View report page

2l8
some risk to individuals. But the danger from small-pox to any
community using such precautions as we have recommended is
not now great enough, nor is the safeguard of sufficient certainty
to fulfil these conditions.
It is true that in a considerable number of the cases
examined for us the injury or death is reported to have been
only indirectly due to vaccination. Insanitary surroundings
and parental ignorance or even parental neglect are assigned in
some cases as the causes of complications. But even in such
cases it is clear that, apart from the vaccination, the contributory
causes alone would not have produced the results admitted. An
operation which for its safety requires complete sanitation, with
care and skill on the part of every mother, would seem to be
scarcely a fit matter for universal compulsion.
On the whole, then, we are of opinion that a resolute and
universal enforcement of vaccination is neither possible, nor
expedient, nor just. It is not possible, because there exists a
sufficient amount of conscientious opinion opposed to give it to
recalcitrants the credit of martyrdom, and because in great
centres, such as Leicestershire, it is questionable whether even the
police could carry out compulsion without the aid of the army.
It is inexpedient, because it concentrates attention on a safeguard
proved to be insufficient in itself, and leads to the neglect of
sanitation and isolation, which our evidence shows to be more
effective. It is unjust, because to meet a danger often remote
by a defence at best uncertain, it overrides parental responsibility
and disregards parental feeling.
The proposal of our colleagues is, that while abandoning the
attempt to enforce vaccination upon those who honestly object to
it, we should continue to press it by force of law upon the
indifferent and negligent. In the matter of re-vaccination, however,
their proposal is different; they are impressed with the
transient influence of vaccination, and recognise the need of revaccination
as early as nine or ten years of age, and advise its