Another most important point is this: You may say, "Never mind, rather than have the bother of being summoned and the rest of it, I will let my children undergo the operation." What about the danger? (Cheers.) Upon this subject I will dare to say this:
There is not a medical man in the kingdom but will admit there is a risk. Before the Royal Commission 6,000 cases of injury from vaccination were presented, with 800 deaths. This is the condition which we have upon the most reliable statistics, and that represents a very sorry fact. We are told by Dr. Bond that we should have calf lymph; but we must not forget that some of the most disastrous results which have ever occurred, and which have been recorded only recently, have been the result of the use of calf lymph; and so terrified is the Government about it that it will not sanction its use by the public vaccinators. Therefore it is no use going to cow-pox direct from the calf.
You may say, "What is this calf lymph?" There are three kinds. Supposing you have the spontaneous cow-pox taken from the sore on the cow’s udders, a calf is strapped to a table and its abdomen having been shaved, about 100 punctures are made in it and some cow-pox matter rubbed into them; the calf is then tied up for eight days when it is strapped down to the table again and this lymph, by means of clamps, is squeezed out of the various sores raised and put into capillary tubes. Then the calf is let loose and sold to the butcher for prime veal. (Laughter.) That is the spontaneous cow-pox, which Jenner himself said was practically useless.
With regard to the other kind of cowpox, which is commonly used, you put the matter from a child’s arm into the calf’s abdomen; and you stand a chance of getting some human diseases of the worst kind as well as cattle disease into the bargain. The third kind is small-pox virus itself with which Badcock inoculated no less than 20,000 people under the name of vaccination. Even Sir James Watson said he could sympathise with, and even applaud a father who would pay multiple fines and even undergo imprisonment rather than submit his child to such a ghastly risk. (Cheers,) He (Sir J. Watson) was then speaking about syphilis.
[Vaccination] [Smallpox]