The Story of a Great Delusion in a Series of Matter-of-Fact Chapters

VACCINIA PLUS OTHER DISEASE.

Nor is the case against vaccination yet complete. The virus used is not only Vaccinia, but more than Vaccinia; for it is impossible to propagate virus from child to child without taking up other qualities. This was clearly foreseen by the variolators when vaccination was introduced—they making it a point to take smallpox for inoculation from known and sound subjects. They maintained that cowpox transferred indiscriminately from arm to arm must acquire and convey constitutional taints; and their prognostication was speedily and grievously fulfilled in the item of syphilis. Notwithstanding, the fact was furiously contested. It was said that parents used vaccination as a screen for their own wickedness; and assertion alternated with denial even to our own day. At last the conflict is at an end. The evidence has grown too multitudinous and deadly for evasion. The invaccination of syphilis is admitted, and any question is reserved for the degree of frequency. Some are pleased to describe the risk as infinitesimal, but their pleasure stands for nothing but itself. Deeds are expressive beyond words. The wide resort to animal vaccination on the Continent and in the United States has but one interpretation. Doctors and patients do not abandon what is easy for what is troublesome, nor incur the risk of the communication of bovine disorders unless under the influence of over-mastering terror.

STATISTICAL EVIDENCE OF EXTRA DISEASE.

Relations of individual experience may be disregarded as untrustworthy, but the broad evidence of national statistics conveys authoritative lessons. Vaccination in England was made compulsory in 1853, stringently so in 1867, and systematically extended to the entire population. If therefore it were true that vaccination often communicates more than Vaccinia, and that it aggravates existent and excites latent disease, the proof must be manifest in the statistics of the Registrar-General. Thus argued Mr. C. H. Hopwood, and accordingly he moved in the House of Commons successively for three Returns, published as follows—Vaccination, Mortality, No. 433, 1877; Mortality (General and Infant), No. 76, 1880; and Deaths (England and Wales), No. 392, 1880.

These Returns, charged with curious and authentic information, are little known, and have been treated with significant silence by the press. Obscurantism is not confined to ecclesiastics. Our valiant journalists who mock at the Index Expurgatorius, and abhor the Russian censorship, are in their little way as ready to act the same part in favour of established prejudice. If facts adverse to the public confidence in vaccination are revealed, it is considered no more than decent to keep them out of sight.

What then is the evidence of Mr. Hopwood’s Returns? Briefly this: they clearly illustrate that vaccination does produce, intensify, excite and inoculate disease whose issue is death. The record of infant mortality from fifteen specified diseases related to vaccination stands thus—

Thus, while the population of England and Wales had increased from 18 to 23 millions, the deaths of infants from fifteen diseases had risen from 63,000 to 106,000. Had the mortality kept pace with the population, the deaths in 1875 would only have been 80,000; that is to say, in 1875 there perished in England 26,000 infants who would have lived had vaccination remained as little in vogue as in 1847! The result though startling in the gross is precisely what might have been predicted. The infancy of a country cannot be systematically diseased, that is vaccinated, without exciting and aggravating other maladies, and thereby enlarging the harvest of death.

VACCINIA AGGRAVATES DISEASE.

The asserted connection of vaccination with other ailments, such as bronchitis, sometimes gives occasion to ignorant ridicule. “Bronchitis,” says Sir Lyon Playfair, “has about the same relation to vaccination as the Goodwin Sands have to Tenterden Steeple.” The answer is that the debility produced by vaccination predisposes to affections of the respiratory organs. The human body does not consist of isolated compartments, but is an organised whole, sympathetic in all its parts and functions. Erysipelas, as we have seen, is the primary symptom of inoculated Vaccinia, and diarrhœa is its commonest sequence; and given erysipelas and diarrhœa, what vigour may remain to assist and throw off other ailments? It is not said that certain maladies are communicated by vaccination, but that vaccination contributes to their fatality. An infant that would have survived bronchitis dies of bronchitis and vaccination; dies of teething and vaccination; dies of convulsions and vaccination; dies of whooping-cough and vaccination; and so on. Again disease kindles disease, and many a child might outgrow congenital scrofula or phthisis if the latent disorder were not roused by vaccination. For these reasons no doubt need be entertained that were vaccination abolished, the event would be immediately signalised by an extraordinary fall in infant mortality.

ORIGIN OF COMPULSORY VACCINATION.

If vaccination were a voluntary superstition, its prevalence would be sufficiently deplorable; but when we think of it as inflicted on the nation, and pressed on those who know it for an injurious imposture, language is apt to arise which it is expedient to repress. It may be asked how it came to pass that legislation was ever compromised with a medical prescription, and the answer is not a reassuring one. The initial error was the endowment in 1808 of the National Vaccine Establishment, and the provision of vaccination fees in 1840 out of the poor rate. For the enforcement of vaccination, there never was any popular demand—never the slightest. The public had, however, learnt from sanitarians that a large part of the sickness from which they suffered did not come of fate, but was preventible; and under this novel persuasion the vast expenditure on sanitary works during the past fifty years has been cheerfully incurred. Availing themselves of this favourable disposition in the public mind toward projects in the name of health, certain medical place-hunters operating as the Epidemiological Society contrived to gain the ear of Government and to pass a compulsory Vaccination Act in 1853. The politicians who lent themselves to this transaction disowned any knowledge of vaccination. They acted, they said, under medical advice, and ran the bill through Parliament with little resistance. The Act did not personally concern M.P.’s. If they happened to believe in vaccination, their children received the rite with all recognised precautions. Its enforced application by contract at 1s. or 1s. 6d. per head was reserved for the unenfranchised and unconsulted multitude; whilst the administration of the Act provided place and pay for its ingenious promoters.

