640 Transac tions. — Miscellaneo us . 



pulsory ? " To this question I give au unhesitating answer in 

 the negative. I hold that it is not expedient to force vaccina- 

 tion on the people, — 



1. Because vaccination does not invariably protect from 

 small-pox even for a few months. [See my book on small- 

 pox, pp. 40, 41,] 



2. Because the protective influence of vaccination is so 

 feeble after the age of puberty that revaccination becomes 

 necessary whenever the person is exposed to immediate danger 

 of infection. 



3. Because even revaccination repeatedly, successfully, and 

 recently performed does not protect from an attack of small- 

 pox — e.g., my own case after five successful vaccinations, the 

 last within six months of the attack of small-pox. 



4. Because vaccination, even performed with care, may be 

 followed by accidents which may destroy life, or produce per- 

 manent constitutional changes of an injurious character, or 

 be the means of introducing the germs of syphilis, tubercle, or 

 leprosy into the system. 



5. Because in this colony vaccination is quite unnecessary, 

 inasmuch as small-pox has never spread here, although it has 

 frequently been introduced. Hence it appears that our system 

 of quarantine, although far from perfect, amply suffices to pre- 

 serve us from small-pox. 



6. Because, so far from compulsory vaccination being ex- 

 pedient, vaccination here is highly inexpedient, and may be 

 followed by much evil, while it cannot do any good. 



I must guard myself on one point. I am not prepared to 

 recommend that vaccination — that is, as I understand it, the 

 inoculation of a modified small-pox in infancy — should not be 

 practised in Europe, where the conditions of life are totally 

 different. Nobody who has seen small-pox of the severer types 

 — confluent, corymbose, or hgemorrhagic — would be inclined 

 to deny that vaccination, with its possible dangers, is far pre- 

 ferable to an attack of natural small-pox. The horror and 

 disgust inspired by a small-pox patient, the hideous loathsome 

 aspect of the face, the horrid smell, the frightful pits and scars 

 that often result, the blindness and deafness that sometimes 

 follow, and the dil3iculty of getting nursing attendance for such 

 cases, can only be appreciated by those who, like myself, have 

 attended small-pox patients and hospitals in an epidemic. I 

 saw cases in England — a few dozen, perhaps — but until I had 

 to attend in an epidemic, where we had over twenty thousand 

 cases in a year in a small island, I had no adequate idea of 

 what small-pox was. Young people of the present day have 

 no idea of what ravages small-pox used to inflict. Forty or 

 fifty years ago a very considerable percentage of the population 

 in Britain was pitted by small-pox, and the disfigurement this 



