Read Ebook: Compulsory Vaccination Report of a Public Meeting held in the Marylebone Vestry Hall London on Wednesday evening October 19 1870. by Marylebone Anti Compulsory Vaccination League

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COMPULSORY VACCINATION.

REPORT OF A PUBLIC MEETING, HELD IN THE MARYLEBONE VESTRY HALL, LONDON, ON WEDNESDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 19, 1870.

PRICE THREEPENCE.

PRINTED FOR THE MARYLEBONE ANTI-COMPULSORY VACCINATION LEAGUE, BY WATSON BROTHERS, CHURCH STREET, MINORIES, E.

THE ST. MARYLEBONE Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League, FOUNDED 1869.

Executive Committee. J. CAPLIN, Esq., M.D., F.A.S.L. A. J. DAYMAN, Esq.

C. T. PEARCE, Esq., M.D., Mr. ROBERT COLE. M.R.C.S. Mr. AARON EMERY. R. B. GIBBS, Esq. Mr. THOMAS HOBBS. R. G. SNELL, Esq. Mr. GEORGE MARGERISON. F. H. HALLAM, Esq.

This League has been established with the following Objects:--

Tickets of Membership may be obtained for One Shilling of any Member of the Committee, by whom Donations and Subscriptions will be thankfully received.

Mr. G. MARGERISON, 5, BLANDFORD STREET, PORTMAN SQUARE, W.

REPORT.

On Wednesday Evening, October 19th, 1870, a Public Meeting, convened at the requisition, numerously signed, of the ratepayers of Marylebone, was held in the Vestry Hall of that large Metropolitan Parish. The object of the Meeting, as announced by advertisement, was "to take into consideration the Acts of Parliament which render Vaccination Compulsory."

The chair was occupied by R. HALLAM, Esq. a Vestryman, who said, it was twelve months that day, since a meeting was held in that hall, for the purpose of inaugurating a Marylebone Branch of the Anti-Vaccination League. Some gentlemen of the medical profession, subsequently said that if they had been present, they could have upset all the arguments on the other side. The executive of the Marylebone Branch had very straightforwardly said, they would be happy to meet those professional gentlemen, and the public notice which the secretary would read, invited their presence. The notice having been read, the Chairman proceeded to say it must be apparent to all that they were not assembled there to make pecuniary profit. They did not come to receive vaccination fees, but to enter their protest against such an iniquity. The subject they were to discuss was one of the most important that could engage their attention. A great outcry had been raised about the unfortunate position they stood in with respect to infanticide and baby-farming; and Dr. Lankester, one of the coroners for Middlesex, had made himself very busy to have a check put upon those practices, but why did not the coroner reflect upon the enormous amount of infanticide caused by the point of the lancet? Could he be a conscientious man, when he carried his prejudice for vaccination into the coroner's court? He very much regretted that they had a medical coroner, and although he had voted for him at first, he would promise never to vote for another gentleman of the same profession. He then referred to the recent inquiry in St. Pancras, on the body of a child which died the day after it was vaccinated. The death was attributed to congestion of the lungs, but the iniquitous part of the proceedings was that the doctor who vaccinated performed the post-mortem examination. Referring to the general question, he said that under the vaccination system, even when small-pox was absent there was an equivalent disease present. Dr. Lankester himself, in a return he had furnished to the parish of St. James's, said that although they had no small-pox, they had its equivalent--scarlet fever--very bad. Dr. Lankester had also said that there were three small-pox cases in the hospital; one patient was unvaccinated, and two had been vaccinated. That order of things was not according to the promise of the vaccinators, who told them that vaccination was a preventative. Before calling on the speakers he would just say to the medical profession, that they desired a fair and impartial investigation. As an individual he was open to conviction, if any gentleman present could prove he was in the wrong, but as far as he at present saw, he should as much expect to see the sun shining in the middle of the night, as to be convinced of the utility of vaccination. If any medical gentlemen wished to speak and would hand up their names they should be heard.

Dr. Routh and Dr. Thompson sent up then cards.

