Vaccination a Delusion: Its Penal Enforcement a Crime: Proved by the Official Evidence in the Reports of the Royal CommissionWallace, Alfred Russel
Science
Vaccination a Delusion: Its Penal Enforcement a Crime: Proved by the Official Evidence in the Reports of the Royal Commission
Wallace, Alfred Russel
Vaccination
One other matter must be referred to before taking leave of the
Commissioners. I have already shown how completely they ignore the
elaborate and valuable evidence, statistical tables and diagrams,
furnished by those who oppose vaccination, such as were brought before
them by Mr. Biggs of Leicester, Mr. A. Wheeler, and Mr. William Tebb,
who, though all were examined and cross-examined on the minutest details,
might as well never have appeared so far as any notice in the Final
Report is concerned. But there is also a very elaborate paper contributed
by Dr. Adolf Vogt, Professor of Hygiene and Sanitary Statistics in
the University of Berne, who offered to come to London and submit to
cross-examination upon it, which, however, the Commission did not
consider necessary. This paper, a translation of which is printed in the
Appendix to the 6th Report, p. 689, is especially valuable as the work
of a thorough statistician, who, from his position, has access to the
whole body of European official statistics, and his discussion goes to
the very root of the whole question. The treatise is divided into nine
chapters, and occupies thirty-four closely printed pages of the Blue
Book; but, being an elaborate argument founded mainly on a scientific
treatment of statistics, there was probably no member of the Commission
capable of adequately dealing with it. Yet it is of more value than fully
nine-tenths of the remainder of the voluminous reports, with their 31,398
questions and answers. Professor Vogt’s treatise covers almost the whole
ground, medical and statistical, and enforces many of the facts and
arguments I have myself adduced. But there are two points which must be
especially mentioned. His first chapter is headed—“_A Previous Attack of
Small-pox does not Confer Immunity_.” I have long been of opinion that
this was the case, and have by me a brief statement, written six years
since, to show that the rarity of second attacks may in all probability
be fully explained by the doctrine of chances. But I had not statistics
sufficient to prove this. Professor Vogt, however, having the statistical
tables of all Europe at his command, is able to show not only that the
calculus of probabilities itself explains the rarity of a second attack
of small-pox, but that second attacks occur more frequently than they
should do on the doctrine of chances alone, indicating that, instead
of there being any _immunity_, there is really a somewhat increased
_susceptibility_ to a second attack![21] This being the case, it becomes
really ludicrous to read the questions and answers and the serious
discussions as to whether a “good vaccination” protects more or less
than a previous attack of small-pox. Some think the protection is the
same, but the greater number think it is not quite so much. Even the
most ardent vaccinists do not claim a greater protection. But none of
them ever doubt the _fact_ of the protection gained by having had the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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