Vaccination : is it worthy of national support? Verbatim report of a public discussion in South Place Chapel, Finsbury, London, on ... 28th May, 1878. George Wylde, ..., and asserting the affirmative, and Alexander Wheeler maintaining the negative, under the presidency of Sir Thomas Chambers.

  • Wyld, George, 1821-1906.
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Vaccination : is it worthy of national support? Verbatim report of a public discussion in South Place Chapel, Finsbury, London, on ... 28th May, 1878. George Wylde, ..., and asserting the affirmative, and Alexander Wheeler maintaining the negative, under the presidency of Sir Thomas Chambers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    the deaths. The excess of deaths now constantly augmenting, as vaccuiation is more and more stringently enforced, of all the diseases I have named children are dying in increasing numbers; and, in the Registrar-General's return, you will find now a regular division for erysipelas. Twenty-nine such deaths after vaccination are reported in 1874; thirty-seven in 1875. Vaccination is also inefficient, and cannot do away with small- pox. It is inefficient, because, since Jenner pronounced his dictum, we have had numerous epidemics, namely, in 1818, 1825^ 1838, 1865, 1871, and the present epidemic in London, which has been going on for three years. This proves that small-pox is not done away with, and that vaccination is inefficient. Then, another important fact is, that the infant death-rate is increasing. The Registrar-General's report for 1875 acknowledges this in the broadest manner. He says that the general death-rate of infants under one year from 1861 to 1870 was 154 per thousand births; and that in 1875 was 158. This, you see, is an increase now going on at the present date. And I understand Dr. Wyld to concede a large amount of this. It is conceded on all hands. There is not a medical report published in which much of this is not conceded. That being so, what does Dr. W)'ld say? I have in my hand a letter of Dr. Wyld's, published in the Newcastle Chronicle oi ist March, 1878, in which he says:—In the days of Jenner the lymph used, being only a few removes from the heifer, was so good that its use almost stamped out small-pox in these islands. Now as to the facts. Did it stamp out small-pox in the time of Jenner? If small-pox was not stamped out at all in the days of Jenner, Dr. Wyld's ground is gone. Jenner, we hear, commenced his enquiries when he was a lad. He was inoculated when a boy; he was starved till he was thin, and was bled till he was weak, prior to the illness from small-pox, after inoculation; and he felt it was a misery which it would be well to get rid of; and that was the general experience ; so that it was a good thing for the people of England that inoculation was got rid of Jenner did away with inoculation by substituting his practice, and we will give him that credit. When he, in 1798, published his Incjuiry, he asserted that he had found a a true cow-pox. There were several sorts, but he had found the true one, which was capable of being inoculated in the human frame. This was his point, and he asserted that it afforded a perfect pro- tection from small-pox. He went on increasing the positiveness