"Anti-Humbug" versus "Anti-Prejudice"
-of compulsory powers availed himself of the local news sheets in his endeavour to prove that those who had signed the petitions more from prejudice than from reason, and signed himself Anti-Prejudice. He was soon, however met with rejoinders, not only from local ant-vaccinators, but also from a person at Tunbridge Wells, who, for his signature used the prefix anti in a difference sense. I will therefore call his communication "Anti-humbug" versus "Anti-prejudice". The former wrote as follows:-
Sir,—“Anti-prejudice” and vaccination! what a droll combination of words! Can ”Anti-prejudice” know the meaning of the compounds comprised in his signature? Prejudice has been defined as ”judgment without enquiry,” and it is more than a hundred years since as Essayist wrote :—
”Prejudice is that habitual notion of things and persons that a man receives from the information of others; it is early engrafted in the mind and the last to be got rid of. It is the sense of a second person, which a man makes use of for his own, and is led into the fatal mistake of believing that the effect of his judgment which came to him another way......The exertion of this no-principle will produce equally terrible or equally calm actions of life, and a man shall reckon it either his duty to sit still, or murder just as any young imbibed opinion directs him...... Thus, whatever is done upon this foundation, though never so faulty, shall find advocates, because it meets with some similitude of action in your neighbour, and that is reason enough for his approving it.”
Before ”Anti-prejudice” again assumes his pen and a nom de plume, I would tenderly advise him to consult some sensible friend, if he have one.
”Anti-prejudice” would cram Mr. Marson down our throats; but, who is Mr. Marson? He is a member of a self-constituted clique of medical quacks who have the vanity to style themselves the ”Epidemiological (query illogical) Society,” the folly to thrust their unasked-for advice upon Parliament, and the impertinence to require power to coerce into the acceptance of their opinions and their nostrums a free and thoughtful people. Mr. Marson is likewise resident surgeon to the Small-pox and Vaccination Hospital; he-is a mere trader in cow-pox vaunting his wares, and what is death to others is more than sport—it is life—to him.
Mr. Marson states that he vaccinated more than 40,000 persons—poor things!—and that.he has never seen any evil results traceable to vaccination, When evil results follow, he would attribute them to other causes. Is Mr. Marson sincere? Because he can wield a lancet and inflict disease, is he therefore qualified to trace cause and effect? Is Mr. Marson fitted with even ordinary powers of observation? I have seen a man daily, for months, stand before a fire, and that same man afterwards printed a book descriptive of certain scenes, in which, describing that very apartment, I had so often seen him warming himself, he says: “Of course there was no fire there.“ Some persons have not the gift of observation.
Even if Mr. Marson be qualified to observe and to trace cause and effect, has he honestly endeavoured to do so? How many cases has he followed to their homes and watched through subsequent years after they had passed from his cruel hands and without the doors of his slaughter-house? Mr. Marson reminds me of a celebrated quack who kept a record of all persons who consulted him. An inquisitive friend of mine visited him, and, on looking through the record, observed opposite every name the word “ cured,“ although it seemed that the great majority never paid the second visit. “How is this,” said my friend, “those people do not seem to have come a second time, and yet you mark them cured?—how do you know they are cured?” “For that very reason,“ said the quack, “because they never returned.“ But if those patients swallowed the quack’s prescription, perhaps their friends could tell a different tale, and thus it may be with many of the victims of Mr. Marson’s quackery. Go where one will, one hears lamentable accounts of the evil consequences of vaccination.
In your columns deaths from vaccination have been frequently reported on the authority, of the weekly returns of the Registrar-General. Is Mr. Marson ignorant of those important papers? Apropos to this question, in the current weekly number, he may find the following:—
“Greenwich, East.—At 3, Bromley place, on 19th September, the daughter of a waterman, aged 3 months, ‘erysipelas (after vaccination), convulsions,’ ”
Poor murdered innocent !—the victim of quackery misnamed science! How many similar cases are never reported? How many deaths from convulsions are attributed to teething, which should be attributed to vaccination ?
