CHAP. xvin. VACCINATION A DELUSION. 293 



nation of such a " finding " as this namely, that the 

 Commissioners were by education and experience wholly 

 incompetent to deal intelligently with those great masses 

 of national statistics which alone can furnish conclusive 

 evidence on this question. 



At the end of the main enquiry, as to the effect of vac- 

 cination on small-pox (pp. 98, 99), the Commissioners 

 adopt a very hesitating tone. They say that " where 

 vaccination has been most thorough the protection ap- 

 pears to have been greatest/' and that " the revaccina- 

 tion of adults appears to place them in so favorable a 

 condition as compared with the unvaccinated." But 

 why say " appears " in both these cases? It is a ques- 

 tion of fact, founded on ample statistics which show us 

 clearly and unmistakably as in comparing Leicester 

 with other towns that vaccination gives no protection 

 whatever, and that the best and most thorough revacci- 

 nation, as in the Army and Navy, does not protect at all ! 

 It is no question of " appearing " to protect. As a fact, 

 it does not protect, and does not appear to do so. The 

 only explanation of the use of this word " appears " is 

 that the Commissioners have founded their conclusions, 



from a " Military Surgeon " stated that numbers of soldiers have had 

 their arms amputated in consequence of mortification after vaccina- 

 tion ; and a Baptist minister and ex-soldier, the Rev. Frederick J. 

 Harsant, gave evidence before the Commission of another Shorncliffe 

 disaster in 1868, he himself, then a soldier, having never recovered, 

 and having had unhealed sores on various parts of his body for more 

 than twenty years. Eighteen out of the twenty men vaccinated at 

 the same time suffered ; some were months in hospital and in a much 

 worse condition than himself (6th Report; p. 207). In the same 

 volume is the evidence of twenty medical men, all of whom have 

 witnessed serious effects produced by vaccination, gome being of a 

 most terrible and distressing character. 



