August 4, 1898J 



NA TURE 



321 



such as might have been anticipated. Weak concession 

 is not compromise ; whilst, on the other hand, obstinate 

 resistance to amendment, from whichever side of the 

 House the overture is made, cannot be put to the credit 

 of the inteUigent statesmanship of some of our legislators. 



Looked at dispassionately, this question should be 

 largely one of principle ; but granting this to its full 

 extent, it must always be recognised that sentiment 

 under certain circumstances may rout principle entirely. 

 Such being the case, principle must in minor points give 

 way to sentiment. 



To a very large extent, the present outcry against 

 vaccination is the direct result of the practical dis- 

 appearance of small-pox from our midst, such disappear- 

 ance having been brought about by thorough vaccin- 

 ation. This statement may be traversed by some, but 

 all statistics, British and foreign, go in the same direction 

 on this point. At one time every child was expected to 

 have an attack of small-pox, just as certainly as at the 

 present day it is expected to contract an attack of 

 measles. Indeed, children were often put into the way of 

 being infected in order that they might get the attack over 

 as soon as possible. This was so in spite of the fact that 

 the mortality was frightfully high, and that amongst those 

 who survived the attack, blindness, deafness, scarred 

 features, and even greater deformity was perhaps the 

 rule rather than the exception. 



Those who then had experience of this small-pox were 

 ready enough to accept vaccination for their children and 

 for themselves. They had almost daily experience of 

 horrors such as we cannot now realise (unless we have 

 passed through a cholera, a plague, or a severe typhoid 

 epidemic), and they were ready to try anything which 

 would give even promise of some amelioration, however 

 slight, of the seventy of the attack. We have it on the 

 authority of medical men who were instrumental in 

 carrying on the earlier vaccinations, that the better a 

 population was vaccinated the fewer were the cases, the 

 less was the mortality, and the slighter were the ensuing 

 deformities. For some time, so long indeed as those 

 lived who had known small-pox before vaccination, there 

 was no agitation against vaccination ; but as soon as a 

 people arose who knew not small- pox, and who knew not 

 its terrors, the slight discomfort of vaccination was re- 

 belled against. 



Two of the most thoroughly vaccinated people in the 

 world are the Scotch and the Swiss. In Scotland the 

 public vaccinator's post is almost a sinecure in most dis- 

 tricts, because the parents, of their own free will, call in 

 their medical attendant, in whom of course it may be 

 assumed they have every confidence, to advise them and 

 to perform the operation for them as soon as it is thought 

 to be necessary. The result is that by the time it is six 

 months of age, almost every child is vaccinated under the 

 very best possible conditions, i.e. when it is in good health, 

 and is suffering from no teething, skin, or digest.ive 

 trouble. If a certificate of vaccination under such con- 

 ditions, or one that it is deemed by the medical attendant 

 advisable to postpone vaccination, were demanded by 

 the registrar, as is now done in Scotland, more thorough 

 vaccination than is now obtained would undoubtedly be 

 the result. 



An unvaccinated family or colony is a danger to the 

 community. How firmly this is held in Switzerland is 

 evidenced by the fact that no child is allowed to receive 

 its education at the hands of the State until it has been 

 vaccinated. What is the result .-* That in Switzerland 

 almost every child which has reached school age is fully 

 vaccinated, and in order to save trouble, i.e. to take the 

 best period for the performance of the operation, the 

 child is usually vaccinated before the process of "teeth- 

 ing '' commences. As is well known, vaccination during 

 this early period has many advantages. In the first place 

 the child is protected during the period when it is other- 



NO. I 50 1, VOL. 58] 



wise most susceptible to attack by the disease, and at 3) 

 period when the percentage mortality is highest. Then^ 

 too, this is the period when the child can most easily be 

 kept clean and at rest, i.e. before it is able to walk and 

 knock its arms about. The irritating and irritable teeth- 

 ing period has not commenced, and perhaps most im- 

 portant of all, the child is, or should be, taking chiefly^ 

 milk foods, so that intestinal and cutaneous irritations 

 and eruptions are of comparatively infrequent occurrence.. 

 If in this country these points were more carefully 

 attended to, we should hear far less of eruptions and 

 convulsions " due to vaccination." 



It is all very well to talk of the liberty of the subject 

 — the parent — in connection with vaccination, but is it 

 right that this should interfere with the rights of the 

 child ? By the Factory .Acts children of tender years are 

 protected (more or less efficiently) against the cruelty and 

 greed of parents. Under the Educational Act children 

 are sent to school and prepared to take some respectable 

 part in the world's work. It has even been suggested 

 (often by those who are loudest in their denunciations of 

 compulsory vaccination) that children should be clothed 

 and fed as well as educated at the expense of the State ; 

 but as soon as the State steps in to put the child in a posi- 

 tion to preserve its life or its sight in the presence of an 

 epidemic of small-pox, there is an outcry by these same 

 people against the invasion of the liberty of the subject 

 and the rights of the individual. Under the Public 

 Health Act a Medical Officer of Health has certain 

 powers that override such liberty or license of the indi- 

 vidual as may by its manifestation be dangerous to 

 his neighbours ; and even the common law steps in to 

 prevent the cruel or ill treatment of children. It is there- 

 fore surely reasonable that helpless children should not be 

 handicapped in life, or be made centres of danger for those 

 around, by being left absolutely unprotected against the 

 attack of a disease which, if unmodified, usually leaves 

 marks both deep and lasting on its victim. 



Under the circumstances it is a matter for consider- 

 ation whether some concession should not be made to 

 sentiment. The days for martyrdom are over, and many 

 of the vaccination "martyrs" have developed and bloomed,, 

 because in the first instance they have been too careless 

 to conform to the requirements of the law ; once a 

 martyr, however, always a martyr. Is it not a politic 

 suggestion that the onus of objection should be thrown 

 on the shoulders of those who do not wish to have their 

 children vaccmated ? If a man takes the trouble to go 

 before a magistrate (or two), and affirm in open court 

 that he has a deeply-rooted objection to vaccination, he 

 may be looked upon as a faddist ; but his children might 

 be exempted from vaccination until such time as an epi- 

 demic of small-pox made its appearance, when the com- 

 pulsory rule should at once be put into force. In order that 

 this might be done, the onus of reporting unvaccinated 

 children should rest with the objector, who would be in the 

 position of a ticket-of-leave man who would come up for 

 judgment, and whose children would at the same time 

 come up for vaccination in the presence of an epidemic. 

 Those who would take this trouble might be exempt ;. 

 but those who would not, could no longer pose as martyrs 

 when failing to comply with such reasonable regulations, 

 and so they would come under the lash of the law. 



The Vaccination Bill can scarcely pass into law in its 

 present form ; its passage in such form would afford evi- 

 dence that however able a large body of men may be, and 

 however well endowed with common sense, they have 

 not as a body the capacity to legislate, or the backbone 

 to stand out where expert evidence, which is the only 

 evidence that is of any value in this case, is placed in 

 opposition to a fad— not a popular fad— but a fad held 

 by a very small but noisy and self-assertive, and therefore, 

 from the parliamentary point of view, powerful minority. 

 The country as a whole is not against vaccination ; 



