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shame, that their children have been inoculated with other diseases at the
time of vaccination, are incorrect." This opinion is fully confirmed in the
evidence adduced by Mr. Simon in his last Annual Report to the Lords of Her
Majesty's Most Honorable Privy Council, from which evidence it appears that
no other disease, except the vaccine disease, can be communicated by vaccination,
not even in cases where the lymph is taken from a child suffering from
syphilis, or other constitutional disease. Such evidence is, in my opinion,
incontrovertible.
"That the operation of the Vaccination Acts has not been attended with
the beneficial result which the public had anticipated, is obvious from the
following facts:—
1. That many children, above four months old, are unvaccinated,
and die of small pox, as is shown by the returns of the local
Registrars of the District.
2. That many children die of small pox after vaccination, as is
shown in the returns of the Small Pox Hospital. The records
of this valuable institution, the only hospital exclusively devoted
to small pox in Europe, inform us that, out of 5,797
patients admitted from 1836 to 1851 inclusive, 3,094 or 53
per cent., were after vaccination; and since that period, as
might have been anticipated, from the great increase in tho
number vaccinated, the per centage is much larger, amounting
now to about 72 per cent.
3. That, from a Table, kindly given to me by Mr. Pare, the Clerk
to the Guardians of the Union, it appears that out of 2,783
registered births, only 1,824 or 65.5 per cent., were successfully
vaccinated by tho Public Vaccinators; of which number
225 were above 12 months old.
Although considerable allowance must be made for the children who die
in early infancy, and for the cases which are vaccinated by private practitioners,
and at the public vaccine institutions, still, there arc a great many
in this District who are not vaccinated.
Universal vaccination, if properly performed, would be, in the concurrent
opinion of the most experienced medical men, a great and lasting benefit,
both to the state and to every family; and hence the great necessity for the
operation being performed in such a manner as will render the patient, if not
entirely free from an attack of small pox, at all events, exempt from its fatal
influence.*
From the most extensive statistical returns of the Small Pox Hospital,
carefully prepared by Mr. Makson, the Resident Medical Officer, it appears
* Cows have been inoculated with small pox, and with the matter taken from the
resulting vesicles of these animals, children have been vaccinated. Tho process, therefore,
of preventing small pox by vaccination, is really only carrying people through
small pox in a modified form. "The vaccinated are safe against small pox, because
they in fact have had it."