3. That this same vaccination, on the contrary, predisposes to variola, and renders it more dangerous. 4. That vaccination exposes to syphilis. 5. That vaccination exposes equally to various other maladies much more dangerous than the small-pox. 6. Lastly, that vaccination is a powerful cause of degeneration of mankind. The evening session was opened by Dr. Weber. He spoke upon the vaccination question as viewed by medical men. They commence practice, he said, with unreasoning bias in favour of vaccination, and are too busy to inquire into the facts; whilst the Medical Press hold their readers aloof from examination or discussion. He also referred to the medical training in the Universities, where the instruction on vaccination excludes all facts adverse to the popular theory. Dr. Weber denied that vaccination is, properly speaking, a medical question, but is one which properly belongs to the people, who, by compulsory experience are driven to demand the why and wherefore. Dr. Walz, City Councillor for Frankfort-onOder, omitted all scientific terms in his address, in order that it might be fully understood. He said it was to be deplored that the law which they were now trying to abolish was initiated under statements devoid of truth, as had been shown over and over again. He mentioned the serious maladies which were the outcome of vaccination, the cases brought to light being more numerous every day, as cause and effect were scientifically recognised. The Prussian Board of Health admits that every vaccination leaves a condition of fever to be got rid of, with not un frequently eruptions. Most of the evil sequelæ of vaccination are, however, carefully smothered, or attributed by medical attendants to latent causes. On the 11th the sittings opened at 9.30, when Dr. Oidtmann delivered an elaborate discourse of about an hour's duration, in which he reviewed the circumstances leading up to passing the Vaccination Act of 1872. He said it was one of the greatest psychological riddles of our century, that the advocates of impostures like variolation and vaccination, and the belief in their protective character, should have been able to dominate the whole world. He attributed the mischief to the falsity of the original reports, comparing them to counterfeit bills of exchange. The Doctor proceeded to expose the statistics furnished to the Government, and showed from official returns that in other diseases, such as scrofula, diarrhoea, croup, brain, nerve and lung diseases, the mortality was much greater than from smallpox, and that the terror which small-pox inspired was entirely without foundation. It was absurd to select the latter disease for special compulsory treatment. The mortality statistics prior and subsequent to vaccination clearly proved that vaccination had in no respect lessened the general death-rate. The German official statistics in this respect were confirmed by the English "Blue-books." Dr. Oidtmann concluded his able address amid loud applause. Dr. Schoppe, of Bonn, spoke on vaccination, as a factor in the health and up-bringing of the. child. He saw that the evils attending the operation were not new to the present generation, but were known to Jenner's contemporaries, who observed the eruptions, glandular swellings, and deterioration of the infantile constitution. Scrofula, he thought, might in some, cases be attributed to bad nourishment and improper parental management, as well as to bad lymph. Sometimes children with good constitutions passed through the vaccine fever harmless, but in others it was an excitant of maladies which were of life-long duration. Medical men, he was sorry to say, had no sound knowledge on these important matters, and were kept in ignorance through prejudice. Herr Zoppritz, of Stutgardt, gave a description of vaccination as adopted in Wurtemburg, where young bulls are used as vaccinifers, and not calves or heifers. The lymph is extracted from pustules on the scrotum by a painful operation, being ́ pressed out by tweezers. It was incredible that the injection of such a product into the skin of a little child could produce anything but evil. At the open meeting in the evening, at which there was a full attendance, Dr. Boëns commenced by saying that the International League, had undertaken a noble work in the interests of humanity. It was not difficult to prove that vaccination is an evil per se, and the fruitful cause of disease and death to many thousands in all countries. Sometimes the evil is apparent, but often the seeds are sown in the system, and the diseases are not manifest for some years, and statistics show how little vaccination protects from small-pox. Formerly it was claimed that twenty years, then for ten years, but all these the rite afforded protection for life, then for claims have proved alike false. On the other hand, vaccination undermines the constitution, and if re-vaccination, now demanded by the medical profession, is persisted in and adopted, the entire must become physically degenerate. Dr. Ch. Pigeon declared that no enlightened physician is now afraid of small-pox. It was a malady easily amenable to rational treatment, but it serves the purpose of the vaccinationists to pretend to the contrary. He had no fear of the contagion. Doctors, he said, often held on to vaccination through the pecuniary bias, and no language was too strong to reprobate such mercenary conduct. It was now time that they should work together to obtain the objects of the League, and to procure the freedom of the press