View report page

89
"If the London children under 10 who were unvaccinated,
had had the protection which the current vaccination gives,
not 782 of them, but at the outside nine, would have died of
small-pox during the year.
"If the 861,000 vaccinated children had died at the rate
of the 55,000 unvaccinated, we should not now be considering
125 small-pox deaths, and how they can be reduced, but
we should be confronted with an additional 12,000 and more
deaths from small-pox, occurring during the year in the
London population under 10 years of age."
This "great saving of children from death by small-pox
can only have been due to vaccination, and largely to the
operation of vaccination law."
It must be remembered, moreover, that the mortality of
small-pox in vaccinated children, small though it be, is unduly
high, for the reason, doubtless, that so much of the
vaccination which passes current is imperfect, there still
being many medical men who systematically evade the spirit
of the law, and disregard the teachings of experience, as
summed up in the instructions issued by the Board for the
guidance of public vaccinators. A prime condition of
vaccination, "successful" from the official standpoint, is the
production of four typical vesicles; but we are told that
there is a "form of private vaccination that offers itself in
competition with public vaccination, and which parades its
inefficiency as a reason for its acceptance by ignorant people.
Its professors say to young mothers, 'Do you come to me
and I won't hurt your baby; I'll make only one place on its
arm, not four, as those public vaccinators do.'" It will
excite little surprise, therefore, that—the vaccination being
done in almost equal proportions by public vaccinators and
private practitioners—the proportion of deaths from smallpox,
among children under ten, is far greater among the
patients of private practitioners, than among children vaccinated
by the public vaccinators; and this despite reasons, to
which Dr. Buchanan refers, which might fairly lead us to
G