The political side of the vaccination system; an essay read at the Birmingham Anti-Vaccination conference, October 26th, 1874 / by F.W. Newman.

  • Newman, F. W. (Francis William), 1805-1897.
Date:
[1874?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The political side of the vaccination system; an essay read at the Birmingham Anti-Vaccination conference, October 26th, 1874 / by F.W. Newman. 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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    their learned and much trusted predecessors ! If our law-givers had a little leisui-e for traiK^uil thought, if they exercised any inde- pendent thought, if they did not vote at the bidding of their party, surely any ordinary wisdom would have led them to retort on the medical men who have been intensifying compulsory vaccination,— WTiat would be the state of your art, and of the public health now, if under the pressure of your graduated predecessors, whose wisdom you now count folly, we had made inociilation compidsory 1 Your practice, on very many vital matters, lias been reversed within ]'ecent memor)^ If Ave now yield to your request, and make com- pulsory vaccination more and more stringent, how many years will elapse before your successors ask us to turn right round and make it penal 1 All men who have heads, and free thought, must see that such interference of law with medical process is fundamentally an illegitimate use of law, fatal to the progress of medical art. And who can justly deny that it is a most tyrannical invasion of the rights both of parents and of infants ? Unless I am a criminal, or am dangerous to the public health, or am needed for the public defence, it is vmjustifiable to assault my person. To say that be- cause I may hereafter take small-pox, or scarlet fever, or plague, therefore I am now to be treated as if I had the plague, is so con- temptible an absurdity, that I do not believe there lives a man who would dare to utter it in parHament. It is only our sapient vac- cinators who call healthy infants foci of infection. These men seem to imagine that with their medical degree and the patronage of Government, they may talk nonsense with impunity. Against the body of a healthy man Parliament has no right of assault what- ever under pretence of the Public Health; nor any the more against the body of a healthy infant. Parliament might indeed forbid a parent, mad with theories, to make cruel experiments on his child, as by inoculating it with syphilis, with plague, Avith small-pox, or with cow-pox ; for to j^^otect the health of every citizen is clearly within its legitimate functions. But to forbid perfect health is a tyrannical Avickedness, just as much as to forbid chastity or sobriety. No laAvgiver ccm have the right. The laAv is an unendurable usur- pation, which creates the right of resistance. In the law of com- pidsory vaccination, the legislators say to every parent, You shall not keep your child in perfect health. We must give the coAv-pox to yom- child ; and with it you must take the chance of everything else. The longer the child is kept in a poxy state, the safer and better. We knoAV that there is danger of vital poAver beinf^ so vigorous, as at length to throw the coAV-pox off, and recover''the