652 The Vaccination Question Reconsidered. [November, 
vaccinating lancet.” Dr. Cameron, in a letter to the 
“Times,” states that in 1867 the chief of the French Na- 
tional Vaccination Service published an account of upwards 
of 160 cases of syphilitic infection, through vaccination, 
which had been brought under his notice in little over a 
year.” 
A Parliamentary Return shows that whilst general infant 
mortality has been decreasing, the deaths from those nine 
diseases which are capable of being communicated by vac- 
cination have largely increased. Of 2000 deaths registered 
as due to syphilis in 1874, *484 ( or nearly 75 per cent) were 
infants under one year of age. 
Dr. Carpenter seeks to set these grim faCts aside in a 
manner which we must decline to characterise. He con- 
tends that as we do not refuse to drink water because it may 
contain lead, so we should not refuse to be vaccinated be- 
cause the lymph may contain the syphilitic virus ! He 
forgets that it is easy to detect lead in water, whilst to dis- 
cover the presence of syphilitic poison in vaccine is an 
unsolved problem. Further, not one nor a hundred glasses 
of plumbiferous water would establish hopeless lead-poison- 
ing, whilst one minute particle of syphilitic virus introduced 
into the system may defy elimination. Lastly, even a fatal 
case of lead-poisoning is of much less consequence to society 
than a case of the transmission of syphilis. The former 
evil cannot be communicated by the victim to others. Nor 
must it be forgotten how greatly the danger is multiplied by 
the modern plan of repeated vaccination. 
If we rejeCt human lymph — a precaution especially requi- 
site in a country like Britain, where syphilis has been in a 
manner cherished as a moral agent — we encounter, it would 
seem, other dangers on the nature and probability of which 
further information is needed. Mr. Taylor contends that 
vaccination direCt from the calf may convey bovine tuber- 
culosis, and that matter obtained direCtly or indirectly from 
the horse may implant glanders — an evil worse, if possible, 
than syphilis itself. 
We are now in a position to summarise what has been 
said. Both Mr. Taylor and Dr. Cameron agree that vac- 
cination, as now performed, falls very far short of giving 
complete protection, and that such protection is gradually 
decreasing. But Mr. Taylor goes much further : he pro- 
nounces vaccination a “rite,” a “superstition,” whose 
“failure begins from its earliest institution.” This extreme 
view he does not prove, and, making all allowance for a 
temporary abatement of the virulence of smallpox at the 
