648 The Vaccination Question Reconsidered. [November, 
to which both sides can appeal. Hence the “ natural rights 
of parents ” can be taken into account when, and only when, 
the uselessness and the perils of vaccination shall have been 
clearly shown. 
It would be interesting to trace what was the original 
standpoint of the anti-vaccination movement. Did the 
recusants start with a conviction of the inutility and the 
risks of the supposed safeguard ? Or did they take up ori- 
ginally a theological or political position, and have afterwards 
sought for medical evidence in its support ? In the latter 
case we must hold the movement utterly irrational in its 
rise, though of course any sound arguments which may have 
been since brought forward are not invalidated by original 
error. 
The anti-vaccinationists rightly lay great weight upon the 
possible communication of syphilis by the vaccine lymph. 
To this we may refer below. But we would ask, Are not 
some of their leading spirits also agitators against the Con- 
tagious Diseases ACt ? And if so, are they not guilty of a 
slight inconsistency in defending the existence of the dire 
affeCtion whose communication they so much dread ? 
But we must now turn to Dr. Carpenter’s eight proposi- 
tions, the first seven of which assert, in slightly varied 
forms, the efficacy of vaccination, whilst the last seems to 
sneer at the existence — or at least the extent — of the danger 
of the simultaneous transmission of other diseases. Every 
one of these propositions Mr. Taylor traverses, not without 
ability, and to a certain extent successfully. If we do not 
misunderstand him, however, he maintains that vaccine is 
not, and never was, a protective — an evident exaggeration. 
It is not in our power to verify all his quotations, and to refer 
to the statistical returns he has made use of. But there are 
certain broad open faCts which weigh in his favour. No one 
will dispute that in the first two quarters of the present 
century vaccination was not nearly so general as it is now. 
It was confined to what are commonly called the upper and 
middle classes, and even amongst these it was far from uni- 
versal. Yet prior at least to 1838 a person with a pitted face 
was looked on as a curiosity — a survival from the days of 
ignorance. In our childhood we constantly heard the small- 
pox spoken of as an extinCt evil. None of our schoolfellows 
or associates had been attacked by it, nor had, apparently, 
any of the children or young people whom we chanced to 
see in the streets. No one hinted at the necessity of re- 
vaccination. How a minority of perhaps 25 per cent — to 
take an outside estimate — could protedt the non-vaccinated 
