634 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



Art. LXIII. — Is it expedient to make Vaccination 



compulsory ? 



By E. H. Bakewell, M.D., formerly Vaccinator-General and 

 Medical Officer of Health for the Colony of Trinidad ; 

 Author of " The Pathology and Treatment of Small-pox " ; 

 Fellow of the Eoyal Medical and Chirurgical Society of 

 London, &c. 



IRead before the Auckland Institute, 20th July, 1891.] 



Finding my name and opinions much quoted in the publica- 

 tions of the Anti-Vaccination League, and in the evidence 

 given before the Eoyal Commission on Vaccination now sit- 

 ting in London, I am desirous of recording my opinions on 

 the question of compulsory vaccination in a more formal 

 manner than I have hitherto done. The subject is one of 

 great and increasing importance and interest — few are more 

 so, as it is a question which is personal for every parent of 

 children born on British soil or in British colonies. 



Let us begin by defining our terms. I ask, Is it expedient 

 to make vaccination compulsory? — not "Is it right?" I 

 use the term "expedient" advisedly, since we have no na- 

 tional or authoritative code or basis of ethics, and the terms 

 "right" and "wrong" are therefore inapplicable. Under a 

 parliamentary system the individual has no rights ; his life, 

 his health, his property, are all at the mercy of the supreme 

 power residing in Parliament. Nevertheless, like all des- 

 potisms. Parliaments find it expedient to exercise their 

 supreme power within certain self-imposed limits. It would 

 be quite within the competence of Parliament, and would be 

 the logical sequence of the Compulsory Vaccination Act, to 

 enact that, when the parents object to vaccination, their 

 children should be taken from them by force, and vaccinated 

 by force. But the inexpediency of sending a policeman to 

 snatch a baby from its mother's arms in order to have it 

 vaccinated, was stated as the reason for not resorting to legis- 

 lation of this extreme kind. 



Then, what is "vaccination"? It is too well known to 

 need a description of its external symptoms or appearance ; but 

 it may be as well to note that there are two kinds of vaccina- 

 tion — the one derived from a disease which appears to be a 

 natural disease of the cow and horse — the true Jennerian 

 vaccinia^and the other derived from the inoculation of human 

 small-pox into the heifer or cow. Owing to the feebleness 

 and apparent inefficiency of the Jennerian vaccine, Mr. 

 Marson, some twenty-five or thirty years ago, inoculated 



