THE HOME.

White Ribbon, Volume 9, Issue 97, 1 June 1903, Page 10

THE HOME.

By A. W.

VACCINATION.

The lute small-pox scare affords an excellent opportunity to say a few words on the subject of vaccination. Now an operation that (according to Wallace, one of the greatest scientists of our age) “ has never saved a single life, but has lie n the cause of sj much disease, so many deaths, such a vast amount of utterly needless and altogether undeserved suffering,” needs challenging at the outset by everyone who has the welfare of the race at heart.

The medical fraternity, or at least that part of it which favours vaccination, has had to surrender their once apparently impregnable position of “ arm to arm" vaccination as fact after fact of the tearful results was marshalled against it, and has now entrenched liehind the tottering support of “ pure call lymph." Pure calf lymph ! The phrase is a general muddle in itself. As Wallace says, it is utterly “ misleading to apply this term to a product of disease, used to produce another disease, and now admitted to l>e «apable of transmitting some of the most horrible diseases that afflict mankind.” But since comparatively few people are aware of how the vaatne pun (pure lymph) is produced a little enlightenment may well make peoDle consider before allowing their children to undergo this most loathson e operation. Dr. Jenner, whose name will ever be associated with the introduction of vaccination into England, says, “ There is a disease to which the horse is frequently subject—farriers term it the grease. It is a 4 i inflammation and swelling of the heel, from which issues matter possessing properties of a peculiar kind, which seems capable of Generating Disease in the human body which i>ears a strong resemblance to the small-pox, that I think it is highly probable m?y l>e the source of that disease. In this dairy county (Gloucester) the office of milking is done by men and women indiscriminately. One of the men, having applied dressings to the hoise's heel afflicted with the grease, incau-

tiously milked the cows, and thus the disease was communicated to the cow, and hence the name cow-pox.” Further, Dr. Jenner says, “ What renders the cow-pox virus so extremely singular is that the person thus affected is for ever after protected from the smallpox,” this statement being grounded on an ignorant superstition of the country people. Jenner believed that swine-pox, cowpox, small-pox, and the grease, were all one and the same disease; at one time he thought the grease should pass through the cow, but upon further inquiry he arrived at a different conclusion, and used the grease in its natural state, and supplied the public with it from ibe horse’s heels.

44 Now,” says an authority, 4 ' is the cows have not oee i kind enough ” to have the cow-pox naturally for many years, the doctors are by no means at a loss to procure a supply of pure lymph The process of poisoning a healthy beast is somewhat difficult—strong health will not unfrequently refuse for a time to be affected by it, but when it does take it, the animal will supply filth enough for half a million of people. In order to get this puke lymph, it is taken from the sores of a child vaccinated, or from a person suffering from small pox; this matter is then introduced into the body of the animal, and when the cow begins to show marks of blood-poisonng in the shape of foullooking sores, the discharge of the disease hybridised by man and beast, is again used To Blood-poison Children. This iscalled 44 vaccination from the cow direct.”

Now the dangers of vaccination may

l>e thus briefly summed up : (i) it is likely to introduce other diseases into the system, (2) it may induce a change in the skin which deranges its vital action and so prevents the system from ridding itself of morbific matters from the blood, (3) it may produce susceptibility in a constitution to other diseases, (4) parents through vaccination may transmit an enfeebled constitution upon their offspring. 44 Erysipelas was formerly a disease of adult life, now more than two-thirds of the cases are children under five years of age, and one-third under twelve months. Falk about the slaughter of the innocents !’* Dr. Caron, Chevalier of the Legion of Honour, says, 44 The mortality from small-pox stems to increase with the number of the vaccinations and revaccinations pe r formed every day at Paris.” His testimony was so wen supported tnat vaccination ceased to become ccmpulsory, and a writer in the Daily Seu s says, — 44 The small-pox, after gradually declining in Paris for the last two years, ha* now utterly disappeared from the bills of mortality. There is not a single case in the last death returns. And yet, in this country there is no compulsory vaccination, and during the war and the commune re-vaccination, in favc.ir of which there was a feeble movement at the loginning of 1870, almost entirely went out of fashiorw The rewaid ofhalf-a-crown finds few takers It is very perverse of unvaccinated Paris to be free from small pox w' ile the disease rages in vaccinated Londm.” 44 The 44 Medical Times and Gazette " contains a letter from Dr. Hakewell, M.D. of Health and Public Vaccinator of Trinidad, who says, 44 It is a

strange but undoubted fact that leprosy is greatly increased in our land : that it attacks the children of respectable parents, particularly the Europeans. Now, it is worthy of remark, vaccination has, of late years, loeii compulsory. The general opinion of medical men here is that it is quite possible that leprosy may be propagated by vaccination.”

Mr W. Field, of London, President of the Veterinary G ”ege, says, 44 grease in the horse is alwr % accompanied bv diseased lungs.' YV. C. Collins, M.D., says 44 250,000 deaths annually occur from consumption, pneumonia, convulsions, atrophy, and other strumous diseases occasioned or Superadded by Vaccination ’ 44 It is our duty, ’ says a report of the Vaccine Institution, 44 to acknowledge that cases have proved fatal from the effects of vaccination.” Testimony of this sort could be continued indefinitely, and it remains with the people of this colony to say whether they shall not insist on the immediate repeal of the Acts w hich, as Wallace says, 44 were passed by means ot allegations which were wholly untrue, and prom.se', which have all l>een unfulfilled. They stand alone in modern legislation as a gross interference with personal lil>erty and the sanctity of the home ; while, as an attempt to cheat outraged nature and to avoid zymotic disease without getting rid of the foul conditions that produce or propagate it, the practice of vaccina tion 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.”