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
Diagram IX. is equally important as showing a remarkable correspondence,
if not a causal relation, between vaccination and disease. From 1848
to 1862 there was a considerable decrease of both general and infant
mortality, and also in infant mortality from small-pox. This, Mr. Biggs
tells us, was when important sanitary improvements were in progress.
Then the more thorough enforcement of vaccination set in (as shown
by the dotted line), and was accompanied by an increase of all these
mortalities. But so soon as the revolt against vaccination began, till
the present time, when it has diminished to about 2 or 3 per cent. of
births, all mortalities have steadily decreased, and that decrease has
been especially marked in infant lives. It is very suggestive that the
lines of infant mortality have now reached the position they would have
had if the slow decrease during 1850-60 had been continued, strongly
indicating that some _special cause_ sent them up, and the _removal of
that cause_ allowed them to sink again; and during that very period
_vaccination_ increased and then steadily decreased. I venture to declare
that in the whole history of vaccination there is no such clear and
satisfactory proof of its having saved a single life as these Leicester
statistics afford of its having been the cause of death to many hundreds
of infants.
Diagram X. exhibits the check to the decrease in infant mortality, both
in London and for England, since the enforcement of vaccination (p. 57),
and thus supports and enforces the conclusions derived from the preceding
diagram.
THE ARMY AND NAVY
I next discuss in some detail what is undoubtedly the most complete and
crucial test of the value or uselessness of vaccination to be found
anywhere in the world. Since 1860 in the Army, and 1872 in the Navy,
every man without exception, English or foreign, has been vaccinated on
entering the service, though for long before that period practically
the whole force was vaccinated or revaccinated. Diagrams XI. and XII.
exhibit the result of the statistics presented to the Commission, showing
for the Navy the death-rate from disease and that from small-pox for the
whole force; and for the Army the death-rate from small-pox for the whole
force, and that from disease for the home force only, foreign deaths from
disease not being separately given.
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