Nor did the failure to prevent smallpox exhaust the condemnation of vaccination. Ineffective, it was far from harmless. Itself a disease, it was a conductor and excitant of other diseases, and, inoculcated, occasionally bore with it other company. Erysipelas, as Jenner taught, was the note of successful vaccination; but erysipelas, not being a limitable affection, was frequently a mortal one; and deaths from erysipelas as a sequence of vaccination were of constant occurrence. Then there were skin eruptions, carbuncular and glandular swellings, tuberculosis, scrofula, syphilis, etc., either provoked or inseminated with the vaccine disease. Such results were so distinctly recognised that, in the Lancet, of the 11th November, 1854, it was stated

So widely extended is the dread that along with the prophylaxy something else may be inoculated, that few medical practitioners would care to vaccinate their own children from a source of the purity of which they are not well assured.

But the care vaccinators exercised over their own offspring was impracticable for the multitude. Again, citing the Lancet, 23rd October, 1854, it was said

The poor are told that they must carry their children to be vaccinated by medical men who may be strangers to them. They apprehend-and the apprehension is not altogether unfounded, or unshared by the educated classes, that the vaccine matter employed may carry with it the seeds of other diseases not less loathsome than the one it is intended to prevent.

Useless against smallpox, and injurious in itself, it remained to test the influence of vaccination on the health of the community

What is the per centage of deaths from all epidemics among the Vaccinated as compared with the Unvaccinated? What is the per centage respectively of cases of disease of the respiratory organs, of skin diseases, of scrofula, and of convulsions? What is the average duration of life among the Vaccinated and among the Unvaccinated? Of a thousand children vaccinated within a given time after birth, and of a thousand unvaccinated, the whole two thousand being placed as nearly as possible in like circumstances, what per centage in each thousand attain the age of puberty?

These are statistics with which the advocates of Vaccination have never grappled. Is it not, then, rather premature to decide that Vaccination is an unmixed good, a boon which we ought not only gratefully to accept, but which we should even combine to force upon the acceptance of others?

If it should appear that before a given age the rate of mortality from all causes be the same among a thousand vaccinated and a thousand unvaccinated children, of what avail is Vaccination? Of what import is it, as a public question, in what shape death claims his allotted number of victims, whether by Smallpox, Scarlet Fever, or Hooping Cough? If, however, the rate of mortality should prove to be greater among the Vaccinated than among the Unvaccinated, how shall we avoid the conclusion that Vaccination is a curse and not a blessing?

The interdependence of the forms of zymotic disease, so luminously displayed by Dr. Watt in the statistics of Glasgow, was apparently a conception in excess of the capacity of the average medical mind. It was the custom of vaccinators to treat smallpox as a solitary existence, any diminution of which was ascribed to the observance of their rite, and any increase to its neglect, although the observance of the rite was neither less in the waxing, nor more in the waning of the disease. With many illustrations from medical literature, Mr. Gibbs enforced the lesson that diseases were not irregular and detached disasters, but varied manifestations of a common disorder: that when one form prevailed, other forms abated or disappeared; that health, and the defect of health, were referable to habits and conditions of life; and that the consequent rate of mortality was unaffected whether smallpox happened to be one of its factorsindeed, in numerous instances, a reduced rate of mortality signalised the prevalence of smallpox. In short, to suppose that the creation and culture of an ailment like vaccination could by any means tend to the invigoration of life was to reverse the canon-that health always and everywhere was the best defence of health.

Among the supporters of his thesis, none had greater weight than Dr. George Gregory. Adducing "the experience which twenty years of official connection with

the Smallpox and Vaccination Hospital had given him,” he asserted

The great principle that there are no diseases strictly isolated from others. They are links in a chain—

"All are but parts of one stupendous whole."

They must be viewed in conjunction, if we would hope to form just, enlarged, and legitimate views of the character and pathological affinities of each.