Is Mr. Marson acquainted with the opinions of his late colleague and senior, Dr. George Gregory? who declared that vaccination does not lessen the general mortality—that its blessings (whatever they may be) are met and counterbalanced by the law of vicarious mortality; and that, contrary to what obtains amongst the unvaccinated, the susceptibility to small-pox increases amongst the vaccinated as life advances. In short, vaccination is a great juggle.
Does Mr. Marson know that Gregory neither vaccinated nor inoculated in his own family? and that Jenner (!) inoculated his second child ?
Mr. Marson is not aware of any evil consequences resulting from vaccination. Has he read the writings of Copland, Bayard, Carvot, De Lisle, Lutze, Zimpfel, Schreiber, Nittinger, and others? If not, the sooner he informs himself the better. A few extracts may be useful here. Io his “Dictionary of Practical Medicine“—a text-book of the Profession—Dr. Copland, after quoting Rilliet and Barthez, says, “that scrofulous and tubercular affections have increased since the introduction of vaccination is undoubted.......As already shown, it cannot be doubted that vaccination favours the prevalence of the several forms of. scrofula.” (Part 15. Article, Scrofula.) Again:—“At the time of my writing this, just half a century has elapsed since the discovery and introduction of vaccination; and after a quarter of a century of most transcendental laudation of the measure, with barely occasional whisperings of doubt, and after another quarter of a century of reverberated encomiums from well-paid vaccination boards, raised with a view of overbearing the increasing murmurings of disbelief amongst those who observe and think for themselves, the middle of the 19th century finds the majority of the Profession, in all latitudes and hemispheres, doubtful as to the preponderance of advantages, present and prospective, to be obtained from inoculation or from vaccination.“ (Part 15. Article, Small-pox.)
This revival of the controversy as to the respective merits (or demerits) of vaccination and inoculation—of tweedledum and tweedledee—is the condemnation of both.
Dr. Bayard says:— ”Since vaccination, mortality has doubled amongst the French youth. The military hospitals ere doubly peopled. The number of marriages has augmented in proportion double the number of marriageable females by the rapid succession of second marriages. Fertility has diminished. Constitutions and the public health have become worse. Mental and bodily infirmities have increased. Existing generations have deteriorated. The proportion of adults to minors is no longer what it was in the eighteenth century, consequently the tables of mortality of Davillard and Duparcieux are no longer correct. The nation, by the daily loss of its best strength, overburthened with old people and children, beholds the public misery increasing, and hastens on rapidly to decay. Mr. Herpin and others had noticed this displacement by smallpox in the age of the vaccinated, which caused M. Serres to say— 'Whereas, amongst the unvaccinated, mortality strikes the young under ten years and afterward declines; amongst the vaccinated, oo. the contrary, it is from this age up to 28 or 30 that the mortality is highest.'” as —Influence de la. Vaccine sur le population, p. 10.)
M. Anceton shows that ”The vaccinated child of five years is more liable to smallpox than the unvaccinated child of the same age.”
M. Garnot says:—” The babe just born had, in the 18th century, a probability of living 16 years; in the 19th century, 26 years. On the other hand, in the last century; the young man of twenty years had a probability of adding 37 years to his life; to-day the young man of the same age can only hope for 26. The budget of death has not diminished, it is filled with the corpses of the youth of from 18 to 30 years old.”
M. Carnot finds the cause in vaccination.
Dr. Woirot is of opinion that,—” Notwithstanding that the mortality of all ages has successively diminished, that of the period from 10 to 30 years has considerably increased. A disturbing cause has therefore appeared in our day, not only to arrest, during that period of life, the progressive decrease of mortality, but even to give it an impulse in the opposite direction.”
Dr. Woirot is of opinion that this cause is vaccination.
M. Castel says of vaccination:— ”How much this practice (on which we had built the most flattering hopes) has left of taint in the animal juices, has caused of dissolution in the elements of life, is manifest; so great is the temerity to oppose an obstacle to an eruptive malady, so difficult is it to supply the place of nature.”
M. Anceton says:—” One is moved at the thought of a vaccine constitution.” ”Vaccination,” says Professor Trousseau, ”is an error which has had its turn.” ”Government,” says Professor Chrestien, ”will perhaps be obliged to repel it with as much energy as they propagated it.”
