CHAP. XVIII. 



VACCINATION A DELUSION. 



II. 



MUCH OF THE EVIDENCE ADDUCED FOE VACCINATION IS 

 WORTHLESS. 



WE will now proceed to discuss the alleged value of 

 vaccination, by means of the best and widest statistical 



the Royal Commission (p. 128) is worthy of earnest attention. It is 

 the evidence of Dr. Thomas Skinner of Liverpool: 



Q. 20,766. Will you give the Commission the particulars of the 

 case? A young lady, fifteen years of age, living at Grove Park, 

 Liverpool, was revaccinated by me at her father's request, during an 

 outbreak of smallpox in Liverpool in 1865, as I had revaccinated all 

 the girls in the Orphan Girls' Asylum in Myrtle Street, Liverpool 

 (over two hundred girls, I believe), and as the young lady's father 

 was chaplain to the asylum, he selected, and I approved of the selec- 

 tion, of a young girl, the picture of health, and whose vaccine vesicle 

 was matured, and as perfect in appearance as it is possible to con- 

 ceive. On the eighth day I took off the lymph in a capillary glass 

 tube, almost filling the tube with clear, transparent lymph. Next 

 day, 7th March, 1865, I re vaccinated the young lady from this same 

 tube, and from the same tube and at the same time I revaccinated 

 her mother and the cook. Before opening the tube I remember 

 holding it up to the light and requesting the mother to observe how 

 perfectly clear and homogeneous, like water, the lymph was; neither 

 pus nor blood corpuscles were visible to the naked eye. All three 

 operations were successful, and on the eighth day all three vesicles 

 were matured " like a pearl upon a rose petal," as Jenner described 

 a perfect specimen. On that day, the eighth day after the operation, 

 I visited my patient, and to all appearance she was in the soundest 

 health and spirits, with her usual bright eyes and ruddy cheeks. 

 Although I was much tempted to take the lymph from so healthy a 

 vesicle and subject, I did not do so, as I have frequently seen ery- 

 sipelas and other bad consequences follow the opening of a matured 

 vesicle. As I did not open the vesicle, that operation could not be 

 the cause of what followed. Between the tenth and the eleventh day 

 after the revaccinatiou that is, about three days after the vesicle had 

 matured and begun to scab over I was called in haste to my patient 

 the young lady, whom I found in one of the most severe rigors I ever 

 witnessed, such as generally precedes or ushers in surgical, puerperal, 



