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
Here we note, first, as in all the other communities we have dealt
with, the general correspondence between the two lines of total disease
mortality and small-pox mortality, resulting from the greater attention
given to sanitation and to general health conditions of both forces
during the last thirty or forty years. But, instead of small-pox
mortality absolutely vanishing with the complete revaccination in the
Army since 1860, it shows but a small improvement as compared with
general disease mortality; just as if some adverse cause were preventing
the improvement. In the Navy the improvement is somewhat greater, and
more nearly comparable with that of general disease mortality. There is,
therefore, as regards proportionate decrease, no indication whatever of
any exceptional cause favourably influencing small-pox.
In diagram XII. I compare the small-pox mortality of the Army and Navy
with that of Ireland from tables given in the _Final Report_ and the
Second Report; and we find that this whole country (at ages 15-45) has
actually a much lower small-pox mortality than the Army, while it is a
little more than in the Navy, although the mortality during the great
epidemic was higher than any that affected the Army or Navy, owing to its
rapid spread by infection in the towns. But the proportionate numbers
dying of small-pox in a series of years is, of course, the final and
absolute test; and, applying this test, we find that these revaccinated
soldiers and sailors have suffered in the thirty-one years during which
the materials for comparison exist, to almost exactly the same extent
as poor, half-starved, imperfectly vaccinated Ireland (p. 65)! Another
and still more striking comparison is given. The town of Leicester is,
and has been for the last twenty years, the least vaccinated town in the
kingdom. Its average population from 1873 to 1894 was about two-thirds
that of the Army during the same period. Yet the small-pox deaths in the
Army and Navy were thirty-seven per million, those of Leicester under
fifteen per million.
Thus, whether we compare the revaccinated and thoroughly “protected” Army
and Navy with imperfectly vaccinated Ireland, or with almost unvaccinated
Leicester, we find them either on a bare equality or _worse off_ as
regards small-pox mortality. It is not possible to have a more complete
or crucial test than this is, and it absolutely demonstrates the utter
uselessness, or worse than uselessness, of revaccination![24]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account