly perhaps r.ban any other ollicial document which lias hitherto been published, what might be the results were tlic conscientious clause made so clastic as (o render the vaccination laws a <Jer.<i letter. The leniency towards allowing the individual greater liberty of aclion in matters which alFecl the health of the com. mumty is a growing one, even among the section that Haunts its alleged Socialism a guiding principle in its politics. The recent alterations in the vaccination laws have not been progressive in any true sense, as The Hospital pointed out at the time when they were brought forward. At the ;ame time Ihe condition of affairs here is not so discouraging as it appears to be in New Zealand. That country, to judge from Dr Mason's report, must be veritable Islands of the West for the anti-vaccinator. There, as Dr Mason justly remarks, the mutter is entirely in the hands of the parent. "He may know nothing about the question—that matters not. He is not required to show even an intelligent appreciation of the pros and eons of the position. Ho has simply to go More a magistrate and say "I believe it will injure my child." and the child goes unprotected, Ixisl year out of 21321 children born only 4486 were vaccinated. Over 81 per cent, of children born in 1906-7 are unprotected against smallpox. But that is not the worst of the question, Apparently a large section of the community are passively breaking the law, while a. noisy few aroactively opposing it. . . ."

This is, in the words of the High Commissioner, a. pretty state of things, and the most melancholy part of it is that it is the, ideal which a larfrc section of this country appears | 0 be striving for. Antivaccination is making headway, strange as it may seem to those who are firmly convinced of the ho|x'lessncss of struggling against, facts. The present generation of parents, as Dr Mason observes, little knows what a fateful disease smallpox is, Ninotyninc per cent, of our population have never seen a case or the results of the disease. They do not consider, therefore, that the passing inconvenience that attends vaccination is a sufficiently small price to pay for a comparative immunity against one of tho most loathsome and horrible of the diseases that, allliet mankind, lew of usaml the " man in the street" least of all— emulated the philosophy of Ruskin, and wonders not at what mon suffer, but at what thoy escape. Tile result is that the community has its health imperilled by a section of faddists and sentimentalists, and that the anti-vacciuationist looms large'in the political horizon and "worries excessively- until he succeeds."

Those of us who liave any knowledge of smallpox and its history, those, too, who have read Dr Mason's report and marvelled at fue inaction of" a Colonial Government that calmly submits to the humiliation of liaving its laws transgressed and unobserved, will not contemplate that, success with equanimity. And yot, unless every medical man makes it his personal duty' to teach his patients the truth about vaccination, none of us can be astonished if the conscientious objector wins all that lie lias fought for— the right to become a danger to'his fellow-men, the privilege of posing as .1 martyr while lie is not far short of a murderer, and exemption from a measure that has been made compulsory on the rest of the community.