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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 40

Mr. Wheeler's Opening Speech

Mr. Wheeler's Opening Speech.

Mr. Wheeler, on being called upon by the Chairman to open the discussion, was greeted with hearty cheers. He said :—I have to take a single objection, to the negative being put first; the affirmative usually goes first, but Dr. Wyld wishes the last word, and I was perfectly willing to concede him any such advantage.

In opening this debate, we begin in the middle of our subject. We ought to have commenced seventy years before we do; we ought to have commenced in 1721; we ought to have commenced with Lady Mary Montagu; we ought to have commenced with inoculation; we ought to have commenced with the pitted faces which we hear of so frequently as being common in our forefathers' time. Those pitted faces and the prevalence of small-pox were entirely due to this—that the doctors in the previous century considered a person was a fool and a fanatic who would not consent to have the small-pox either in the natural way or by inoculation. The result was that a great portion of the population, especially in the southern counties of England, did have the small-pox, and that population largely afflicted with the small-pox lived in the only portion of England in which there was any attempt at registration; and consequently while the bills of mortality for the city of London contain a large number of deaths from small-pox, in times long previous to registration,* they do not contain any account of those districts in the country, where there was no small-pox, districts which Jenner, and Lettsom, and Blane mention, when they say whole counties were sometimes for years exempt from it.

M'Culloch's "Statistical Account of the British Empire" gives an account of 4095 persons who were insured in the Equitable Society, and who died between 1801 and 1832; and of this large number of insurers there was only one who died from small-pox. Now, that reveals to you a condition of things which perhaps may occasion some surprise. You have been told that all the counties of England were devastated with "natural" small-pox to an enormous extent, but the statement is unsupported by facts. It was

* English registration began in the year 1838.

page 5 artificially-produced small-pox in the main. This point must be understood before you can arrive at the condition of things which existed at the time of Edward Jenner.

After these preliminary remarks I should like to open this debate with a motto from John Stuart Mill :—"He who knows only his own side of the case knows but little of that."

Dr. Farr has stated our case in words which we need not to improve upon, that we declare vaccination unworthy of public support "because it is fatal, is ineffectual, and is the means of propagating odious diseases." With that sentiment I entirely agree, and I propose briefly, and as clearly as I can, to lay before you what are the facts in proof of it.

To-night we have to deal with a gentleman who agrees that vaccination spreads disease. We will take that point first. Vaccination spreads disease; it spreads erysipelas; it spreads syphilis—the vilest of diseases; it spreads skin disease. If you want the proof, I refer you to the return printed by order of the House of Commons, which proves that syphilis is spread to a large extent, and that there is a great extension of syphilis since vaccination was made compulsory, especially in children under one year of age. The whole, or nearly the whole, of the increase of deaths from syphilis since 1853 is in children under one year of age. And nearly the whole increase in erysipelas since 1853 has taken place in children under one year of age. These are facts that will have to be explained; and I know of nothing that can satisfactorily account for them but vaccination. Dr. Martin, a great authority for Dr. Wyld, freely admits those two points. He says, "Erysipelas is the bane of human vaccination," and that "no care in the selection of virus, no study of seasons, or of the condition of patients, affords any means of escape whatever—it is the inseparable concomitant of arm to arm vaccination." He confesses, in terms which are not so strong as those of Dr. Warlomont of Brussels, that syphilis is equally communicated; and we have the Government Blue Books containing statements which have been too much over-looked, showing that this horrid contamination has been communicated to the misfortune of a great number of people.*

This, then, as to spreading disease; but where disease is disseminated many will die, and the return I have quoted gives us

* See the Blue Book of 1857.

page 6 the deaths. The excess of deaths now constantly augmenting, as vaccination is more and more stringently enforced, of all the diseases I have named children are dying in increasing numbers; and, in the Registrar-General's return, you will find now a regular division for erysipelas. Twenty-nine such deaths after vaccination are reported in 1874; thirty-seven in 1875.

