EXTRACTS

In an article entitled the "Dreadful Revival of Leprosy," in the San Fernando Gazette, Isle of Trinidad, 22nd February, 1890, the writer says :—" It may not be generally known that as far back as 1805 there were only three lepers in Trinidad; eight years later there were 73 out of a population of 32,000. Twelve years later, when an attempt was made to segregate them upon a small adjacent island, it was found that these afflicted persons had increased so rapidly that the scheme had to be abandoned. In 1878 there were 860 out of a population of 120,000, and later statistics show that the number of lepers was increasing four times as rapidly as the population." .....Dr. White, surgeon to the United States Navy, who visited the islands in 1882, in a report to his Government estimates the concealed cases at 3 per cent. of the population. p41......According to the same writer on the subject, leprosy was discovered in the island in 1840, but Mr. D. Meyer, Agent for the Honolulu Board of Health, in the appendix to the report presented to the Legislative Assembly of Honolulu in 1886, says it was in 1859 or 1860 that he saw the first case of the disease. 1840 was the date of its introduction is the opinion p42....To account for the appalling spread of this terrible scourge of humanity within such a short period of time, the evidence points conclusively to one prominent cause--vaccination. There is no evidence to show that leprosy increased in Hawaii until after the introduction and dissemination of the vaccine virus.
    In a communication to the Government of Hawaii, Dr. Kynsey remarks that leprosy is not confined to any community, but is more frequently observed among the Singhalese and Tamlins; seldom among the Eurasians, and more rarely among Europeans, and is chiefly found among the poor, ill-fed, ill-housed classes of the community. The Eurasians, I may observe, as well as the better-class Europeans, absolutely decline to be vaccinated from native lymph sources, to which the native population are obliged, reluctantly, to submit.p78
      The day after my visit, 31 of the inmates were taken from the Suspect Hospital to Honolulu, and thence from the King’s Wharf were forcibly deported to the living grave at Molokai, from whence no traveller returns. The scene was of the most painful description. These afflicted creatures were torn from their friends and relatives, husbands from wives, children from their parents, frantic with uncontrollable grief. Lovers were separated, their lips trembling with emotion, amidst unutterable wailings, wringing of hands in the agony of despair, and heart-breaking experiences which I shall never forget, and which the pen of a Balzac, or Victor Hugo, could only adequately describe. p44........This goes on year after year, and will probably continue until medical men themselves turn their attention from experimental treatment to preventive measures, and themselves petition Governments to suppress the mistaken system of vaccination, which, it is admitted by the highest authorities, has been a prolific source of this terrible evil.

The New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal 1880, published a communication from Dr. T. H. Bemiss, Lahaina, Hawaii, on the introduction and spread of leprosy in these islands. "Alarmed," says the writer, "by an invasion of small-pox in 1853, a general vaccination of the whole population was ordered, p118

A well-known medical practitioner at Honolulu gave me a photograph of Keanu, which distinctly shows the appearances peculiar to inoculated tubercular leprosy at the point of insertion in the arm, as well as in other parts of the body. And he considered the experiment an absolute demonstration of the inoculability of the disease. He also unhesitatingly expressed the opinion that the dissemination of leprosy in Hawaii was largely due to inoculation by the lancet of the public vaccinator, a most serious matter not only for Hawaii, but for all other countries where the repulsive and destructive disease is endemic. Dr. Arthur Mouritz, Medical Superintendent of the Leper Settlement, Molokai, says it is doubtful whether one per cent, of the Hawaiians would resist intentional inoculation.p128............Nor can they be considered remarkable, knowing how the disease had been propagated by the vaccination lancet. In one instance reported to Queen Liliuokokalani, an entire school in Hawaii was swept away, with the exception of a single survivor, by this means.

