232 THE WONDERFUL CENTURY. 



CHAP. XVIII. 



highly placed, however eminent, however honorable, are 

 yet utterly untrustworthy. Beginning in the early 

 years of the century, and continuing to our own times, 

 we find the most gross and palpable blunders in figures 

 but always on the side of vaccination and, on the testi- 

 mony of medical men themselves, a more or less con- 

 tinuous perversion of the official records of vaccinal in- 

 jury " in order to save vaccination from reproach." Let 

 this always be remembered in any discussion of the ques- 

 tion. The facts and figures of the medical profession, 

 and of Government officials, in regard to the question of 

 vaccination, must never be accepted without verification. 

 And when we consider that these misstatements, and 

 concealments, and denials of injury, have been going on 

 throughout the whole of the century; that penal legis- 

 lation has been founded on them; that homes of the poor 

 have been broken up; that thousands have been harried 

 by police and magistrates, have been imprisoned and 

 treated in every way as felons ; and that, at the rate now 

 officially admitted, a thousand children have been cer- 

 tainly killed by vaccination during the last twenty years, 

 and an unknown but probably much larger number in- 

 jured for life, we are driven to the conclusion that those 

 responsible for these reckless misstatements and their 

 terrible results have, thoughtlessly and ignorantly but 

 none the less certainly, been guilty of a crime against 

 liberty, against health, against humanity, which will, 

 before many years have passed, be universally held to 

 be one of the foulest blots on the civilization of the nine- 

 teenth century. 1 



1 As an example of the dreadful results of vaccination, even where 

 special care was taken, the following case from the Sixth Report of 



