ANTI-VACCINATION PIONEERS. MR. GEORGE S. GIBBS, of Darlington, was the last delegate to arrive. Some of you know that he is one of the earliest and oldest advocates of our cause. For a quarter of a century he has resolutely opposed the domination of the medical priesthood, which like the religious priesthood of an earlier epoch, has so cunningly and selfishly sought to crush out parental rights, and choke the liberties of the nation. His admirable translations of the French Government Official Vaccination Returns, and his excellent publications, have made his name known to all the earlier, and many of the later friends of the cause. It was my privilege, therefore, on his arrival at the Conference, to introduce him to the assembled delegates, as the doyen of the English Anti-Vaccinators, and I need scarcely say, that his welcome was of the heartiest description. It is not too much to say that to Mr. George S. Gibbs, of Darlington, and to his relatives, the late John Gibbs and Richard Butler Gibbs, who by their faithful persistency, have kept alive this movement in England against the contempt and scorn and indifference of almost the entire nation, is due the fact that it now exerts so potent an influence on public opinion and on parliament, that to use the words of Mr. Ernest Hart, "fills the entire medical profession with alarm and regret." Had it not been for this fidelity to human rights, and this resistance to medical intolerance, at this the beginning of our agitation-I doubt if this International opposition would have been possible. Mr. George S. Gibbs maintains with unshaken determination the truth of his conviction, and holds an abiding faith in the ultimate triumph of truth over falsehood, and righteousness over cruelty and injustice. And it has been said by a high authority that there is no greater injustice than that which is committed in the name of the law.

Another veteran in the movement is Dr. Adolf Vogt, Professor of Medicine in the University of Berne, a delegate from Switzerland, who was elected Vice President of the Paris Congress. Dr. Vogt is a man of European reputation, and is known through his writings to every student of sanitary science. Having occupied a prominent position in the medical world for thirtytwo years, and a distinguished position for more than half that time, his testimony at the Congress was doubly valuable. He asks where can be found a scientific authorisation for forcing a surgical operation upon the people, an act to which he says the State attaches the same importance, that it does to the act of birth, marriage, and death, or that the Church attributes to the seven sacraments. Dr. Vogt showed by historic evidence that small-pox had increased as vaccination had been enforced in Sweden, Prussia, Germany, and England during the past thirty years; that small-pox had begun to decline at the beginning of this century, and before Jenner had even announced his discovery; that the epidemics throughout Europe from 1868 to 1874, after almost universal vaccination, were not surpassed in intensity by any of those of the last century. He looked upon vaccination in

preventing small-pox epidemics in the same light that he regarded epigastric bandages as a prevention of cholera, or the paper amulets worn by the soldiers of Lamoricière at Meroda and Ancona as a protection against the bullets of the enemy. From Mr. W. Tebb's Address on the International Anti-Vaccination Congress at Paris.

WHATEVER HAPPENS MAKES FOR VACCINATION.

A FEW days ago a navvy on the Great Northern works at Leicester, who slept at a lodging-house in the poorest part of the town, was sent to the small-pox hospital and is dead. According to state-medical hypothesis, myriads of living small-pox germs remain in full vigour, seeking whom they may devour among the thousands of unvaccinated burgesses and the hundred thousand of people whose vaccine protection has expired by lapse of time. If the contagion spreads rapidly, it will be a proof of vaccination theories, as showing the small-pox to be a highly contagious disease; if it spreads slightly, it will equally be a proof of vaccination theories, as showing the modifying power of vaccination in a community; and if it does not spread at all, it will be an undeniable proof of vaccinating theories, and of the power of the cow-pox in rendering the contagious "germs" harmless. Everything that can happen, everything that does happen, and everything that does not happen, are alike proofs of vaccination.

