CHAPTER XVIII. 



VACCINATION A DELUSION ITS PENAL ENFORCEMENT A 



CRIME. 



To-day, in all its dimpled bloom, 



The rosy darling crows with glee; 

 To-morrow, in a darkened room, 



A pallid, wailing infant see, 

 Whose every vein, from head to heel, 



Ferments with poison from my steel. 



A. H. Hume. 



Against the body of a healthy man Parliament has no right of 

 assault whatever, under pretence of the public health; nor apy the 

 more against the body of a healthy infant. 



Professor F. W. Newman. 



I. 



VACCINATION AND SMALL-POX. 



AMONG the greatest self-created scourges of civilized 

 humanity are the group of zymotic diseases, or those 

 which arise from infection, and are believed to be due to 

 the agency of minute organisms which rapidly increase 

 in bodies offering favorable conditions, and often cause 

 death. Such diseases are: plague, small-pox, measles, 

 whooping-cough, yellow fever, typhus and enteric fevers, 

 scarlet fever and diphtheria, and cholera. The condi- 

 tions which especially favor these diseases are foul air 

 and water, decaying organic matter, overcrowding, and 

 other unwholesome surroundings, whence they have been 

 termed " filth diseases." The most terrible and fatal of 

 these the plague prevails only where people live 



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