"That the enforcement of the practice of so-called Vaccination, is an interference with the liberty of the subject, and injurious to the community, and that therefore, this meeting is of opinion that the Vaccination Acts ought to be repealed."

The resolution was seconded by Dr. McOubrey, who called the attention of the meeting to the unconstitutional character of the Acts which enforced the practice of vaccination; giving power to magistrates to consign to prison, men and women, without trial by jury. He adverted to the almost unexceptional practice of magistrates, of cruelly inflicting the utmost penalty of the law, and this in defiance of the clause in the Act, which provides that if a reasonable excuse be offered, the fine may not be inflicted. The loss of one or even two children by vaccination, was not held by any magistrate to be a sufficient or reasonable excuse. Moreover, said the speaker, there is no justification for the law, the whole thing is a delusion. Vaccination never did prevent small pox, and Jenner knew it--and therefore he invented a theory that the virus from the horses' heel was the true source of the matter, and was alone protective. The disease which Jenner produced was not like small-pox. Phagaedenic ulcers, with inflamed and swollen glands in the axilla, were the result of the process which he imposed upon the government, and on his unproved assertion, that his process would protect the subject for ever, obtained no less than thirty thousand pounds of British gold. And this was done against the protest of all the leading medical men of the time.

What are the facts regarding this professed protective power? Why, that of the patients admitted into the small-pox Hospital, no less than eighty-four of every hundred eases, were found vaccinated! call you this protection? The whole thing is a falsehood.

Take another case. In Bavaria every person is vaccinated, yet a short time ago small-pox broke out in Munich, and the Royal Pages were seized with small-pox. The Royal Court left the capital in alarm, not less than if a shell had burst in their midst. Since the passing of the Compulsory Act almost every constitutional disease that flesh was heir to had increased most alarmingly. In 1866, 122,222 persons died of chest disease, and of consumption alone 55,714. Now consumption was increasing by 2,000 cases a year. These facts should rouse the people to indignation against a government whose acts are despotic and which aimed at the destruction of the people's liberty. He cordially seconded the resolution.

Before putting the resolution to the meeting the Chairman intimated to Dr. Routh who had sent up his card that if he wished to move an amendment he could now do so.

Dr. Thompson was then called upon. He thought in such an important matter they ought to put aside feeling and look only to the facts themselves. In the first place, great credit was due to Dr. Jenner for pressing so forcibly upon public notice the system of vaccination, although no doubt he did not discover it. If vaccination did not preserve persons absolutely, neither did a previous attack of small-pox, for he knew a case of a woman who had it seven times, and died from the last attack. A strong point had been made by the other side on the statement that there had been a great increase in the number of deaths registered from chest diseases since the introduction of vaccination. He most unhesitatingly admitted that to be a fact, but why was it? It was not because of vaccination, but in consequence of the introduction of the use of that instrument for sounding the chest. Previously there were next to no means of discovering chest disease, and persons dying from it were registered as dying from other forms of disease. There had been no increase shown in the number of deaths from chest disease. More than 20,000 cases had been under his care during the last seven or eight years, and he had found that persons suffering from consumption had, in a very large proportion, suffered from small-pox also. He believed small-pox to be an exciting cause of consumption, rather than a preventative as had been asserted. Previous to vaccination, as many as 4,000 in 1,000,000 died from small-pox, and that number, since its introduction, had fallen to 158. He really, in his ignorance, had thought that the anti-vaccination movement would have ceased in face of the facts from St. Giles's and Ireland.

The chairman: The sanitary habits of the people have something to do with the improvement in Ireland.

Dr. Thompson had no doubt that was the case, but it could have nothing to do with the improvement in St. Giles's, as the sanitary habits of that place were not very advanced. Let them continue vaccination till small-pox was eradicated, and then they could do without it altogether. Small-pox had only originated once in the history of the world, and if they could only once stamp it out, it might never recur. His attention had been called to some figures which he had omitted to notice in regard to Sweden, where the mortality which was so strikingly reduced after the introduction of vaccination, that in one year there were only two deaths, again rose by degrees till it reached 2,000. This was owing to the carelessness of the people, who thought the disease had gone altogether, and neglected the continuance of vaccination. Strenuous efforts were again made when the mortality rose, and it was reduced rapidly, till there were only 41 deaths in one year.