Eight or ten years ago one of the doctors at a London small-pox hospital was seized with fever. I do not agree with the doctrine that the zymotic diseases are specific, and to this extent I am with Dr. Carpenter. Ergo, one zymotic patient may in some cases infect another person with a zymotic disease, to which a different name may be attached by the maintainers of specificity; the infection being either by inoculation or by too close an approach to the patient.

H. D. D.

MR. THOMAS BURT, M. P.-The case against Mr. Burt for refusing to have his child, Wilfrid, vaccinated, was heard at Newcastle on 14th June. Mrs. Burt appeared for her husband, who was absent in London, and admitted the charge. A fine of 20s. was inflicted, and the magistrate suggested that Mrs. Burt should read the evidence recently published, showing the great liability of unvaccinated persons to small-pox. The advice was superfluous, as Mrs. Burt is familiar with the evidence and knows its worthlessness.

A NICE INVESTMENT.-We have received the prospectus of The Calf Vaccine Lymph Co., capital £10,000 in shares of £1 each. It is said, "This Company has been formed for the supply of Vaccine Lymph directly from the Calf, as originally advocated by the discoverer of Vaccination, Dr. William Jenner." If the lymph is no better than the biography, it will be mixed indeed! jumble of Edward Jenner with Sir William Jenner is piquant in the extreme. Lymph at 2s. per tube may be had of the Medical Superintendent, 4 Agar Street, Strand.

The

ON VARIOLA.

BY DR. CARL SPINZIG, OF ST. LOUIS, U.S.A. THIS work has appeared at a time when its teachings are much wanted, and must exercise corresponding influence. The views of the author are both novel and well thought out, full of fresh original matter and patient research; and, withal, showing much study of the works, and respect for the experiences, of others.

Dr. Spinzig does not believe in the existence of any peculiar or specific infection in the case of small-pox; and even quotes the statements of distinguished French and German microscopists to the effect that the minute examination of

vaccine and variolous matter shows these two

substances to have, in the specimens examined, absolute microscopical identity in all essential characters. Even under spectroscopic examination no essential difference was observed,-a result which is likely enough when the one substance has been deliberately produced by inoculating calves or heifers with the other.

According to Dr. Spinzig, variola belongs to the class of septic diseases; and may be produced, de novo, whenever a special set of conditions exists. These conditions are partly within the body and partly without, and are especially likely to occur in connection with insanitary surroundings, and amongst an ill-fed, ill-clothed, and dirty population.

Dr. Spinzig's work is valuable, both from a statistical and a scientific point of view; but it has not been done full justice to in the editing; having apparently been translated from German into English. Making every allowance for the anxiety of the editor to have the work early before the public, I am bound, in candour, to admit that a resumé, more carefully printed and edited, would be more likely to circulate freely amongst English readers than the work in its present form. With all these drawbacks, however, we on this side of the water welcome the volume as one of the ablest contributions yet issued in connection with variola and vaccination. The view the author takes respecting the identity of variola and vaccinia is, no doubt, contradicted by the recent report of the Belgian Commissioners of the Academy of Medicine; but he certainly gives high authorities in support of his own view, which seems likely to modify our conceptions of so-called "specific poisons" occurring in the course of "regressive metamorphosis,' such as takes place in morbid changes in the human body.

The boldness of the author's position can be readily perceived by a single quotation; which is set down with the utmost deliberation, as the logical outcome of the propositions and statistics previously advanced. He says, when speaking of the septic character of vaccine virus and its pathological relation to tuberculous deposits, "The imminent danger of permanently injuring health, and of bringing life into early peril, arising from vaccination, must thus be fully apparent; if yet its practice is insisted on it cannot be considered as anything else than a wilful crime, and should certainly be liable to the same penalties as all other criminal practices against life." The logic of the learned Doctor

is so pitiless that he does not leave the conscientious vaccinator a solitary rag to cleave to either on the ground of experience, reason, or scientific possibility. Henceforth let us plainly tell our opponents that however much we may have hitherto shrunk from condemning the practice of private vaccination amongst those who are able to judge for themselves, we now no longer give an uncertain sound. There are, no doubt, amongst them men of great intelligence, vast learning, and high moral character; but this only renders it more necessary to bring persistently before them the evidence on which our own judgment has been based. The whole quackery must be cut down, root and branch,

with all the unclean birds that have hitherto so

comfortably nestled beneath the shade of its profitable branches.