In all countries where leprosy is endemic, Europeans resolutely object to be vaccinated with lymph from native sources; and, notwithstanding the law, when imported lymph cannot be obtained they and their children remain unvaccinated. As a consequence, the population of Europeans attacked with leprosy is comparatively small and, indeed, of rare occurrence, except in the case of soldiers who are subject to the military regulation of revaccination. p129

JAPAN
Leprosy has existed from time Immemorial in this country, and there is an old established leper settlement at the hot springs at Kusatsu, to the north of Tokio. Leprosy is reported to be increasing considerably, and according to a communication in the Liverpool Mercury, September 22nd, 1891, three leper hospital asylums have been established in Tokio during the past ten years. One of these hospitals, treated in 6 years 4249 cases, of which 3852 were those of Japanese patients. The Pioneer (Allahabad) of September 9th, 1891, reports that leprosy has spread in the Japanese villages to an alarming extent during the past few years. In one village near Toimachi, in the Gifu Ken province, every inhabitant is a leper. The Japanese Government is taking steps to look after their afflicted people.
  The Lancet for May 25th, 1889, states that vaccination was made compulsory in the seventh year of Meiji (1874). It will be noted therefore that the rapid diffusion of leprosy took place shortly after the introduction of the compulsory law, and has kept pace with the progress of vaccination in this community. Dr. Tamanoto, of the Imperial Japanese Navy, says that when leprosy occurs in a family it is the custom to conceal it.

COLOMBIA

In all the French colonies vaccination has been prosecuted with rigour, and has been followed by the increase of leprosy, just as in England the increase of infantile syphilis is due to arm-to-arm vaccination, as shown in the third report of the Royal Commission on Vaccination. The barbarous therapeutics, the tattooing and burning, have existed among the natives from time immemorial. Vaccination has been but recently introduced.

"I should be sorry to see a leper cook, and I go further than that. In vaccinating, I think hardly a medical man would take vaccine lymph from the arm of a leper infant. I know it has been our practice for the last twenty years not to do so." p64

SOUTH AFRICA

The Colonial legislature would have served the cause of the public health more effectually by directing their attention to municipal sanitation, and discouraging the practice of vaccination, which, according to the opinion of district surgeons, and the best informed authorities in South Africa, has been instrumental in largely spreading both syphilis and leprosy. It is hardly possible for a disinterested observer and inquirer to come to any other conclusion. p72......Dr. Alexander Abercromby, author of "Thesis on Tubercular Leprosy," writing to me from Cape Town, April 20th, 1892, says the disease is now "spreading rapidly amongst the white population and better class of people."

He records the curious fact that, of about 120,000 souls in Mitylene, 15,000 are Mussulmans, and amongst these there is not a single leper to his knowledge. Dr. Zambaco omits to note the fact that Mussulmans in most countries have a rooted aversion to, and distrust in, vaccination, and escape the ordeal whenever they can.’p100

"A sad case occurred here a short time ago, which shows the danger that arises from the practice of vaccination in an island where leprosy is treated as of no account. A few months ago a little girl, the daughter of the Rev. Mr. —, a Wesleyan missionary, who came to the West Indies from England two or three years before, fell ill. On examination by the doctors it was found that the poor child had contracted leprosy. The only probable means of communication was by inoculation; and thus the parents, endeavouring to save their daughter from the very remote danger of small-pox, inoculated her with the horrible poison that will make her life a living death and herself a loathsome and repulsive, spectacle. p145

:—" Dr. Gavin Milroy, in his ‘Report on Leprosy and Yaws in the West Indies’ (House of Commons Command Papers, c. 729) states on pages 32, 33, ‘In the frequent conversations which I subsequently had with many of these gentlemen (the medical officers in the West Indies) I learned the fact that the European and most of the higher creole families were always extremely anxious about the source of the lymph to be used in the vaccination of their children, from the dread of a leprous taint being thus acquired. None of my informants appeared to partake of this belief themselves, but all recognised the propriety of avoiding the use of lymph from children of families known or believed to be afflicted, especially as infants themselves rarely, if ever, exhibit any outward manifestations of the malady.’ "Dr. Milroy says that the Vaccinator-General, Dr. Bakewell seemed to give countenance to the popular belief as to the transmissibility of leprosy by vaccination."p155

In Barbados we find a strong prejudice against vaccination, for Dr Browne writes:—‘It has been a general rule not to vaccinate from the apparently unhealthy, or those of leprous taint, not so much from any opinion founded on fact of the possibility of conveying the disease, as from respect to the general prejudice prevailing p154

Dr. Freeland, Government Medical Officer of Antigua :—‘ In some of these islands, leprosy had no doubt spread from the want of precautions to separate the diseased from the healthy, from poverty, from overcrowding, or from decomposed food, and from, I fear the system of arm-to-arm vaccination, which now so universally prevails." p154

