The Story of a Great Delusion in a Series of Matter-of-Fact ChaptersWhite, William
History
The Story of a Great Delusion in a Series of Matter-of-Fact Chapters
White, William
Vaccination
But when or where has such comparison been even attempted? Nor
would it be easily practicable: for the vaccinated comprise
the best portion of the community, physically; but who are the
unvaccinated? They are the waifs and strays of civilisation, the
offspring of the miserable and the vagrant, who, without fixed
domicile, escape the attention of the vaccination officer. These,
whatever their ailment, whether measles, pneumonia, diarrhœa, would
exhibit a higher rate of mortality than the vaccinated; but would
it therefore be safe to argue that vaccination was not only good
against smallpox, but against measles, pneumonia, and diarrhœa?
Yet it is these, the lowest physically and most neglected of the
population, who drift into smallpox hospitals, who are exhibited as
fearful examples of the neglect of vaccination. It might be added,
they are unbaptised as well as unvaccinated, and probably the one
defect may be as prejudicial as the other.
UNVACCINATED DEATH-RATES.
Our contention does not end here. Such is the prejudice in favour
of vaccination that a bad case of smallpox is assumed to be an
unvaccinated case. Over and over again has it been proved that
vaccinated patients dead of smallpox have been registered as
unvaccinated, their death being taken as evidence of the absence of
the saving rite. Again in severe smallpox, when vaccination marks
are invisible, the sufferer is frequently set down as unvaccinated.
Dr. Russell, of the Glasgow Hospital, relates that patients
entered as unvaccinated, showed excellent marks when detained for
convalescence. Had they died, they would have gone to swell the
ranks of fearful examples.
It is thus that the high death-rates of the unvaccinated are
accounted for, the framers of hospital reports appearing to vie
with each other in extravagance. We are continually adjured in
the newspapers to confess our folly and repent, because 40 or
60 or 80 per cent. of the unvaccinated have perished in this or
that hospital _because unvaccinated_. To us such statistics have
fraud written on their face, and the more they are sworn to,
the more unscrupulous do their vendors reveal themselves. When
all were unvaccinated last century, the hospital death-rate of
smallpox ranged about 18 per cent. Now we are asked to believe
that death-rate has doubled, trebled, quadrupled, and for no other
reason apparently than to make for the glory of vaccination.
NURSES EXEMPT FROM SMALLPOX.
IV.--It is further said that nurses in smallpox hospitals never
contract smallpox because they are revaccinated.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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