Vaccination is also inefficient, and cannot do away with small-pox. It is inefficient, because, since Jenner pronounced his dictum, we have had numerous epidemics, namely, in 1818, 1825, 1838, 1865, 1871, and the present epidemic in London, which has been going on for three years. This proves that small-pox is not done away with, and that vaccination is inefficient. Then, another important fact is, that the infant death-rate is increasing. The Registrar-General's report for 1875 acknowledges this in the broadest manner. He says that the general death-rate of infants under one year from 1861 to 1870 was 154 per thousand births; and that in 1875 it was 158. This, you see, is an increase now going on at the present date. And I understand Dr. Wyld to concede a large amount of this. It is conceded on all hands. There is not a medical report published in which much of this is not conceded. That being so, what does Dr. Wyld say? I have in my hand a letter of Dr. Wyld's, published in the Newcastle Chronicle of 1st March, 1878, in which he says :—"In the days of Jenner the lymph used, being only a few removes from the heifer, was so good that its use almost stamped out small-pox in these islands." Now as to the facts. Did it stamp out small-pox in the time of Jenner? If small-pox was not stamped out at all in the days of Jenner, Dr. Wyld's ground is gone. Jenner, we bear, commenced his enquiries when he was a lad. He was inoculated when a boy; he "was starved till he was thin, and was bled till he was weak," prior to the illness from small-pox, after inoculation; and he felt it was a misery which it would be well to get rid of; and that was the general experience; so that it was a good thing for the people of England that inoculation was got rid of. Jenner did away with inoculation by substituting his practice, and we will give him that credit. When he, in 1798, published his Inquiry, he asserted that he had found a "a true cow-pox." There were several sorts, but he had found the true one, which was capable of being inoculated in the human frame. This was his point, and he asserted that it afforded a perfect protection from small-pox. He went on increasing the positiveness page 7 of his assertions, and published further observations in 1799. These statements of Jenner are most positive; and I shall quote from his works a statement than which nothing in language could be stronger or plainer. He says :—"To have admitted the truth of a doctrine at once so novel and so unlike anything that had ever appeared in the annals of medicine without the test of the most rigid scrutiny would have bordered upon temerity; but now when that scrutiny has taken place, and when it has been found in such abundant instances that the human frame, when once it has felt the influence of the genuine cow-pox, in the way that has been described, is never afterwards, at any period of its existence, assailable by small-pox, may I not, with perfect confidence, congratulate my country and society at large on their beholding, in the mild form of the cow-pox, an antidote that is capable of extirpating from the earth a disease which is every hour devouring its victims—a disease that has ever been considered as the severest scourge of the human race?" Those are the words of Dr. Jenner in 1799. I defy any man to find human language stronger, more positive and exact than that. He went on to publish the "Origin of Variola Vaccinæ" in 1800, and in this he asserts, only four years after his first vaccination of the poor lad Phipps, "that it became too evident to admit of controversy; that the annihilation of the small-pox must be the final result of the discovery." Nothing can be stronger or clearer than his assertions on this point at this time. If we find that these assertions are the mistakes of ignorance or credulity, then we must conclude that Dr. Wyld is mistaken, and that both Dr. Jenner and Dr. Wyld are equally deluded. In 1802, after the issue of his Inquiry, &c., Dr. Jenner was induced by his friends in London to go to Parliament and ask them to award him something for this wonderful discovery. Jenner "was a man of a mild and retiring disposition;" but he asserted that the world had never before received such a discovery, and that it was worthy of national support. Parliament appointed a committee to inquire into the matter, and the committee called before them certain doctors, including Dr. Lettsom, a Quaker—I say it to his dishonour—who persuaded the committee that Jenner's statements were true. I shall be glad if, being myself a Quaker, I can do something to undo the mischief which the powerful tongue of Lettsom helped to fasten on the world. Lettsom used his great powers of persuasion before the committee, which reported to page 8 Parliament that something handsome ought to be awarded to Jenner, because "vaccination would absolutely extinguish small, pox in these realms." This was what Parliament reported only six years after the first inoculation with cow-pox. Jenner, aided by such powerful friends, and by unfounded assertions, obtained the reward of £10,000, and he came and took a house in London. And it was after this he wrote a letter to a friend, in which he said—"Vaccination is placed on a rock immovable." I think so too; it was placed on the rock of the £10,000 vote, which committed the Government to the practice. Now if the life of Jenner had never been published, he would have stood before the world as never having modified the positive statements we have quoted, and which were the ground of his reward; and yet he wrote to a friend—"The public thinks it is not a complete protection," and during the sitting of the committee to Mr. Hicks, "Don't listen to every blockhead who says it fails." Baron says that in 1804 failures began to multiply; persons had small-pox who had been vaccinated. In 1806 the failures multiplied still more; but not-withstanding that, Jenner managed to get £20,000 more, and that completed the £30,000 which "a grateful country" awarded to him for his words, and for his words alone.

In 1809 there was a small-pox epidemic, which might have been due to the inoculators; I cannot say; but Baron says that in consequence "Jenner and vaccination were again put upon their trial." "Put upon their trial" seven years after Jenner had got £10,000 for "exterminating the small-pox;" seven years after President Jefferson had written from Virginia, "You have banished from human ills its greatest;" nevertheless, vaccination was "again put upon its trial!" Jenner then propounded a new theory to the world—that vaccination protected from small-pox as much, and no more than small-pox itself protected from a recurring attack. That theory was invented and propounded to the world in 1809, and he clung to it tenaciously to the day of his death, asserting, in the face of the positive statements I have quoted from his book, that he never claimed for it any greater protection. He wrote to Miss Calcraft in 1811—"What if 100 or 500 persons have small-pox after cow-pox, as many can be produced who have had small-pox after small-pox." That, however, was nothing to the point; for his strong case was that none who were vaccinated could possibly take it. Inoculators had likewise claimed that persons who had small-pox by inoculation could not have page 9 it again a second time; and when Jenner was before the committee he told them that vaccination protected completely, while inoculation only partially did so. How do facts agree with Jenner's continued declarations that cow-pox protected a person from small-pox as much as an attack of small-pox itself? Mr. Marson reported that, between 1836 and 1851, 3094 persons were in the small-pox hospital after having been vaccinated, and in the same period only 49 persons were admitted for small-pox who had had the disease previously.* Jenner was, therefore, as thoroughly wrong with his second doctrine as with his first.