"I could trace the first authenticated cases of leprosy back to about 1830, but the terrible spread all over the islands did not take place until very nearly thirty years later, at a time when an epidemic of small-pox had given rise to very general and very careless vaccinations throughout the group ……..attach far more importance to an instance of an increase of leprosy soon after vaccination on a much smaller scale, and during a much more recent period than the above. I have it on good authority that a very remarkable new crop of leprosy cases sprang up at Lahaina, on the island of Maui, about a year after most careless vaccination had been practised there." p157

Amongst other incidents, the Princess refers to an interview with one, Kehikapau, in the presence of several persons. - Kehikapau called the Princess’s attention to the circumstance of his having contracted the disease from vaccination. He also mentioned that, through the same agency, all his schoolmates had died of the disease, induced in this way.  According to the Report of Surgeon J. R. Tryon, of the United States Navy, leprosy has spread "from year to year in Hawaii, and has increased to a marked degree since the indiscriminate and careless vaccination practised during the severe epidemic of small-pox in 1853." — Medical and Surgical Memoirs, 1887, vol. 2, ft. 1252, by Dr. Joseph Jones, President of the State Board of Health, Louisiana."After referring to the relation of leprosy with syphilis in the Hawaiian Islands, the author says :—"Vaccination was also inquired into. Alarmed by an invasion of small-pox in 1853, a general vaccination of the whole population was ordered, and physicians being at that time very few on the islands, non-professionals aided in the work. p160

In the report of Dr. H. W. Blanc, Professor of Dermatology and the Chief Sanitary Inspector for the city of New Orleans, November 27, 1889, addressed to the President of the Board of Health for the State of Louisiana, where leprosy has been provokingly prevalent, it is stated that leprosy, syphilis, and tuberculosis are transmitted by vaccination. p179

And in a leading article, November 22, 1891, this same influential Indian journal, referring to leprous vaccination, observes :— "There seems to be no possible room for doubting the reality of the very grave danger to which attention is drawn…….. It is notorious that inoculation, that is, the direct introduction of the virus into the blood, is the chief, if - not the sole, means by which leprosy is communicated. p183

7.—" A Hindu male, Bhaleshur, aged ten years. Six months after vaccination, three and a half years ago, a white patch appeared over his left clavicle and on vaccine site. Half of the patch on clavicle ulcerated, and the ulcer, finch broad and 3/4 inch long, refused to yield to either arsenic or mercury, both of which he had taken for two years. The clavicle is denuded of flesh, and plainly visible to the naked eye, while the ulcer itself is of a leprous type. p195

It is certainly amazing to find that probably the chief factor in the dissemination of leprosy in the present day—Jennerian vaccination— should have been practically set aside by the Indian Commissioners. Considering the amount of conclusive evidence now before us, many, like myself, must have felt appalled to find that this was so. p206

Dr. Roger S. Chew, of Calcutta, who was for six years in the Medical Department of Her Majesty’s Army in British India, and has devoted fourteen years to the study of leprosy in India and other countries, furnishes, in his pamphlet on leprosy, a table giving the results of his investigations into the causation of the 1034 cases which have come under his treatment. Of these, he says, insanitation is responsible for 105 cases, vaccination for 148, and 72 cases are due to other forms of inoculation. p190

Dr. Sutherland, of Patra, says :—" When serving with the native army, I found repeatedly that men who had in early life the character which I regard as a proof of the existence of a leprous taint, which I have already described, frequently had to be invalided in after years for leprosy, and subsequent observation and inquiry have led me to the conclusion that the opinion I have formed regarding what I have named a leprous taint was correct, and that this condition precedes the appearance of the disease in its aggravated form; and I think I am warranted in concluding, from the data given above, that this leprous taint exists in one out of every ten of the adult rural population of this district. In stating this, I am aware that my views will probably astonish persons who have not given the subject the attention I have."—Royal College of Physicians Report, p. 188.  p218