Long surmised, but never proved, until the statistical inquiries of recent times showed its correctness, Dr. Gregory continues

We may, for want of a better name, call this curious doctrine the Law of Vicarious Mortality; by which is understood that whenever one epidemic diminishes, another increases, so that the sum total of epidemic mortality remains, on an average of years, nearly the

same.

EPIDEMIC MORTALITY IN ENGLAND AND WALES DURING 1838, 1839, AND 1840.

We learn from this table, that every year is distinguished by some master epidemic. In 1838, Smallpox was the ruling epidemic throughout England. In 1839, Measles and Scarlet Fever struggled for the mastery. In 1840, Scarlet Fever was so general and so fatal, that the mortality by it exceeded by one-fifth the ravages of Smallpox during the epidemic season of 1838, and more than doubled the mortality by that disease in 1839.

Everything teaches us that when one avenue to death is closed another opens—

"Noctes atque dies patet atri janua Ditis."

Vaccination, great as its merits are [What are they?-J. G.], and no one more fully appreciates them than I do, does not, and cannot do, all that its too sanguine admirers promised. The blessings of Vaccination are met and balanced by the Law of Vicarious Mortality. How and why is this? The explanation is easy. The weak plants of a nursery must be weeded out. If weakly children do not fall victims to Smallpox, they live to fall into the jaws of tyrants scarcely less inexorable. Scarlet Fever and Measles are both advancing in respect of mortality; and the increase of deaths by Hooping Cough since this century set in [that is, since the introduction of Vaccination.-J. G.] is quite extraordinary.*

The concession of so much was the concession of all. If smallpox was merely displaced to be replaced, and the tale of death maintained by cognate diseases, what was there to claim for vaccination, even if it were allowed to have an influence adverse to smallpox? Where were the lives saved? and where the glory of the immortal Jenner? The advocates of compulsory vaccination were accustomed to cite countries like Austria, where the practice was enforced, for English imitation. Let us then compare, said Mr. Gibbs, the death-rate of the chief centres of English population with the death-rate of the chief divisions of Austria, and note which had the advantage in the years 1850-51—

These figures required no commentary. If vaccination

had stopped smallpox in Austria, it evidently had not

reduced mortality even to the level of the most insanitary English towns.

Assuming, said Mr. Gibbs, that vaccination is entitled to all the credit claimed for it, let us endeavour to estimate the gain, if it should be enforced. The yearly average of deaths from all causes, in England and Wales, is 370,000, of which about 7,000 are from smallpox

This 7,000, then, is the limit of gain which enforced Vaccination could confer; but from the 7,000 should be deducted about onethird for deaths from Smallpox among the Vaccinated; and from the remainder should be deducted an equivalent for the deaths caused immediately and remotely by Vaccination; and another equivalent for the deaths resulting from the Law of Vicarious Mortality. This done, it would require no little ingenuity to discover a balance in favour of Vaccination.

Having thus argued the matter out, was not Mr. Gibbs justified in asking

What would be thought of the tinker who would knock a hole in the bottom of his saucepan lest one should be burned there in the ordinary way?

Yet it is just what the vaccinator does; and when he finds-as he might have foreseen, had he been governed by common sensethat his saucepan does not wear a bit the better, but rather the worse, he gravely endeavours to excuse the failure, by asserting that unfortunately he made the hole too big, or too little, too much on this side, or too much on that, or by offering some other equally wise excuse.

Lastly, there were the political and moral considerations involved in compulsory vaccination-the first attempt in England to confer on a medical prescription the force of law

Surely, a wise Government may perceive that there are greater evils than the occasional outbreak of an epidemic. The systematic violation of human rights and natural affections, the uprooting from the human breast of feelings of self-reliance, a state religion in physic, coercion which may well be regarded as odious persecution, the belief of the poor that what they hold dearest is sacrificed to the selfish prejudices of the rich-any one of these is far worse than a pestilence.

Cannot they who believe in Vaccination protect themselves? Nobody seeks to hinder them; nobody presumes to dispute their right to adopt any medical practice, however questionable it may