Compulsory vaccination : an inquiry into the present unsatisfactory condition of vaccine lymph, and remedy proposed.

  • Blanc, Henry Jules, Sir, 1831-1911.
Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Compulsory vaccination : an inquiry into the present unsatisfactory condition of vaccine lymph, and remedy proposed. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    and only when too late will the authorities regret their apathy, and the public their neglect of one of our greatest sanitary measures. Never indeed was the future of vaccination so threatened as at the present day; and how can it be otherwise, when no heed is taken of the many warnings daily given by the true friends of this great prophylactic. The declared adversaries of vaccination are far less dan- gerous to its cause than those who in the presence of the strongest evidence persist in the denial of the possibility of the transmission of other diseases, and of the actual degeneration of vaccine lymph, and who endeavour by partial and trivial facts to force upon the public a belief in a perfection that no longer exists. The anti-vaccinators, however wrong on many im- portant points, have, by their exaggerated statements, done good service to the cause of vaccination. By enlarging on its few existing defects they have called public attention to a subject of great importance, and have roused the medical profession from a feeling of too great security to one of caution and care. I have said that I considered compulsory vaccina- tion a wise and proper measure, but this must be subordinate to one essential condition—namely, that the vaccine lymph forced upon the public shall be as