i88o.J 
647 
Analyses of Books . 
ignorance and appealing to public “ conscience,” so long watch- 
fulness and unceasing efforts will be required “ ne quid detriment 
respublica capiat .” Mr. Hart has therefore done well in issuing 
the pamphlet before us, which we hope may be as widely circu- 
lated as the errors which it exposes and refutes. 
Amongst the items of the “ anti-vaccination creed ” which the 
author endeavours to extraft from the bundles of tradfs sent him, 
one of the most prominent is that compulsory vaccination is an 
infraction of the “liberty of the subjea.” This objeaion, if it 
can be maintained, strikes at the root of sanitary legislation alto- 
gether. If a man has the right of negleaing a known precaution 
to diffuse small-pox among his neighbours, he has the same right 
by negleaing other precautions to make his person, his family, 
and his house a focus of diphtheria, scarlatina, typhoid, or 
cholera : he is justified in travelling in a public conveyance when 
suffering from infeaious disease ; in allowing sewage, &c., to 
run into wells and streams used for the supply of drinking- 
water • and, indeed, in setting fire to his house, regardless of 
the danger to his neighbours. All this, and much more, follows 
by logical sequence if we once deny the right of the community 
to coerce a refraaory anti-vaccinationist. We cannot recognise 
the vested rights of disease. If vaccination is really a safe- 
guard against small-pox, then the individual who rejeas this 
proteaion is much more to be censured than the suicide. If the 
latter fails in effeaing his purpose we punish him far more 
severely than the anti-vaccinationist, though his offence cannot 
possibly injure the public. No more valid is the “ conscience ” 
plea It is a most remarkable faa that the greatest wrong-doers 
in the world— witch-burners, inquisitors, Thugs, Torquemada, 
Cotton Mather, Robespierre, and the like— have been conscien- 
tious men. But no well-ordered community would on that ac- 
count gb'e scope to their propensities. It seems to us that the 
magistrates, in dealing with “ Peculiar People ’’who have al- 
lowed their children to die rather than call in medical aid, have 
been somewhat mistaken in entering upon this “ conscience ” 
question at all. If the negledt is once proved, why should the 
court inquire as to its motive ? . . 
An objeaion is sometimes raised against vaccination to which 
Mr Hart does not refer. We have heard it argued that the 
small-pox cleared away the sickly and debilitated part of the 
population, who, if suffered to survive, would have died of con- 
sumption, scrofula, general debility, and perhaps have become 
previously the parents of unhealthy children. But is it certain 
that the small-pox showed so much discrimination in the selec- 
tion of its viaims ? We suspea not : except we are strangely 
misinformed, healthy children, the offspring of sound and vigorous 
parents, were not unfrequently swept away. 
It is sometimes asked, how it comes that small-pox epidemics 
are still possible, and that the disease has not continued to decline 