12th May, 1881.

EDWARD HAUGHTON, M.D.

DRAG 'EM OFF TO THE HOSPITAL !-At a meeting of the Metropolitan Asylums Board, Mr. Proudfoot said they would never be able to strike at the root of the evil until they were empowered to remove every case of infectious disease to an hospital as soon as discovered.

THE ICELANDERS.-J. C. J. reminds us that "the Icelanders have been emigrating to Manitoba, as many as 1500 leaving in one year; and that in the Agricultural Gazette, 22nd October, 1877, it is stated that in Manitoba they were decimated by small-pox, the mortality being chiefly among the young.' It is the old story-the nearer the protection of vaccination the greater the mortality. The most important question, however, remains. How did small-pox get into Iceland and into Manitoba ? Did it originate in the pre-adamite germ of Dr. Lionel Beale?"

Yet

ORDINARY VACCINATION CONDEMNED. Mr. Arthur Roberts, Medical Officer of Health, Keighley, writing to the Keighley News of 18th June, says "I have just vaccinated my youngest child, and re-vaccinated myself, and if there is any fear of an out-break of small-pox, I shall revaccinate the whole household. I always vaccinate with calf-lymph, never from arm to arm, because I believe that vaccination from arm to arm exhausts the strength of the lymph, and consequently the protection against small-pox becomes less and less, until at last vaccinations done with such lymph are very little protection." It is not much to the credit of Mr. Roberts that he should live in the light of Keighley and remain so foolish. he entertains opinions about vaccination, widely at variance with accepted practice, which Dr. Buchanan and Dr. Stevens would regard as scarcely less mischievous than those of the Keighley Guardians themselves. Mr. Roberts ought, also, to remember that in his depreciation of arm-to-arm vaccination, he is at complete variance with Dr. Warlomont of Brussels, the chief of Calf-Lymphers. In a letter to the British Medical Journal of 18th June, he says, "Calf-lymph and human-lymph are considered of equal value as difference: that animal lymph has the advantage preservatives against the small-pox-with only this over human lymph of offering to families an absolute guarantee against the transmission of disease from one human being to another." It is right enough that Mr. Roberts should hold his own opinion, but he is in no position to rebuke others for singularity.

MR. DODSON ABUSED.

MR. DODSON should rebel, and inform his medical advisers that he can no longer be the mouthpiece of their fables in the House of Commons. Imagine the honest man put up to reply to Mr. Hopwood's question whether there was not a large quantity of variolous lymph in use, and saying that if by variolous lymph was meant matter capable of producing small-pox, there was no such matter used under the Vaccination Acts! adding that he was informed that all attempts of late years to inoculate cattle with small-pox had proved abortive. It seems true that there is nothing like audacity. The recent outcry of the Calf-Lymphers over the diffusion of small-pox through the use of small-pox inoculated on cattle by Ceely and Badcock was taken as forgotten! The fact is notorious, and it avails nothing to be informed that the successes of Ceely and Badcock have not recently been repeated. The virus raised by them on cows from small-pox is in general circulation, and no vaccinator who uses the national stock can tell which is Ceely's and which is Jenner's. But to place the matter beyond dispute let us turn to the Report of the Parliamentary Committee of 1871, p. 248, Question 4325, where we shall find that Mr. Candlish asked, "What is the source from which you derive vaccine lymph?" and that Mr. Marson, Marks Marson, replied, "I have two sources now in use; one obtained from the cow by inoculating the cow with human small-pox; the other source being a cow which had the disease in a natural way, in the neighbourhood of Brussels, about two years ago.'