At the conclusion of Dr. Thompson's speech several gentlemen rose to put questions to Dr. Thompson, when Dr. Pearce asked permission of the chairman to reply to the two medical gentlemen who had just addressed them. Permission being obtained--

Dr. Pearce said, he felt happy in meeting his two professional brethren, Dr. Routh and Dr. Thompson, and discussing with them this important question; and he proposed in order to avoid taxing the memories of the audience, to mingle the two speeches, and to reply in the reverse order of their delivery, noticing first the concluding remarks of Dr. Thompson.

This ingenious division of the mortality into groups, according to the number of cicatrices is a delusion. Why, Mr. Marson tells us, with regard to the 'modified' cases said to have been vaccinated, but having no marks of vaccination, that they "must have received a protective influence as regards fatality, which would have been greater, but for the disease having been influenced by vaccination."

Reference had been made to the diminution of small-pox in the parish of St. Giles's. At a meeting in Kentish Town some months ago, Dr. Ross adduced what he thought to be evidence of the effect of vaccination in St. Giles's. At that meeting he, Dr. Pearce, had combated Dr. Ross's argument by shewing that the diminished mortality from small-pox was owing to its absence and its displacement by scarlatina.

Dr. Seaton's statistics had been quoted to-night in proof of the advantage of legislation on the subject. That well paid officer of the Privy Council had drawn up a table for the Epidemiological Society which he, Dr. Pearce, had republished in his essay, and which he begged now to hand to Dr. Routh and Dr. Thomson for their inspection.

DIVISION 1. DIVISION 2. DIVISION 3.

Before the enactment Vaccination provided Vaccination of any Vaccination gratuitously, but not obligatory. Laws. obligatory. Year. No. of Year. No. of Year. No. of Deaths. Deaths. Deaths. 1838 16,268 1841 6,368 1854 2,808 1839 9,131 1842 2,715 1855 2,525 1810 10,431 1847 4,226 1856 2,277 1848 6,903 1857 3,936 1840 4,645 1858 6,460 1850 4,666 1859 3,848 1851 6,997 1860 2,749 1852 7,320 1861 1,320 1853 3,151 Average 11,944 -- 5,221 -- 3,240 Annual Deaths.

The table was compiled for the purpose of showing that legislative measures to provide and enforce vaccination, have been effective in diminishing the mortality from small-pox.

The third division is supposed to prove that the decrease of the mortality from small-pox is due to compulsory vaccination. It must be remembered however, that in the second division there are three epidemic visitations included, while in the third division there is only one. Moreover, if the years 1862-3-4-5, be added, the average annual deaths for the period 1862-65 amount to 5,421, thus--

Year. No. of Deaths. 1862 1,628 1863 5,964 1864 7,684 1865 6,411 -- 5,421

Dr. Seaton attributes the diminished mortality from small pox to compulsory vaccination, closing his account with 1861, which is the year of lowest mortality in the table. How will he account for the subsequent increase of mortality from small-pox under a more vigilant enforcement of the Act of Parliament?

Dr. Routh has quoted Dr. Seaton with a view of illustrating the contrast between the last century and the present in respect to the mortality from small-pox.

Dr. Farr in the 30th annual report of the Registrar General says, quoting Dr. Watt, of Glasgow, a child had a better chance of reaching its tenth year in the last eighteen years of the last century when small-pox formed 20 per cent. of the whole mortality than it has now, when small-pox mortality is only two per cent.

In 1863 scarlatina destroyed 30,000 in England, a mortality of 1,800 to each million persons living. In 1869 and 1870 the probability is that the mortality from scarlatina will reach 40,000 annually, shewing a death rate per million of 2,000, while small-pox will probably not exceed 70 to a million.