in respect to the discussion of this important subject (loud applause). Mr. Thomas Baker, of the Inner Temple, London, furnished some valuable facts concerning the recent small-pox epidemic in London, and the re-vaccination panic which had tended to intensify the outbreak. He deprecated the conduct of the press in persistently concealing the true facts, both as to vaccination and its injurious consequences. Professor A. Vogt, of Berne, shared with Dr. Pigeon his fearlessness with regard to the contagion of small-pox, and said he would like to visit all the countries where vaccination is not enforced, in order to ascertain for himself whether it prevails to as great an extent as in pro-vaccinating countries. He compared the pro-vaccinators to the priests of the church, who threatened the tortures of inferno to those who questioned the true ecclesiastical faith; whilst the latter predicted the curse of small-pox to those who scoffed at vaccination. He then referred to the statistics of small-pox and vaccination in various cities in Austria, Russia, and Turkey, and to the mortality from small-pox of the vaccinated French soldiers at Shanghai at the time when the unvaccinated Chinese soldiers in the same district had no small-pox. He furnished figures to prove that the attacks in the well "protected" districts in the East Indies were 25 per cent. more than in those, districts where vaccination was much less in vogue. In the Dutch East Indies small-pox has much more extensively prevailed since the Jennerian era than before. Dr. Vogt's address was touched throughout with a delicate irony, and was frequently applauded during its delivery and at its close. tions after the practice had ceased ere the disease could be exterminated. Dr. Oidtmann said that Pasteur's experiments, even where the deductions were correct, were only analogies, and not proofs. Herr Zoppritz spoke of the importance of electors pressing members of the Reichstag to give more time and attention to the vaccination question. This had been done by members of the Wurtemberg Diet, the result being that nearly all were now opposed to compulsory vaccination. Dr. Oppenheim, of Cologne, declared that the Democratic members of the Reichstag, without exception, were unanimously against both vaccination and its enforcement. Mr. Tebb's address on Vaccination, or Sanitation, as a preventive of small-pox, was then read in German. He commenced by referring to the terrible condition of England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when all zymotic diseases were rife, to the want of drainage, defective water supply, intramural interments, filthy habitations, and still filthier streets, illustrating his theme by citations from Macaulay and other historians. He traced the steps of the earlier sanitarians, Dr. Southwood Smith, Edwin Chadwick, and others to amend these defects which ultimately led to the passing of a series of acts, beginning with the Public Health Act in 1848. He showed that small-pox could not exist where there was proper sanitary observances, and contended that even if it could be proved that vaccination either acted as a mitigant or preventive it was in the present state of sanitary science wholly unnecessary. He gave illustrations of what had been done in banishing this and other distempers by various improved dwellings associations in London, and mentioned several districts in the Metropolis, where, with favourable sanitary sur and had been, indeed, practically annihilated, even during the most severe epidemics. He quoted Dr. Farr and Prof. Playfair to prove that no epidemic could withstand cleanliness, and contended that Governments were without excuse for continuing a system which, besides being nonpreventive, is the sourse of unspeakable evils. Dr. Von Cöllen, of Cologne, said that only one side of the subject was, properly speaking, "a doctor's question," and gave a résumé of the present state of the question in Germany. He referred to the vaccination of recruits in the German army in 1826, who eight years later were re-vaccinated, showing that even at that early period the protection was only thought to last less than a decade. At that time the dangers arising from vaccination were but little under-roundings, small-pox was of the rarest occurrence,. stood, and there was no law to enforce it; but now that compulsion is practised by the State, the belief in its protective virtues has all but disappeared. The speaker then proceeded to detail the circumstances under which the compulsory law was carried in 1872, asserting that there was only a small majority of the Reichstag in its favour, and indicated that there was now & strong reaction against vaccination. After the law was enacted, agitation set in, which had been gradually increasing up to to-day. Laws, good or bad, were, like men, known by their fruits, and the fruits of this law were pitiful indeed. It was admitted that no physician could be certain that any vaccine lymph was secure from danger, and yet, no matter how terrible the consequences, the law put its shield around the vaccinator, and refused to punish him. He hoped that these abominable laws would soon be utterly abolished. Dr. Walz quoted statistics as to the extent and virulence of the present small-pox epidemic in London, and yet in no city had vaccination been more persistently carried out. Here ended the business of the Congress. The delegates next discussed the place of meeting for the Congress of 1882, and the claims of London, Berne, Geneva, and Brussels