VACCINATION PROSECUTIONS. Mr. Courtney, M.P., has moved for an amended Return of the number of persons who have been imprisoned or fined for non-compliance with the Vaccination Act. It is to be hoped that this new Return will make some approach to fulness and accuracy. The previous Returns were worthless.

A FORECAST OF SANITARY TRUTH.-God no more makes whole nations of men jealous, envious, malignant, eager to surpass each other, ambitious, conquerors, cannibals,-than He forms nations continually labouring under leprosy, purples, fever, or small-pox. If you meet an individual subject to these physical evils, impute them without hesitation to some unwholesome condition in which he lives, or to a putrid air which infects the neighbourhood.-ST. PIERRE'S Arcadia.

CATTLE PLAGUE AND Cow-Pox.-Dr. Cameron, M. P., refers to Mr. Ceely who obtained vaccinia from small-poxed heifers; as did also Mr. Badcock and Sir Cordy Burrows; the small-pox being, as was said, filtered through the cow and made harmless! Dr. Cameron, however, overlooks Mr. Ceely's report on the case of Mr. Henry Hancock of Uxbridge, who was accidentally punctured while superintending the autopsy of a bullock dead of cattle-plague, whereby a genuine vaccine vesicle was produced on Hancock's hand. It is said that Mr. Ceely changed his name, but if he did the chromo-lithograph he published to illustrate the case remains to attest his original accuracy. I gave the pamphlet with the coloured picture of Hancock's hand to a lady, who showed it to her husband, who was so sickened with the sight that he could not eat his dinner.-J. C. J.

PROGRESS IN NEW ENGLAND. DR. ALEXANDER WILDER of New York writes to Mr. Tebb:-"I visited the city of Hartford on 10th May to be present at the meeting of the Connecticut Eclectic Medical Association, and had a cordial reception. To my great gratification, and not a little to my surprise, I found several decided anti-vaccinators, and many whose confidence in the established preventive had been badly shaken. There did not seem to be one real believer in vaccination in the hall; several were favourable but distrustful. The out-going president, Dr. L. S. Ludington of New Britain, Connecticut, a veteran, announced himself as one whose faith had been shaken; while the new president, Dr. Ripley, was an outspoken adversary. So too was Dr. S. B. Munn of Waterbury, former president of our National Medical Association. It was voted to hold a semi-annual meeting at New Haven in November, at which papers and discussions on vaccination should be the principal topic. In our United States Medical College, the president, the leading trustees and professors are, as you already know, pronounced in hostility to the blood-poisoning practice."

WHY SO FAITHLESS?-We read in the Daily News-"CORFU, 18th June. The British Fleet under Admiral Seymour has passed this island. It did not stop here on account of small-pox."-Yet all the men, vaccinated and re-vaccinated, were as secure from small-pox as hospital nurses! Why so faithless?

DEATH FROM VACCINATION.-A child named Florence Maud Woodley, four months old, was vaccinated a week ago at the public station at Plymouth, and proceeded favourably until Thursday, when the arm became inflamed, and the child expired yesterday morning. At the inquest held last evening, independent medical testimony was given to the effect that the child, a strong one from birth, had died from exhaustion, indirectly produced by vaccination. The jury returned a verdict accordingly.-Daily Telegraph, 18th June.

THE first Conference of the London Society in their new room, 114 Victoria Street, Westminster, was held on Wednesday evening, 22nd June. Mr. Tebb occupied the chair, and Dr. Pearce read a paper on the past, present, and future of the movement against vaccination. Dr. Pearce's reminiscences of the early days of the agitation were especially interesting, and must not be forgotten. It is our habit to think so much of our own activity and success that we are apt to forget the past whereby our position has become possible. The Society's room is well adapted for an audience of about a hundred, and the Conferences afford excellent opportunity for inquiry and discussion.