Some (soldiers) have had their arms amputated and been discharged from the service, and others have sustained lifelong injuries. It must be noted that soldiers, when quartered in tropical countries where leprosy and syphilis prevail, are often obliged to submit to several re-vaccinations. In Capetown, a soldier belonging to the North Stafford Regiment, on duty near Government House, informed me (February 9th, 1892) that since he joined the army he had been vaccinated thirteen times. He was badly pitted with small-pox. 221

"Amongst 62 persons affected with this disease now in treatment in the Hospital dos Lazaros, in this city, 26 were vaccinated p232

It is clear by Dr. Abraham’s mode of argument that leprous vaccination, as an important factor in the increase of the disease, is the last thing he will admit. All other possible sources of dissemination must be excluded before a theory so fatal to medical prestige can be tolerated. Any other of the numerous theories promulgated to account for new centres of leprous contamination the doctor is ready to consider, but vaccination (to use a classic phrase) "must be preserved from reproach," and the reputations of its distinguished advocates maintained.  p239

The testimonies elicited by this inquiry as to the communicability of leprosy and syphilis seem to have had no practical effect on the College of Physicians. In a letter from that body on "Vaccination and Leprosy," dated London, August 17, 1871, and addressed to the Earl of Kimberley, it is stated that, while it is admitted that in a few instances syphilis has been transmitted by vaccination, "yet with reference to leprosy it must be observed that there is no evidence adduced beyond the merest presumption that this disease has ever been transmitted by vaccination."  p245

The alarming increase of leprosy in Hawaii, which took place after the introduction of vaccination by the missionaries p245 end

Owing to the increase of leprosy in South Africa, inquiries by Select Committees of the Legislative Assembly were instituted in 1883 and 1889, but the interrogatories relate chiefly to the spread of the disease, and to its contagious or non - contagious character. The questions were submitted viva voce, and vaccination as a possible factor in the dissemination of leprosy is carefully ignored. p248

This correspondence, implicating vaccination, and pointing out a much-neglected source of danger, is absolutely ignored in the Journal of the Leprosy Investigation Committee; while communications from all parts of the world, in which the most diverse and conflicting theories are advanced by persons whose opportunities for observation and inquiry have necessarily been of a. very meagre description, have found insertion in its pages. p254

Moreover, leprosy is an insidious disease, and in its early stages cannot be diagnosed and detected save by experienced medical practitioners accustomed to treat this particular malady. Of the enumerators, not one in a hundred could detect a case of leprosy if he saw it, except when presented in its most aggravated and repulsive form. p259

Dr. John D. Hillis, F.R.C.S., formerly the Superintendent General of the Leper Asylum, Mahaica, in his work, entitled "Leprosy in British Guiana" (1881), says, p. 148:— "With regard to this country one important fact is the immunity from leprosy enjoyed by the aboriginal tribes of British Guiana." This immunity from the disease is attributed to the circumstance that no Indian will allow himself or his children to be vaccinated p265  ...........In a communication to me, dated Rio de Janeiro, May 20th, 1892, Dr. Lima says :—" Now, about the Indian races, those who live away altogether, without any interference or intercourse with civilisation, their freedom from leprosy can be explained not only by the absence of the Jennerian vaccination, but also by the non-intercourse with people capable of being the conductors of the germs of the disease."  p266

Aliwal North (Report, 1885 ).—"Vaccination has been extensively performed amongst both Europeans and natives." In the following year (Report, 1886), the same officer remarks that "small-pox has raged," of which he has treated about 450 cases, and adds that "syphilis has made vast strides." Two years later (Report, 1888), we read :—" Syphilis is still very prevalent. I have frequently drawn the earnest attention of the Government to the sad havoc this disease is dealing amongst the inhabitants."

While showing the utter failure of the extensive vaccination practised in 1884 to prevent the serious epidemic of small-pox which occurred the following year, these three official reports show how the most loathsome of diseases are disseminated by the vaccinator’s lancet. The District Surgeon urges the Government to appoint a Commission of Inquiry. p271