were severally considered. London was rejected on account of the indifference with which the question is treated by members of the English Parliament, who seem inexcusably ignorant of all the later facts and On the last day of the Congress, the 12th, after evidence which are current on the Continent. reading sundry letters and despatches, Herr Switzerland is waiting to see what course the Löhnert, of Chemnitz, addressed the meeting, and Reichstag may take in the debate next session said that in his own town hardly any of the un- before legislating further on the subject. It was vaccinated, between birth and ten years of age, thought expedient, under all the circumstances, had died of small-pox. Dr. Müller, of Berlin, to carry the standard into the centre of the Gerquestioned the truth of this statement, but has man pro-vaccination camp, which is at Berlin, since confessed its accuracy. Small-pox, he main- and a resolution to hold the next Congress in that tained, was to a large extent kept alive by vacci- city was carried unanimously. A hope was exnation, and it would take more than two genera-pressed that the work in England would be pro secuted with vigour, so that the Congress might sion, and support our position by reference to be held in London in 1883. official statistics which our opponents cannot well repudiate. The following gentlemen were then elected members of the Executive Committee of the International Anti-Vaccination League for the ensuing year President Dr. Hubert Boëns, Charleroi, for Dr. H. Oidtmann, Linnich, for Prussia. Mr. William Tebb, London, for England. Switzerland. Dr. Reitz (St. Petersburg Imperial Hospital), for Signor Jules Vizcarrondo, Madrid, for Spain. Count von Zedtwitz, Vienna, for Austria. Under such conditions the result of the Congress cannot but be of the greatest value.-Yours truly, P. A. TAYLOR. From MR, THOMAS BURT, M.P. Newcastle-on-Tyne, Sept. 27, 1881. MY DEAR SIR,-I thank you for your invitation to the Anti-Vaccination Congress to be held at Cologne. I regret that my engagements make it impossible for me to be present. My sympathies are entirely with the objects at which you aim. I heartily wish you success.-Very truly yours, THOMAS BURt. From LORD CLIFTON. Cobham Hall, Kent, Sept. 25, 1881. SIR,-Accept my apologies for my unavoidable absence, and the assurance of my most hearty sympathy with the objects of the Congress. The members will remember my name being mentioned at the Paris Congress as having sent in Mr. Keuckenius (Member of the Netherlands Par- my resignation of the magistracy to the Lordliament), The Hague, for Holland. Dr. Alex. Wilder (Prof. United States Medical Dr. Bertherand, Algiers, for North Africa. Mr. D. Macallister, Melbourne, for Australia. Dr. Von Collen, 8, Berlich Strasse, Cologne, and Mr. William Tebb, of 7, Albert-road, Regent's Park, London, were elected Honorary Secretaries of the International League; to whom all communications may be sent. From MR. P. A. TAYLOR, M.P. 22, Marine Parade, Brighton, Sept. 30, 1881. MY DEAR SIR,-I am sorry that it will be impossible for me to attend the Congress to be held at Cologne next month. Please be good enough to congratulate the delegates from me on the ever-increasing strength of our good cause. The list of distinguished names throughout Europe, and also in the United States now openly pledged never to rest until compulsory vaccination is abolished, deprives our opponents of all decent pretext for repeating that the system of vaccination is only repudiated by a few ignorant fanatics. Hitherto the term fanatic has been understood as applicable to those who affirm without reason, and believe without evidence. Under this interpretation it is not we, but our opponents who deserve the opprobrious title. The experts of our Local Government Board proclaim a conspiracy of silence, and most of our newspapers unworthily accept this mot d'ordre, and refuse all replies to the sophistries and misstatements of the vaccination experts; while we, on the contrary reply solely upon open and free discus Lieutenant of my county entirely on account of the repugnance I felt to the administration of the vaccination laws. Until those laws are repealed, I will never return to that office. It is, indeed, an extraordinary tyranny which compels a parent to suffer his three-months' infant to be poisoned by a deadly blood poison, whatever might be the expediency of enforcing measures really sanitary, really preservative. But vaccinationist medicine and "la médecine conservatrice are at opposite poles of science. The one aims at maintaining the natural strength, that the force of disease may be overcome; the other burns and destroys, that nothing may be left to destroy in the future.-Accept, Sir, the assurance of my highest consideration. CLIFTON. From MR. MONCURE D. CONWAY, M.A. DEAR SIR,-I shall be unable to attend the meeting at Cologne, though I would gladly do so. As yet vaccination is a "question" in my mind, a thing not clearly determined upon and settled as in yours. But one thing is not a question with me any more; that is, the unwisdom and injustic of compulsory vaccination. Compulsion is unfair and impolitic in all cases, except those in which there is a consensus of the competent. In this case there is not only no such consensus, but the tendency daily is to reduce the majority of scientific men who have faith in vaccination.