IN PROSPECT.-Dr. Cameron has given notice that he will call attention to the lack of capacity and resource of the Local Government Board in dealing with the existing small-pox epidemic in London, and has secured Friday, 8th July, for his motion. Mr. P. A. Taylor will move an amendment, and it is hoped that our friends will urge members, over whom they have influence, to support Mr. Taylor on the occasion.

VOL. III., No. 29.]

NOTES OF THE MONTH.

“Murder LeaguES!" Thus Mr. J. G. Talbot, M.P. for Oxford University, stigmatises associations that oppose vaccination. It is not for us to be surprised if what we assert of our antagonists is asserted of ourselves. We not only maintain that vaccination does not prevent small-pox, but that it is the immediate cause of the death of thousands of children, and of numberless ailments in those who survive the superstitious rite; and we prove our assertion by the undisputed evidence of the Registrar General, and especially by such Parliamentary Returns as Vaccination Mortality, No. 433, 1877, and Mortality, General and Infant, No. 76, 1880. Those concerned in the administration of the Vaccination Acts are well aware that vaccination has its price in disease and death; and the most they say for it is, that the price is less than that of small-pox-an assertion we dispute. It was no anti-vaccinator, but Mr. J. W. Pease, M.P. for South Durham, who, in the House of Commons in 1877, appealing to Mr. Sclater-Booth, said, "The President of the Local Government Board cannot deny that children die under the operation of the Vaccination Acts in a wholesale way"-nor was denial attempted. Even if vaccination prevented small-pox, we should say the prevention was more deadly than the malady; and that we had better accept small-pox on the same terms as other forms of zymotic disease, doing what we could by sanitary measures to avert its occurrence and by rational treatment to mitigate its consequences. As for imputations of murder, they are not to be commended on either side; but the question is not one easily argued in scrupulous phraseology, nor do we care to give or to ask for quarter. The Metropolitan Asylums Board, of which Mr. Talbot is a representative, are not remarkable for intelligence. Small-pox is an annoyance and a reproach to them, and as is common with vulgar and unscientific observers, they are ready

[PRICE 1d.

to snatch at any excuse that accounts for its persistence. Their medical officers, perceiving what is wanted, provide the extraordinary statistics with which the public are from time to time horrified Surgeon-General Bostock being the last contributor to the Board's course of sensational fables; he picking out 98 children, said to have been unvaccinated, at the Stockwell Hospital, and showing that 42 died! See, say the Board, and see, say the newspapers, what happens when vaccination is neglected! Presently some one will surpass Bostock with more outrageous figures, and then perhaps the valiant Talbot will demand that "Murder Leagues" be suppressed by the police, and their officers dragged to prison for inciting to rebellion against the law of the land.

DR. W. B. CARPENTER in the Modern Review resumes his defence of the medical profession, with which we are not further concerned than to observe, that he repeats his statements concerning the efficacy of vaccination as if by repetition they were to be proved true. What we say is, that the statements have been shown to be untrue, and that no attempt is made to counteract their exposure. What can be said, for instance, of a man who maintains that the death-rate of the unvaccinated at this day is 44 per cent., when the death-rate a century ago was 18 per cent., and who re-asserts the absurdity with the fact under his eyes? Or, who having admitted the influence of sanitary reforms in reducing other forms of zymotic disease, allows nothing for such reforms in reducing the prevalence of small-pox, but attributes all improvement to vaccination? like Dr. Buchanan to whom vaccination is means of livelihood, and who apart from vaccination would be of no account whatever, may afford to commit themselves to such stupidities; but for a savant of Dr. Carpenter's pretensions, it is little short of suicidal. That he should wantonly endorse the series of trading fictions

Men

under which vaccination is for the present carried on, and which, ere a few years are over, will be nowhere-discredited, repudiated, forgotten, is one of those mysteries which it would require his own knowledge of psychology to explain.