RESISTANCE, INFLEXIBLE RESISTANCE.

When an oppressive law is enacted, by whatever strategy or however corruptly, its repeal is no easy matter. The oppressors have won the nine points of possession. The antagonists of the Vaccination Acts nevertheless possess a certain advantage. Some bad laws can only be denounced as it were from a distance; but vaccination touches every household, and can be fought wherever a child is claimed as a victim for the rite.

We abhor the rite. We detest it as an imposture. We dread it as a danger. We refuse it on any terms. We encourage, we justify, we insist on the duty of rejection. Our contention extends and prospers. In various parts of the country resistance has been rewarded with success. The evil law has been broken down. Freedom has been recovered and freedom is enjoyed. In other parts the struggle for liberty proceeds, and as it proceeds, light is diffused and courage evoked for enlarged resistance. Elsewhere there are vindictive and cruel prosecutions, chiefly of humble folk. “Respected ratepayers,” to whom the law is objectionable and its penalties trivial annoyances, are discreetly passed over. Hard, however, is the lot of poor men, who for love of their children affront the dull animosity and ignorance of English Philistines whether as guardians or as magistrates on the bench of injustice. Shortly co-operation for defence and insurance against fines will enable the feeblest and most fearful to maintain his integrity and encounter his pursuers with undaunted front. Parliament, as our statesmen allow, is deaf to the aggrieved until they make themselves intolerable, and to raise ourselves to that pitch must be our end and aim.

COMPULSORY EDUCATION AND VACCINATION.

Many good people are distressed over the operation of this extraordinary law, and sometimes in their perplexity adventure for excuse, “Surely since we compel parents to educate their children, it cannot be wrong to compel them to have their children vaccinated.”

We answer, education is compulsory so far as it is outside conscience. Compulsion is designed to overcome parental indifference and selfishness: where it confronts serious convictions it is arrested. By general consent the most important part of education is religion; and religion is precisely that part of education which is exempted from compulsion. The law does not even enforce some form of religion, so that parents who regard religion as superfluous may not be aggrieved.

What therefore the opponents of vaccination demand is, that the respect thus accorded to the religious conscience be extended to the scientific conscience—to those who are convinced that vaccination does not prevent smallpox or is an injurious practice. Even allowing it to be a harmless ceremony, resistance would be justifiable. It would be in vain to console a Baptist, forced to convey his child to the parish font, with the assurance that a few drops of water could do no harm. It is not in human nature to submit to the indignity of imposture; and to thousands of Englishmen vaccination is a cruel and degrading imposture, and to punish them for their loyalty to what they think right is every whit as tyrannical as it was for Catholics to persecute Protestants, and Protestants Catholics, and Catholics and Protestants Jews. There is no difference in the terms of intolerance; and there is no difference in the spirit with which this latter-day tyranny is confronted, and that spirit with which religious liberty was vindicated and won.

CONDITIONS OF THE CONFLICT.

To some eyes the conflict is not only arduous; it is hopeless; but we are of a different mind. The conflict may prove even less arduous than it appears; and for these reasons. The law as it stands is perfunctorily defended. No politician answers for it without reluctance. Many allow that a serious mistake was made when legislation was enacted for medical advantage at medical dictation. The Gladstone government proposed to abolish repeated penalties. The central authorities at the Local Government Board make no secret of the insuperable difficulties which attend the administration of the law. They advise concession to its resolute adversaries. They do not reinstate the law where it has broken down. Legislation thus discredited is sure to collapse under broader pressure. The medical support is still weaker; and is chiefly confined to those who represent the trade element of the profession—men who would defend any abuse however flagrant if established and lucrative. It is the custom to laud the immortal Jenner and the salvation he wrought, but these are words of an old song. Those who have penetrated to the inception of the Jennerian rite; who know the absolute promise by which it prevailed and its absolute failure; who have followed its successive transformations and varieties with their respective injuries and fatalities; who are aware of the Babel of confusion and contradiction in which its venal practitioners are involved—these we say recognise how impossible it is for vaccination to be brought under discussion and survive. It is this consciousness which accounts for the reserve of the more prudent order of medical men. They excuse their acquiescence in the delusion (after the manner of ecclesiastics) by the exigencies of professional loyalty; and by the supposition that the harm of the practice is exaggerated, whilst it serves for the consolation of the vulgar. It is for such reasons that we consider the conflict less arduous than it appears. The fortifications are undermined; the bulwarks are rotten through and through. Over all, we place our confidence in the omnipotent favour of the truth. Goliath, mighty and vaunting, is evermore laid low by a smooth stone shapen in the waters of verity.

A WORD FOR THE AUTHOR.

The Story of this Great Delusion, I have tried to tell concisely, keeping close to matter-of-fact, and with some exceptions adhering to English experience. When we venture abroad, we are apt to fall into inaccuracies and draw unwarrantable conclusions. I am told my animus is too pronounced, and that I should have done better had I adopted a more judicial tone. Ah well! we should always have done differently had we done differently. It seems to me a man does best when he is most truly himself; and I question whether I should have improved my case had I tried to conceal my real mind in order to make a more startling show of it at the close.

L’ENVOI.

Lastly, a word to those who are accustomed to dismiss opponents of vaccination as fools and fanatics. It is related of Sydney Smith that calling on Lord Melbourne one morning, he found his lordship in an evil temper and cursing at large. Smith, urgent about his own affairs, at last observed that they should take everything for damned and proceed to business. For like reason I would suggest that the familiar tirade of fool and fanatic be taken as spoken, and that we proceed to discuss vaccination and compulsory vaccination on their merits.