Indeed, Baron saw some difficulty respecting this modified averment of Jenner's, and declared, "It is a great pity that the modified statements of Dr. Jenner were not propounded to the world." I think so too. I think it is the greatest pity of this century. I think if he had propounded this modified statement that Parliament would never have granted him the money; I am perfectly certain of that; because it would have been said, "In-oculation protects as far as that; we want to do away with smallpox altogether." In 1810 Jenner wrote to one of his friends, "I can collect cases of small-pox after small-pox in thousands," as if the proved failure of inoculation did something to strengthen his case. In 1811 there came a clinching argument in what is known as the Grosvenor case. Lord Grosvenor took the small-pox. The doctors said, "It cannot be small-pox, because Dr. Jenner vaccinated you." That was said in sober earnest; and it was sometime before they would believe that this bad case of confluent small-pox occurred after vaccination. The result was a commotion in this city which Jenner could not withstand, and he retired before it and went to Berkeley, and he never appeared here again as a public man. He wrote :—"The town is a fool, an idiot. I shall collect all the cases I can of small-pox after small-pox; it will be the best protection from the past and that which is to come." Did he foresee all this agitation against his theory? did he see the mistake he had made? Then why, if, as he had professed, "his only aim was the truth," did he not confess his mistake and give up the money?

But that is not all. We will go on to 1814, and I wish you to mark these years, for they show a distinct development in Jenner's

* Blue Book, 1857.

Baron, Vol. II., p. 135.

Baron, Vol. II., p. 161.

page 10 mind; they show experience and fact disproving the superstition. In 1814, Lord Ellenborough in the House of Lords spoke of vaccination as not being a perfect preventative. Yet Von Soemmering (Munich) in the same year wrote,—"You have delivered mankind for ever from the small-pox." A year after small-pox was very fatal in London, and Jenner actually penned these words—"The medical ignorance of the practice will stop the protection." I cannot explain how; I will leave Dr. Wyld to do that. In 1818, there was another epidemic, more malignant than the last; and it is at this period, sixteen years after Jenner had stated that he would exterminate small-pox, that we are treated by Dr. Hennen of Edinburgh to the doctrine that "vaccination modifies small-pox." That is the date of the invention of the modification theory. Then we are told by Jenner that it was carelessly performed, and he writes in great distress that vaccination is being discredited publicly. He is extremely bitter with Drs. Moseley and Squirrel, and they deserve his condemnation for seeking to spread and continue inoculation. But that was not the point. Jenner wrote against them for condemning vaccination, and says,—"Don't mind these hissing serpents." Those were his words against his fellow-doctors; I am not going to say anything so strong to-night. In this year poor Phipps died, after being inoculated twenty times.

In 1821 Jenner sent out a circular to most of the respectable medical men in the kingdom; in it he asked for the fruit of their observations respecting the course of the vaccine disease, and also as to whether cases of small-pox in vaccinated persons had been observed. "The answers which he received to his circulars were numerous, and in general satisfactory."* So said Mr. Simon as regarded the answers given to his circulars in the 1857 Blue Book. And yet the answers to Mr. Simon's inquiries contain a large array of facts condemnatory of his conclusions. I wish we knew what was in those answers sent to Jenner. The only one printed is not from a medical man, but a clergyman who vaccinated, and whose faith was in no wise shaken though he had observed or heard of "modified small-pox" in vaccinated persons, which he mysteriously calls "cutaneous small-pox." This is the only answer given, and I conclude that the others must have been more unfavourable still.

* Baron, Vol. II., p. 273.

page 11

In 1823 Edward Jenner died. "And in 1825 small-pox was as prevalent in London as during any of the three great epidemics of the preceding century."* This was two years after Jenner's death. I wish he had lived to see that epidemic, because I think he must have given vaccination up. Jenner was a timid man; he could not stand a great deal of opposition. He was too nervous to give his evidence to the Parliamentary Committee viva voce, and I think he would have had honesty enough to acknowledge the failure had he lived till 1825. This, then, is the case as regards the days of Jenner. Small-pox was no more banished then than now. It was more prevalent than it had often been. And as to vaccination, the whole of the assertions as to its value were made before proof was possible. And the nation stood committed by a Parliamentary vote to the practice before time had proved the assertions of its partisans to be unfounded, to be the delusions they were afterwards demonstrated to be by the stern logic of experience.

We have, then, in these facts and this experience, a complete case against vaccination. Does not this history prove our case? Dr. Wyld says that, "in the days of Jenner, the lymph used was so good that its use almost stamped out small-pox in these islands."

Was small-pox stamped out? It was not. It was extremely prevalent. Within two years of his death as prevalent as during any part of the eighteenth century.

I want to know where it was "stamped out." Not in London; not in Carlisle; not in Reading. I want to know where it was stamped out; and I wait for a reply.

* Born, Vol. I., p. 272.