The Case AGAINST Vaccination By M. BEDDOW BAYLY M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P. June 1936 BRIEF HISTORY OF THE RITE EFFECT OF VACCINATION IN ENGLAND. NO PROTECTION AGAINST SMALLPOX Dangers of Vaccination. THE subject of Vaccination, which for more than a century has been a matter of acute controversy both in medical and lay circles, is, fortunately, one on which anyone capable of appreciating figures can form a sound opinion. As Dr. Guy, F.R.S., said long ago, there is no answer to the vaccination question, but such as is couched in the language of statistics.* Of scientific basis or justification for the practice there is none, and the history of vaccination is the record of a superstitious rite pursued by a series of methods each in turn abandoned when experience proved its danger, and presenting a trail of extravagant claims not one of which has stood the test of time. Even Dr. Major Greenwood, Chief Statistician to the Ministry of Health, declared in 1929 that: " In Jenner's classical paper no mistake was omitted that could possibly have been made, and there was a good deal of evidence that Jenner had been a rogue." In his well-known work, " Epidemics and Crowd Diseases" (1935), Professor Greenwood wrote: '' Most of Jenner's time during the last twenty years of his life was spent in attempting the impossible, i.e., in attempting to convince his correspondents that no properly cowpoxed person could get smallpox." (p. 264) *All medical authorities quoted in this article are provaccinist. BRIEF HISTORY OF THE RITE. The custom of inoculating with smallpox matter had been introduced into this country about 1721, and, being acclaimed by the Royal College of Physicians as " highly salutary to the human race," was assiduously carried out until 1840, when, on account of the disastrous spread of smallpox which resulted, it was made a penal offence. Meanwhile the practice of inoculating "cowpox" matter had been introduced by Edward Jenner in 1798 and termed "Vaccination." The original source of his vaccine lymph was the matter from ulcerating sores on the udders of cows, a disease transmitted by the filthy hands of the milkers; he discarded this later for the greasy discharge from sick horses' heels; but since then there can hardly be an available species of animal but has been used to supply the "virus." As was stated in an editorial comment in the Lancet of May 13th, 1922: "No practitioner knows whether the lymph he employs is derived from small-pox, rabbit-pox, ass-pox, or mule-pox." Dr. Monckton Copeman, Inspector to the (then) Local Government Board, favoured matter taken from a smallpox corpse in the post-mortem room, inoculated first into monkeys, next into calves, and then into children, but for many years now the Ministry of Health have repeatedly confessed their complete ignorance in regard to the ultimate source of their own official supply. For a hundred years one or other of these varieties of diease-matter was used for the vaccination of children, the strain bring carried on by the arm-to-arm method. However, this was proved to result in so many deaths from infantile syphilis in children under one year �the annual death-rate increased, after vaccination had been made compulsory in 1853, from 380 in that year to 1,813 thirty years later�that the medical profession was unwillingly forced to abandon this method in 1898, since when glycerinated calf-lymph has been substituted. This preparation was described by Sir George Buchanan, M.D., F.R.S., Chief Medical Officer to the Local Government Board, as a preposterous adulteration. Be that as it may, the fact remains that during the last 30 years 272 children under five have died from the effects of it, according to the Registrar-General's returns, while only 107 have died from smallpox. Moreover, the increasing incidence of cerebro-spinal disease during recent years led to the appointment of two British Committees to investigate the matter, with the result that the causal relation of vaccination to certain of them has been definitely established, and it is now recommended by the Ministry of Health that the lymph in present use be still further diluted, and the "insertions" reduced from four to one; this, too, in spite of the fact that for the last 130 years it has been claimed that the protection afforded by vaccination is directly proportional to the virulence of the reaction and the area of skin affected. The Circular to local authorities (1929) embodying these recommendations was accompanied by the further advice that primary vaccinations in children of school age or adolescents should, on account of the danger of encephalitis, be discouraged except in the case of actual contacts with the disease. EFFECT OF VACCINATION IN ENGLAND. Let us now see what effect Vaccination had in England. We have all heard much of the terrible nature of smallpox in pre-vaccination days; Dr. Killick Millard describes it as "a good example of the blood-curdling sort of stuff which the pres...