In another place, M. Anceton says:—” The German populations, astonished at having to confide in the assertions of a few vulgar milkers, have never yielded with a good grace to the interested zeal of the vaccinators; the medical police, armed in this country with the rigour of a Deaconian law, could never make them comprehend that inoculation with the product of the morbid secretions of cattle should be without danger, when the same police forbids them, under pain of hideous and mortal diseases, to use the flesh of these same contaminated animals. They have instinctively divined, even before M. le Docteur Boissot (1815), before MM. Teuffer and Berlan, before the publication of those satires, the orders for re-vaccination in the Prussian army, that cow-pox has its errors, weakness and eccentricities, and that far from causing variolous epidemics to recede a hair’s breath, it only facilitates their development. This sentiment of popular hostility, partaken successively by a considerable number of learned physicians in different states of Germany, found on the borders of the Rhine a worthy interpreter in Dr. E. Schreiber, who wrote an eloquent argument against vaccination, in 1832, In his opinion, ‘the vaccine juggleries have been accepted too carelessly and without examination.’”
Dr. Zimpfel says:- ”Every practical physician, whose conscientious efforts are directed, not to treat the maladies of his neighbours superficially, but to cure them radically (which can only be done by discovering the cause of the evil, as far as the fundamental laws of nature permit), is forced to confess that, notwithstanding the immense progress of science in every country, the general infirmities increase more and more, in a dreadful manner, amongst all civilised people.”
Dr. Zimpfel attributes this deterioration to vaccination.
Dr. Lutze says:-”If by these communications we are satisfied that there is Sufficient proof of the inutility and absolute uncertainty of vaccination, another question arises, namely, as regards the danger of the proceeding.
Reil alleges that malignant cow-pox is accompanied by violent inflammations, fevers more or less violent, and ulcers difficult to cure. Exanthematic cow-pox displays, in its diverse modifications, scurf, corroding scabs, erysipelatous inflammations, &c., noticed. by Peerson, Sedfearn, Balhora, Val. Muller, and Stromeyer, Hafeland, Reil, Jarandt, and others, make similar mention. of this exanthem, and Jong communicates several. cases where it degenerates into furuncule. Michaelis gives several cases of scurf and corroding scab. Schreiber gives many cases of metastases from this exanthem—inflammation of the eyes, affections of the glands and bones, of which even Schoenlein makes mention, as the consequence of vaccination. That during dentition vaccination carries off many children, is a fact beyond the least doubt, although they attempt to place it to the account of the teeth. The Court physician, Rublack, at Dresden, although a zealous partizan(sic) of vaccination, warns respecting this period. At this time it is greatly to be feared, lest, exacting too much activity from the system of lymphatic vessels by means of vaccination, and the disturbing consequences thereof, a vicious weakness be engendered of which scrofulous diseases are somewhat later the pernicious results. Also, Schoenlein, as well as Aken, pronounce similarly, and, nevertheless, so many children are vaccinated at this period! Moreover, every year we have distinctly recognised that the vaccine lymph not only is the principle of contagion of simple cow-pox, but that it propagates dartres, scab, scrofula, s—s. There are numerous examples of the communication of s—s by vaccination. Dr. Evertzan relates a remarkable one :— An infant, apparently full of health, who had not a single defect. in his whole body, but whose mother had been attacked by. s—s, communicated this disease to six children by means of: its cow-pox. These children infected their mothers who pursed them. French doctors, especially Ferguson and. Raspail, furnish abundant similar examples. _Raspail alone. observed 60 cases in 1845. Very recently, Nov. 10, 1853, many cases, in which, through the medium of. vaccination, s had been transmitted to children, and by. them to their mothers, were tried before the tribunal at Bamberg, putting beyond doubt the gravity of the danger of vaccination. Similar cases which occurred at Cologne were communicated by the public press”
Dr. Verdi de Lisle says:- ”The human race degenerates. The present generation is the prey of new maladies, and a number of old ones have become more frequent, more grave, more deadly. The efforts of Government are useless; progress is paralysed; there is a radical evil.... The sole cause of multiplied disasters is vaccination.”