Small-pox was a scourge in Europe a century ago. Now, scarlatina is the scourge, and this will continue. One or other form of zymotic disease will continue to exist while the causes which develope them remain. You gentlemen, who advocate vaccination as a preventive measure are in error--you begin at the wrong end--you aim not at taking away the cause, but prefer to contaminate the body with one disease, to prevent the subject from taking another, which is the result of filthy habitations, unclean towns, and bad sanitary arrangements.

So much for one disease, Erysipelas. Let us now come to another frightfully increasing disease of infant life, Diarrhoea. I have, during the last twenty years in which I have given my attention to this subject--vaccination and its effects--observed the frequency with which vaccination of infants is followed by a fatal kind of diarrhoea. Enteritis of infants has without doubt increased and is increasing.

I was not surprised, therefore, to find in the twelfth report of the medical office of the Privy Council, just published, a paper by Dr. Seaton on vaccination in Paris, in which at page 176, occurs the following passage:--

And thus infant mortality is increased by the infliction of a disease of the brute creation, which in the "course of its evolution," causes diarrhoea.

The medical press has lately teemed with articles calling attention to the prevalence of small-pox, in Paris, it is stated that small-pox prevails there because vaccination is not compulsory. While it is quite true that the Legislature of Prance has passed no such disgraceful and tyrannical vaccination acts, as those which exist in England,--yet vaccination is almost universally adopted. Mr. Smee, the surgeon to the Bank of England, and examiner of candidates for life assurance, lately, in a letter to the "Times" newspaper, stated that his large experience enabled him to state that to find a Frenchman unvaccinated was an exception. The 12th report of the medical officer of the Privy Council tells us that in France it has been decreed, under the direction of the Academy of Medicine, by ministers, that "No infant should enter an orphan asylum, an hospital, a primary school, a lyceum, or a government college without a certificate, of vaccination."

The fact is, that vaccination has failed in Paris, as in every other city. Let the medical gentlemen opposite, look to the paper of Dr. Seaton, whose cooked statistics they have quoted to-night; the paper to which I have before alluded, presented to the Lords of the Privy Council in the 12th report of Mr. Simon, and at page 188, they will find the following passage:--

Mr. Glidden made a few observations in support of the medical men who had spoken in advocacy of vaccination, expressing his surprise at the want of modesty in the last speaker, who, as a member of a learned profession, spoke disparagingly of his medical brethren, and applied the term "cooked" to statistics on the other side, while he produced a multitude of statistics of his own.

The chairman here interposed stating that Dr. Pearce head only produced the official statistics of the Registrar General. The resolution was then put and carried with only four dissentients.

Mr. Gibbs said, that the League would be satisfied with nothing less than a full investigation of the Medical Trades Unions. He then adverted to the case of the Rev. H. J. Allen, who had appealed to the Court of Queen's Bench against a second conviction, which conviction had been upheld by the Court, and Mr. Allen left to pay a lawyer's bill of over ?30. He trusted that the lovers of freedom would assist him in his difficulties. Mr. Gibbs then referred to the important testimony, lately adduced by medical gentlemen in Manchester and elsewhere, that the evil results of vaccination were often apparent after "successful" operations with "pure lymph," and reminded the audience that it was from the effects of such an operation, that Sir Culling Eardley, and many others had died. In view of such uncertainties, Mr. Gibbs argued that it was cruel to enforce the prisoning of the community.

The resolution was seconded by Mr. MacHeath, who in an interesting and amusing speech alluded to the "beastly" practice of vaccinating the human species.

The resolution was carried unanimously.

Dr. Caplin moved a vote of thanks to the Chairman, which was heartily responded to, and the meeting, which was most effective, was brought to a close.

DEATHS FROM SMALL-POX IN SWEDEN, 1821-1852.

Date. Deaths. Date. Deaths. 1821 37 1837 361 1822 11 1838 1,805 1823 39 1839 1,934 1824 618 1840 650 1825 1,243 1841 237 1826 625 1842 58 1827 600 1843 9 1828 257 1844 6 1829 53 1845 6 1830 104 1846 2 1831 612 1847 13 1832 622 1848 71 1833 1,145 1849 341 1834 1,049 1850 1,376 1835 445 1851 2,488 1836 138 1852 1,534

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