-Faithfully yours, MONCURE D. CONWAY. From MR. CHARLES E. TAYLOR, M.D. DEAR SIR,-I shall feel obliged if you will convey to the delegates my sincere good wishes for the complete success of the Congress, and my regret at not being able to assist them in the good work. They are labouring to save a large portion of the human race from incalculable misery in the future by relieving them from the imposition of an infamous and bloodthirsty law.-Yours very truly, CHARLES E. TAYLOR, M.D. From MR. GEORGE S. GIBBS. Darlington, Sept. 27, 1881. MY DEAR SIR,-I took a great fancy to Dr. Oidtmann, and do heartily wish that I could accompany you to see him once more as well as to promote the cause of liberty in this regard. I am sometimes very much disheartened at the want of spirit among those who are quite convinced that we are right, and yet allow themselves to be driven into appearing to support the wretched law either by a culpable silence or by allowing their children to be operated on, and so swelling the numbers at Whitehall, so forcibly quoted against us among the ignorant people of influence. In spite of all discouragements I hope you may have a successful gathering at Cologne. I suppose the projected law for France was not passed. This is a point that should be touched on at the Congress, and if you have opportunity to direct attention to the conclusive testimony of the French Academy statistics as to the inutility of vaccination somebody might take up the work of insisting on the authorities paying some attention to them. With kind regard to all our colleagues, I remain, yours truly, GEORGE S. GIBBS. From RECTOR SILJESTRÖM. Sept. 28, 1881. DEAR SIR,-I rejoice that the importance of statistics seems at last to be acknowledged in reference to the vaccination question, and I am only sorry that the simple method has been overlooked so long. I hope that plain arithmetic may in future discussions have the acknowledgment to which it is entitled, and that statistical errors will be resolutely set aside. It will, perhaps, prove more difficult to remove another error that is too common, namely, that vaccination is a medical question, upon which physicians are the most competent judges. It is altogether otherwise. The question is not a medical one at all, but a statistical and political one. As soon as compulsory vaccination is introduced it becomes a question for every citizen. And from this point of view it seems to me the question is disposed of. If, as the evidence proves, the general mortality is not in the least increased by small-pox, it is plain that the State has no occasion and no right to enact any compulsory law. It is without doubt a complete, and completely insupportable tyranny too, for the State to impose on the individual a surgical operation by which an illness as dangerous, or perhaps more dangerous, than the one sought to be averted can be induced. It is even more than tyranny; it is a crime, an offence against the dignity of humanity, and a shame upon science. As regards the efficacy of vaccination in averting small-pox, that also is reduced to a statistical question. It is indeed strange that in the present condition of physiological knowledge so little distinction is made between the medical and the preventive treatment of disease. On this point it is not possible to be too explicit. If I look for good results from the Congress at Cologne. The more I think about vaccination, which I at first took up accidentally, the more I am convinced of its enormous importance. the possibility of this and that kind of poisoning by vaccination is proved, and can no longer be denied, the danger of its conversion into a prescription for all nations cannot be overrated. It is worse than a leap in the dark-a procedure that neither conscientious legislation nor conscientious science can tolerate.-Yours respectfully, P. A. SILJESTRÖM. From DR. GEORGE FREDERICK KOLB Member Extraordinary of the Royal Statistical Commission for Wirtemberg. GENTLEMEN,-I live in the conviction that compulsory vaccination is doomed, although I do not entertain any illusion as to the immediate issue. In this, as in every case where we have to deal with deeply-rooted prejudice, success can only be achieved with great pains and persistent exertion. Well, there has been a fair start. The ice has already begun to crack-thanks to the efforts of many who will assemble at Cologne. The end will be achieved-it is only a question of time. Several favourable symptoms are already apparent. Formerly the advocates of vaccination refused discussion, pretending they could not endure our roughness and ignorance; but this reticence is giving way under the pressure of necessity. Their mere iteration of exploded assertions is ceasing to prevail on the public credulity. Their elaborate calculations of small-pox mortality, carried to the third and fourth decimal place, in countries like Bohemia and Galicia, where the data for such calculations were non-existent, were too much for endurance. I exposed the imposture in my work on vaccination, and no one has even attempted to vindicate what hitherto was blindly accepted for statistical verity. Nevertheless, these fanciful figures were taken as a basis for a report to the Swiss Federal Council. In the same report the immunity of the vaccinated from small-pox is assumed and asserted, when in Berlin alone in 1871 there were 1,191 vaccinated children under five years of age attacked, and 484 of them died. That is suppressio veri et suggestio falsi indeed. A mistake may be excused in the first instance, but if repeated after exposure, how shall we qualify it? It appears to me that vaccinists in their contention with us persistently issues untouched, which also is perverse and dehold by irrelevant accessories, and leave the main ceptive, and indicates conscious weakness and the sense of a questionable cause. Wherefore, let us be of good courage, and steadily maintain the truth, and victory shall be -With my best salutations and wishes, I am, gentlemen, yours, G. F. KOLB. ours. From SIR J. CLARKE JERVOISE, Bart. Idsworth, Horndean, Hants, MY DEAR SIR,-I wish you all the success you deserve. For myself, I cannot doubt that the true science of Liebig, as to the cause of disease, and its progress, fermentation, putrefac From DR. GARTH WILKINSON. 