Drs. Michell, M.P., Hering, Liedbeck, Chapman, Shew, Trall, Johnson, Newman, Schiefferdecker, Laurie, Chepnell, and a host of others, bear similar testimony. The compulsory, vaccinator, Mr. Borham, confesses that ”this vitiated virus is transmitted to scores of others, who shortly after suffer from fulsome eruptions, or the foundation is laid for, scrofula or tuberculous consumption.” And the Lancet admits that ”few medical practitioners would care to vaccinate their children from a source of the purity of which they, were not well assured.”
Here are a few opinions- with which ”Anti-prejudice” may season the opinions of Mr. Marson.
Mr. Marson will not admit that. the diseases which frequently immediately follow vaccination result from it. Has he quite considered what he says? of what avail in such cases is his vaccination? With all his boasted experience, does he really know cow-pox when he sees it? Does he ever mistake another exanthem for cow-pox.? Is he aware: that, according to the best authorities, genuine cow-pox cannot be communicated when another disease lurks in the blood, but a spurious cow-pox is the result of vaccination.
”Anti-prejudice” desires to know, ”from statistics, the proportion of blind now and before vaccination was introduced.”
I know not if ”your energetic correspondent” (whoever he may be) to whom ”Anti-prejudice” appeals, will respond, but, in case he should not, let me advise. “ Anti-prejudice” to apply to his friend, Mr. Marson, and perhaps he may oblige him with the desired information. In the meantime, ”Anti-prejudice” might profitably cogitate upon the influence which enforced inoculation must have had (before the practice became illegal) in spreading death and blindness throughout the community.
As “ Anti-prejudice” and Mr. Marson betray so much fondness for statistics, let me indicate two more directions in which they might usefully push their researches:— the one is to ascertain the relative proportion of children respectively attaining a healthy maturity in a thousand vaccinated and a. thousand unvaccinated:— the other is an enquiry into the cause of the ”constant tendency in the general mortality of the country, to an increase,” as noticed by Dr. Farr, in a recent blue-book.
In return for Mr. Marson’s statistics of deaths from small-pox, allow me to present ”Anti-prejudice” with the following :—In 1850, in the General Hospital, Calcutta, the deaths from small-pox, amongst the vaccinated, were twenty-four per cent.
For my part, it would require something more than the interested vaunts of Mr. Marson to tempt me to buy and use his filthy, pernicious nostrum. ‘To ask a rational being to believe that health can be propagated by the transmission of disease, is to insult his intelligence. A belief in the transmigration of souls, or in the Popish dogma of transubstantiation, is a trifle to the belief in vaccination, Cow-pox repelling, or expelling, small-pox! Satan casting out Satan! Credat Judaeus!
What share of good sense, independent thought, and reasoning power, can be accorded to the believers in vaccination? The root of this fallacy may be traced far back to barbarous times and the love of the marvellous. Achilles imagined he had found a prophylactic in his dip in the Styx — but his heel showed he was vulnerable. The alchymists sought for the elixir vitae, which was to confer immortality, and fancied they had found it. The belief in prophylactics still lingers to testify to the credulity and cowardice of a part of mankind. They would be-wiser than their Maker and improve their organization. Jenner dexterously ministered to their weaknesses, or their vices, and made his fortune. Recent imitators propose inoculation with-s—s as a prophylactic against scarlatina, and inoculation with mingled adder’s poison and rotten liver as a prophylactic against yellow-fever. Madness and impiety !
Physicians find their account in upholding delusion. Doctor-craft aspires to an equality with priest-craft, and humbug in physic is fashionable and profitable. But common sense and science repudiate the belief in a prophylactic. There is no such thing, in the sense in which vaccinators use the word. The only protection against disease is to be found in maintaining the vis vitae by living in accordance with the natural laws—by attention to diet, temperance, air, temperature, ventilation, exercise, rest, clothing, cleanliness, and the due control of the moral and mental faculties.— I am, sir, your obedient servant,
ANTI-HUMBUG.
Tunbridge Wells, Oct. 6, 1856.
