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4
I cannot in this Report avoid alluding to those
persons who object to Vaccination, and endeavour to spread
erroneous and prejudicial doctrines regarding it amongst
many who are willing to listen to them. If they were
permitted to rule, we should again have the disfigurements,
blindness, and all the horrors of the old small pox days.
Whatever objections may be fairly urged against compulsory
Vaccination, it is quite clear that it is a law established
by no party purpose, but for the good of the whole people,
and sanctioned by the enlightened opinion and experience
of the whole civilized world. It is to the interest of society
that unreasonable objectors should be put down, and that
the law should be upheld.
It has even been recommended that parents should not
have their children registered, so that they may escape
the inspection of the Public Vaccination Officer, a circumstance
showing, with other facts that might be cited, the
necessity of a national and more compulsory system of
registration of births, from which complete lists can be
obtained of all children born in any given district. Under
the present registration a certain number of births escape
registration altogether.
Magistrates have very properly inflicted the penalty in
all cases that have been recently brought before them by the
Public Vaccination Officers. In one case I brought before
Mr. D'Eyncourt, Vaccination itself was not objected to, but
the defendant wished the lymph to be obtained from a cow.
It may be a question whether, as in some continental states, a
heifer might not be provided at the public expense for animal
Vaccination, and thus give an opportunity for obtaining
what is still thought by some persons to be more genuine
lymph. The fact, however, is not perhaps generally known,
that animal Vaccination is a far more virulent disease
than arm-to-arm Vaccination, and it would with some
delicate children, in all probability, be followed by results
much to be deplored, and give rise to grave objection to
Vaccination.
The epidemic of small pox that passed over London in
1866 & 1867 is now declining, but there is no doubt it was