A MOST distressing characteristic of Dr. Carpenter's advocacy is his aptitude for fiction. Considering it requisite to prove that medical men have only a trivial pecuniary interest in vaccination, he ventures to assert that "the utmost sum ever paid out of the rates as a vaccination fee is half-a-crown,"-concealing the fact of the extra awards, and that many practitioners contrive to earn a handsome income from vaccination and from vaccination alone. Vaccination at present is a charge of £80,000 per annum on the poor rate, and this large revenue is wholly apart from private practice and payments. In short, vaccination represents a national poll-tax, and if re-vaccination could only be made fashionable and legalised, the medical revenue from the rite would be more than doubled. We do not say the profession uphold vaccination for the sake of fees, but for Dr. Carpenter to assert that fees are without influence, or are matters of indifference, is to presume over much on his readers' ignorance of human nature. But here comes the extraordinary example of Dr. Carpenter's facility at invention, surpassing even his Icelandic statistics, so extraordinary indeed that we give it verbatim, even to his own italics

"Even if vaccinations were all performed at stated times upon infants brought to the operator, the fee would be small in comparison with what is paid for any exercise of similar skill in other professions. But as parents will often not bring their children to be vaccinated, the doctor has to go to them—a journey of miles, it may be, in a large Country Union. Further, since vaccination was made compulsory, it is the business of the Vaccinator to search out, from information supplied to him by the Registrar, every child born in his district; and he is accountable to his Board for having done so. Does the half-crown fee make it the 'interest' of a hard-worked professional man to take this trouble?"

It is almost needless to point out that in order to justify the vaccination fee of half-a-crown, Dr. Carpenter has imposed on the "hard-worked professional man "the function of the vaccination officer, otherwise the hateful spy and informer! Comment is superfluous. Dr. Carpenter has supplied us with the standard of his veracity in controversy, and we may surely be absolved from dealing with him as a serious

adversary. Nothing more piquant in the way of blundering has occurred since the reviewer who ascribed the preface of Johnson's Dictionary to Dr. Latham, and then proceeded to censure Latham for his more than Johnsonian arrogance.

66

MR. AMOS BOOTH turned his prosecution to admirable account. He organised a, procession and a public meeting of which the Midland Free Press observes, "Some stirring scenes have been enacted in the Market Square, but excepting at the last election, when apparently the whole of Leicester turned out to hear the declaration of the poll, never has a larger or more enthusiastic assemblage been drawn together in the locality than was the case on Monday evening, the 27th of June." Mr. Booth conducted the procession on horseback; there was a brass band, a wagonette containing an old fashioned eight-day clock seized with other furniture for Mr. Booth's fines, several vans filled with unvaccinated children, banners with mottoes, Keep your children's blood pure," ," "Sanitation not vaccination," "£200,000 per annum spent on vaccination," etc., and the rear brought up with a vaccinator on a donkey. The humour of the procession was uproariously appreciated. The meeting was presided over by Councillor Wright, and the speeches were pervaded by that political good sense which is the habit of Leicester. The chairman, though disposed to think well of vaccination, held that there was nothing to be said for its compulsory infliction. Mr. Rowley pointed out how faith in the superstitious rite withdrew attention from the true causes of disease, whilst its enforcement and endowment perpetuated its existence it when, like similar forms of medical error, would otherwise perish of its own badness. Dr. Lakin, referring to the seizure of Mr. Booth's chattels, said he believed many magistrates were heartily ashamed of the law they were required to administer.

Mr. Booth said it had been intended to have brought effigies of the Leicester vaccination spies to the meeting, but he had been entreated to have mercy upon them. The immense assemblage broke up with cheers for Mr. P. A. Taylor, M.P.

BEFORE Dr. Buchanan's Memorandum is forgotten and replaced by something more sensational, we would observe that whilst 1532 deaths from small-pox in twelve months is a small item in the bill of London mortality (being about one death to every 2,500 inhabitants, or,