Vaccination, he says, is carried out in the Colonies in a most careless and perfunctory manner. He has seen the operator pass his lancet from one arm to another without the smallest attempt to disinfect the instrument or discriminate between the diseased and the healthy, in districts where both leprosy and syphilis are endemic. From other reliable sources I am satisfied that this is the rule rather than the exception. Canon Baker believes that leprosy is chiefly communicated by means of inoculation, and that arm-to-arm vaccination is a prolific cause of the spread of this fearful plague in South Africa. ............While the vaccination laws for several years have not been enforced against the white population in Natal, all the natives are vaccinated either under persuasion or threats, the operation being carried out in the usual careless manner, with arm-to-arm virus taken from native children without previous examination, and not the slightest attempt is made to clean or disinfect the lancets after each operation. Hundreds of natives, as I am informed on unimpeachable authority, have died of blood-poisoning and of inoculated diseases. .........A member of the Legislative Council,Sir John Bisset, reported in Parliament that many were "blood poisoned, presenting a horrible sight, and dying masses of corruption." In January, 1891, leprosy disseminated in this way was discovered in fifty kraals in one electoral division alone. The natives in their simplicity submit to vaccination, being told that it was the "Incosi" (King) that ordered it, and this was the way the white man secured himself against the plague of small-pox.p274.

"Was vaccinated in 1879; leprosy appeared in 1883." "Vaccinated three times, last vaccination during small-pox epidemic in 1878; leprosy attacked me in 1887." "Vaccinated twice, first when twenty years of age. Leprosy appeared between first and second vaccination." p280

The Leprosy Commissioners (all ardent supporters of the Jennerian practice) have searched far and wide for a rational theory that will account for the recent spread of leprosy in certain countries, but have utterly failed to discover one, and are almost driven to the conclusion that touches closely upon the facts collected in this volume. p309

It may also be added that, at the time when leprosy disappeared from this country, the practice of inoculation and vaccination was unknown, otherwise there is little doubt that leprosy would have been perpetuated in England by the empoisoned lancet, as it is now in the West Indies, British Guiana, India, New Caledonia, the United States of Colombia, Venezuela, and Hawaii...............Sir Erasmus Wilson, in his article on "Leprosy" in Quain’s "Dictionary of Medicine," refers to the various drugs which are recommended and used by one physician or another—quinine, strychnine, phosphates, nitric acid, acetic and carbolic acid, iodine, arsenic, perchloride of mercury, asclepias gigantea, hydrocotyle asiatica, veronica quinquefolia, plumbago rosea, acid nitrate of mercury, potassa fusa, acrid irritating oil of the shell of the cashew nut, chloride of zinc, etc.  p312 Ch 17

I may here observe that Dr. Koch’s much vaunted tuberculin has been tried in almost every leprous country on the globe, and found worse than useless. Much suffering has been caused by its use. The Madras Times, October 28, 1891, reports the visit of His Excellency Lord Wenlock to the leper hospital in this city, when his lordship had pointed out to him several patients upon whom Dr. Koch’s lymph treatment had been tried. One of the patients complained that the experiment had subjected him to excruciating pain.  ............. It appeared to me, however," says Dr. Danielssen (page 210), "if I could infect the leprous patients with constitutional syphilis, it might follow that the syphilitic poison might prove superior to that of leprosy, and that thus the system might be brought to that of a person labouring under constitutional syphilis, and might so become subject to the ordinary process of syphilisation." "This ingenious theory, however," remarks Dr. Hillis, "failed in practice, the leprosy remaining unchanged, whilst the syphilitic process went on."  ................Needless to say that mercury, iodine, quinia, arsenic, and a long list of other remedies, have utterly failed to eradicate the disease. p322--325 ch 17

The Bombay Gazette, 17th July, 1891, reports the opening of the New Leper Asylum at Sehore, Bhopal, towards which Her Highness the Begum of Bhopal has contributed munificently, and has promised an annual grant of 4500 Rs. for the expenses of maintenance. ........This benevolent lady, the Begum of Bhopal, Nawab Shahjeham, has been persuaded to extend vaccinations in her province, upon which she spends 5000 rupees yearly, employing 35 vaccinators, who performed 38,000 vaccinations last year, thus unwittingly spreading the fell disease at the point of the lancet, and helping to fill the wards of the hospital which her benevolence has established. p333 Ch 17

The remedies used were strychnine, phosphorus, arsenic, mercury,. potassium iodide, chaulmoogra oil, resorcin and icthyolin, gurjun oil, neem oil, and strychnia, and sweet oil with chaulmoogra oil and gurjun oil internally p335 ch 17