76, Wimpole-street, Cavendish-square, W., London, Oct. 11, 1881. MY DEAR BRETHREN,-I cannot attend your meetings, but I am fully with you in the whole compass of your great object. The movement which you represent gathers like a river as it goes on, and it cannot be long before Europe and America take earnest heed to its world-wide importance. The vaccination movement also grows, and shows its evil tendencies more and more, and corrupts the pseudo-scientific medicine of the hour to its very core. Pasteur's experiments are the most complete exhibition of this fact. His end would be, could he obtain it, to poison all the blood of all the flocks and herds of the world, in order to keep them in health for the use of mankind. How little he and his like know of the nature of the seeds of evil; of the fruits that are inevitable from them! His process also is absolutely inconclusive. He makes two artificial diseases of his own producing modify each other, and argues as if they were the diseases to be combated. They are not, and never can be those diseases. Anthrax artificially given is not anthrax caught epidemically. If anthrax ceased altogether after his inoculations, there would be no proof that it ever would have occurred had he not practised them. And in the meantime the positive side is, that he is poisoning all domestic animals for generations. Your brother in the work, J. J. GARTH WILKINSON. MR. ESCOTT'S CASE. Mr. Chapman, still pressing Dr. Johnston for satisfaction, received this amazing letter:"157, Jamaica-road, S. E. "Oct. 6, 1881. "DEAR SIR,-Yours of the 5th received. Without for one moment doubting your statement that your client is Mr. Escott, I must point out to you that the miserable fanatics who have caused him all this trouble are still using him as a dupe, and are loudly proclaiming their patronage, and boasting that they are finding the funds in this matter. "I think that when you see the last issue of the organ of this charming Society you will hardly wonder at my refusal to assist their machinations; and although I would willingly do anything in reason to assist Escott, whom I look upon as a victim to their mendacity, I must decline, under these circumstances, to do anything other than refer you to the Local Government Board, who will use their discretion in the matter. "I remain, dear Sir, faithfully yours, "R. Chapman, Esq. "W. BEECH JOHNSTON." A piece of writing like the foregoing relieves us from description. See, we say, Dr. Johnston! A convicted false witness complains of mendacity, and attributes the consequences of his fictions to certain miserable fanatics! The Local Government Board have a singular worthy to account for. We are glad to observe from the local press that Mr. Escott's case is now well understood in the neighbourhood, and that the version of affairs we set forth last month has been confirmed in every particular. We have since made Mr. Escott's acquaintance, and can easily understand the respect in which he is held by those who know him in Rotherhithe and Bermondsey; and that he should have been subjected to atrocious calumny and injured in means and business while in us indignation that we hesitate to express. Mr. overwhelmed with domestic affliction, provokes Escott is not only entitled to the sympathy of those who recognise in vaccination a cruel imposture, but of those who love justice and hate iniquity. A more flagrant outrage on private character, under cover of public service, never OUR readers will be concerned to hear the position of this extraordinary case. Mr. Escott instructed his solicitor, Mr. R. Chapman, to write to the Rev. E. J. Beck, demanding a retractation and apology for his slanderous speech as chairman of the Rotherhithe Vestry. Mr. Beck, in reply, expressed regret for his vehemence, but justified it on the score of Dr. Johnston's letter, which, taken for true, went far, in his opinion, to warrant his observations. Thus the parson sought sheltermondsey and Rotherhithe, we regret to say that, behind the doctor. At the same time, Mr. Chapman wrote to Dr. Johnston, and received from him the following note: "157, Jamaica-road, London, S.E. "Oct. 4, 1881. "DEAR SIR,—I am in receipt of your favour of the 3rd inst. When I offered a copy of my report, I was under the impression that your client was Mr. Escott: I have no doubt from what I have since came under our observation. Whilst Mr. Escott's case is understood in Ber with the honourable exception of the Echo, not a single newspaper (apart from the local press) has withdrawn or apologised for the repetition and enlargement of Dr. Johnston's fictions. Thus it is with fables invented for the greater glory of vaccination. "If they aren't true," as the old lady said of a similar set of fables; "they ought to be." Yet the very people who practise such craft affect horror of what they are pleased to call Jesuitry! |