Pickings from pro-vaccinist polemics.

Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Pickings from pro-vaccinist polemics. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    consultants and pedantic and unbusinesslike professors. . . . • . . What interest or other right have the Senates of the Universities to rule us by electing the members of the Medical Council ? Surely we are more competent to elect them ourselves. As it is, our legislators are neither hereditary, representative, nor any- thing else. There is nothing else on the face of the earth so absurd as the method of constitution of our governing body. The present system is taxation without representation with a vengeance, for almost the whole expense of the Medical Council falls on the general profession. We are the most highly educated body of men in the land, and are quite capable of choosing our rulers ourselves. There is no decent reason of any kind in support of the action of the Senates of the Universities in so far as they do it for us. A Medical Council Reform Bill is badly needed.” [Exclusive Practitionor, Feb. 7th, 79°5, P- 5)- In the annual report of the Health Department of the City of New York, 1870-71, it is stated : “This extraordinary prevalence of Smallpox over various parts of the globe, especially in countries where vaccination has long been effici- ently practised ; its occurrence in its most fatal form in persons who give evidence of having been well vaccinated, and the remarkable suscepti- bility of people of all ages to re-vaccination, are new facts in the history of this pestilence, which must lead to reinvestigation of the whole subject of vaccination and of its claim as a protecting agent.” (Vaccn. Superstition, p. 75). Hill & Ainsworth, Printers, Stoke-on-Trent.