"The first and the most grave result which follows from this interpretation is, then, that vaccination, besides the advantages which it offers us in our contest with variola, presents the danger of opening the way for the invasion of tubercle.
    "If we now turn back and examine the events of the last century or so, we can show a constant increase of tuberculosis, a fact never hitherto satisfactorily explained. There was a time when this malady existed only as an exceptional thing; now, actually, in spite of the incessant progress in public and private hygiene, in spite of all the material improvements that have been made, it tends more and more to rise to the rank of a pestilence............."Side by side with this growing extension of tuberculosis, we see developing, pan passu, and in the same period of time, that is to say, since the beginning of the century, the practice of vaccination. We may ask ourselves whether in this double simultaneous evolution there is not a hidden oneness? If tuberculosis, in spite of all sanitary precautions, has multiplied its attacks during the last hundred years, it is, we submit, because vaccination has come to Create for it a propitious soil. .............In all European armies, vaccination is the order of the day. On their arrival with their corps, the young soldiers are forthwith carefully revaccinated. Now, the military statistics of all countries show an enormous proportion of various forms of tuberculosis among soldiers, especially during the first and second year after their enlistment. .................Whence then can come these attacks of tuberculosis, so sudden, so numerous, upon subjects that, but a few months before, the council of revision rightly declared to be fit for service. Tuberculosis of the lungs, of the organs, of the joints, of the bones, etc., all these fatal evils show themselves in the garrisons of all countries with a frequency before which one might well despair. We believe that we must simply seek the reason for these facts in the revaccination which awaits the recruits upon their arrival at their corps,  p358 appendix

Those familiar with the social condition of India are aware that every effort has been made to remove this dread of the operation which exists more or less all over the country. New lancets and scarifiers have been introduced, and various viruses have been experimented with, one after another—cow, calf, sheep, goat, lamb, buffalo, and donkey lymph — the last, the discovery of Surgeon O’Hara, having been specially urged upon the attention of District Boards and municipalities by the Government. Surgeon-Major W. G. King writes to the Indian Medical Record that he is using vesicle pulp or "lanoline vaccine," which is applied by stretching the scarifications and "alternately dabbing and rubbing in the paste." Buffaloes, he observes, appear likely to yield very much more vesicle pulp than calves, but they exhale an "abominable odour," which renders the work of collecting the pulp most repulsive. The Commissioners state that only the lowest and most ignorant classes readily submit. The law enforcing vaccination in British India, which are unparalleled for their severity, were passed without the consent and against the wishes of the people, whose objection to vaccination arises from a knowledge often gained by sad and bitter experience p363 app

"The number of cases in which small-pox had followed vaccinatioa is 56."The Board think it proper to remark under this head that, in the enumeration of cases in which small-pox has succeeded vaccination, they have included none but those in which the subject was vaccinated by the surgeon reporting the facts.
"The bad consequences which have arisen from vaccination are— 66 cases of eruption of the skin,
24 of inflammation of the arm, whereof
3 proved fatal
"Although numerous, they are nothing to what might be produced. It will be thought incumbent on the vaccinators to come forward and dispute the numerous facts decisive against vaccination here stated on unimpeachable authorities, or make the amende honorable by a manly recantation. But experience forbids us to expect any such fair and magnanimous proceeding, and we may be assured that under no circumstances will they abandon so lucrative a practice until the practice abandons them." 366 app

This increase of small-pox, co-incident with the rapid extension of vaccination, shows that it is a disease governed by causes entirely outside and independent of vaccination. And this opinion is confirmed by the highest authorities. Thus, in a memorandum of the "Army Sanitary Commission," published in the Bombay Government Gazette, Dec. 17th, 1885, the Commissioners say:
    "The first disease in the list—namely, small-pox, which yielded an increase of 1369 deaths, or nearly sixteen-fold that of the previous year’s death-rate-—had assumed an epidemic state in nearly all the districts of the city; yet Bombay has an effective vaccination service, with the use of calf-lymph."  ." In vol. xviii. of "Sanitary Measures in India," page 203, in reference to the smallpox epidemic of 1884, it is stated :—" We are thus brought face to face with the fact that, notwithstanding the existence of an active vaccination service, small-pox swept over the provinces just as if there had been none." In the same volume, referring to Madras, the Commissioners -say:—" No less than seventy-four per cent. of the small-pox deaths in Madras town occurred among children under three years of age." In Punjab, "the Compulsory Act was in force in the Amritsar municipality, but here the deaths from small-pox were far more numerous than in any other town of the province.arm to arm

