Testimonies of medical authorities on vaccination. With index, distinguishing by an aserisk such as treat of animal (cow, horse, or calf) lymph, without reference to arm to arm vaccination.

London Society for the Abolition of Compulsory Vaccination.

Date:: [1882?]

Credit: Testimonies of medical authorities on vaccination. With index, distinguishing by an aserisk such as treat of animal (cow, horse, or calf) lymph, without reference to arm to arm vaccination. 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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$that it will, in a large proportion of cases, protect the system from variola, and that in those cases wlicre it fails of this protection it renders the disease a much milder one, no one will pretend to deny. The only question is whether, as a whole, it is of benefit to mankind. It is maintained that vaccination, while it affords a good degree of protection from variola, yet renders the system more liable to other diseases. It is affirmed also, that other diseases are introduced into the system at the same time with the cow-pox. Long-continued and troublesome skin diseases appear to follow it, and in not a few cases the child seems never to enjoy good health after it has been performed. I think any one who has any considerable practice among children in any great city, will be struck with the number of cases he will find of this kind, by questioning parents on the subject Not only does vaccination cause subsequent unfavourable effects, but it sometimes endangers life at the time ; and in some instances destroys the child. I have myself known most fearful convulsions to be brought on by it, and that in children apparently of the firmest health. Again he says,— I have been for years so much a disbeliever in vaccination, that I would not be willing to have it practised upon a child of my own. —Letter to President, Board of Health, by John Gibbs, Esq. Ordered to be printed by the House of Commons, March 31st, 1856. Dr. W. F. LAURIE, L.R.C.P., L.S.A., Dunstable. I vaccinated a child with pure lymph (reputed to be) from the Royal Vaccine Institution. The child, though previously apparently healthy, has ever since been nearly blind ; opacities of the cornea developing themselves immediately after the operation. This case, and several others from other vaccinators, at Edlesboi-ough, where it was performed, have militated very much against the practice of vaccination amongst the poor.—Letter to Mr. John Gibbs, quoted in a Parliamentary Return, dated i\'=X March, 1856. D. JOSEF HERMANN, Chief of the Imperial Wiede Hospital, Vienna, from 1858 to 1864. When a man has treated hundreds of cases of small-pox, both under sporadic and epidemic conditions, through many years and at all seasons, he comes to the decided conclusion that vaccination has not the remotest effect on the outbreak, course, or issue of the disease. Vaccinated persons, bearing unmistakeable marks of the process on their arms, frequently have confluent small-pox ; while at the same time, unvaccinated people have it in the mildest form! These observations, resting upon the most indubitable truth, appear$