CHAP. xvm. VACCINATION A DELUSION. 303 



while a few medical men, who have personally inquired 

 into these results of vaccination, have found a large 

 amount of mortality directly following the operation, 

 together with a large percentage of subsequent disease, 

 often lasting for years or during life, which, except for 

 such private enquiries, would have remained altogether 

 unknown and unacknowledged (pp. 229-232). 1 



very bad, and the inspector at Sydney declared the vessel to be the 

 " filthiest ship he had had to deal with"! (See " Final Report," pp. 

 205-6 : and Second Report, Q. 5942-5984.) 



Here, then, we have a case in which all the official figures, paraded 

 as being- the result of " taking some pains," are wrong, not to 

 a trifling extent, bat so grossly that they might be supposed to apply 

 to some quite different ship. And the essential fact of the filthy, 

 overcrowded, and unsanitary condition of the ship was unknown or 

 concealed ; and the case was adduced as one showing how unimpor- 

 tant is sanitation as regards small-pox. What the case really proves 

 is that under unsanitary conditions neither vaccination nor revaccina- 

 tion has the slightest effect in preventing the spread of small-pox, 

 since the proportion of the cases among the revaccinated crew was 

 almost exactly the same as that of the whole of the cases (omitting 

 the three infants) to the whole population on the ship. 



With this example of officially quoted facts (!) in support of 

 vaccination, coming at the end of the long series we have given or 

 referred to in the first part of this work, it is not too much to ask that 

 all such unverified statements be, once and for ever, ruled out of 

 court. 



1 The Commissioners in their Majority Report (par. 379) suggest 

 that the deaths due to vaccination are sm;ill in proportion to the whole 

 number of vaccinations, and argue that it would be as unwise to 

 reject vaccination for this reason as to refuse to travel by railway on 

 account of the risk of accident. But they overlook the fact that rail- 

 way-travelling is not made compulsory ; and they make no com- 

 parison by figures, showing the proportionate risk in the two cases. 

 This comparison is, however, made in the Minority Report (par. 184), 

 and it is shown that the risk of death by vaccination, as officially 

 admitted, is, on the average of the nine years 1881-89, between three 

 and four thousand times greater than the risk of death by railway 

 travelling, while it is 622 times as gi'eat as in the very worst year of 