According to Sir Edwin Chadwick, Dr. B. W. Richardson, and all other sanitarians of repute, small-pox is a disease due to insanitary conditions, impure water, bad drainage, dirty living,. and particularly to overcrowding; and, instead of removing these conditions, the Governments of India during the past thirty years have been spending their, energies, and large sums of money, in extending vaccination. Now that the arm-to-arm system has been thoroughly discredited and shown to be futile as a preventive of small-pox and fertile as a disseminator of eczema, syphilis, and leprosy, the cry of the official vaccinator is not the sensible one of "do away with vaccination," but, let us change front and resort to the calf, sheep, buffalo, donkey, or to lanoline lymph—or anything,. rather than confess that the Jennerian system is a humiliating failure. It is well known that animal lymph has been a fruitful cause of the spread of disease in Europe. It is well known that animal lymph has been a fruitful cause of the spread of disease in Europe. On June 17, 1885, an official re-vaccination with "re-generated" lymph at the Island of Rügen, North Germany, caused an infection of a loathsome eruptive skin disease (Impetigo Contagiosa) of 320 children and adults

The perennial cry of public vaccinators is that the lymph is "unsatisfactory." Animal lymph is often attended with excessive inflammation, and the practitioner is obliged to dilute it with glycerine, lanoline, and other substances, and its use is much more expensive. Moreover, a good deal of the so-called animal lymph in vogue is really only arm-to-arm vaccine, inoculated into calves, buffaloes, sheep, and donkeys, and partakes of the diseases both of man and of animals. Of the many cases of ulcerative and of fatal vaccination which have come under my notice during the past twenty years not a few have been due to the use of carefully-selected animal vaccine. Dr. Robert Cory, Medical Director of the Government Calf Lymph Establishment, London, testified before the Royal Commission, November 17, 7889 (Q. 4390), that out of 32,000 cases there were 260 returned with sore arms, and 38 with eruptions. Then there were 16 cases of erysipelas, and nine of axillary abscesses, and (Q. 4392) eight deaths were reported to the Station .of children who had been vaccinated with animal lymph. The same witness testified (Q. 4369) that lymph taken from the cow leads to greater inflammation, and has a greater tendency to produce ulceration, than lymph which has been humanised.appendix

LEICESTER:
"Taking the groups of years dealt with by me before the Royal Commission on Vaccination, our average annual small-pox death-rate during 1853-57, with a moderate amount of vaccination, was only 91 per million population. But when vaccination had been continually and largely practised for a quarter of a century, and had reached over 90 per cent. to the annual births, and when, of course, its assumed protective power should have been greatest,. our small-pox death-rate had progressively risen to an annual average of 773 per million population in 1868-72. Since that time vaccination has rapidly declined in the Borough, now being only about 2 per cent. Of the births, and small-pox mortality has disappeared from our midst. .......
        With over 90 per cent, of primary vaccinations to births in 1868-72, our death-rate from all causes, of children under five years of age, was 107; under ten years, was 61 ; and under fifteen years was 45 per 1000 living under each of those ages respectively. While in 1888-89, with only about 5 per cent. of primary vaccinations to births, each of these death-rates had fallen enormously. The death-rate under five years had declined to 63, that under ten years to 35, and that under fifteen years to 25 per 1000 living at each of the given ages respectively.
        "This would represent a saving of about 880 lives under five years, of about 988 lives under ten years, and of about 1080 lives under fifteen years of age, inclusive and respectively for each year in Leicester.appendix

These figures as compared with times of high vaccination mean an additional saving of about 1400 lives each year in Leicester alone, above the normal rate of saving in England and Wales. If this extra gain could be similarly achieved by the cessation of vaccination in the population of the whole country, other things being equal, it would mean an enormous saving of life .......of about 189,000 lives would be effected. Even allowing an ample margin for possible errors in the calculations of the Registrar-General, these figures are sufficiently momentous to claim serious consideration.