Mr. Wheeler's Second Speech.

Mr. Wheeler—Dr. Wyld cannot do it; it is forbidden. There is a penalty of £50 for every one inoculated, or three months' imprisonment. Dr. Wyld has gone through a variety of statements, and at last has produced the calf lymph. I expected it would have come first. Dealing with Dr. Wyld's objections, I think I have proved that Dr. Jenner was not accurate, and we need not pursue that. Dr. Wyld has told us that 45,000 died in England immediately preceding the days of Jenner. I deny that entirely. My denial is worth nothing, but if you will look at Dr. Lettsom's Life and Letters on page 121 of the second volume, you will find how he uses a supposed fact to prove this. 3500 lives were lost by small-pox in London in a particular year. Dr. page 19 Lettsom says you must multiply this into the supposed population of England. But nobody knew it; our Registrar-General was appointed in 1838, and no one in England can tell further than by surmise and "estimate" what the population was prior to that date. I beg you to mark this carefully. Dr. Lettsom and Dr. Blane calculated that mortality simply in this way. I quote word for word from Dr. Lettsom's Letters :—"We may pretty accurately calculate that in 500,000 inhabitants, 200 annually die of the small-pox, or 400 in every million. Now Europe contains nearly 200 millions, and consequently the deaths in Europe would be 400,000. The globe contains probably 1200 millions, and the deaths of small-pox would be in the same ratio." I say that is the most arrant quackery that was ever written, yet those statements have been reproduced in Parliamentary Blue Books over and over again, and by Mr. Simon and Dr. Seaton as a statistical fact. I say there is nothing in it of the nature of a statistic to compare with our Registrar-General's returns. It is the wildest estimate, and made for a purpose. It is just on a par with the random statements of Dr. Jurin and Dr. Kirkpatrick, the advocates of inoculation. They stated that people who were inoculated were saved from small-pox, or died in only very small numbers, while before inoculation, the countries were decimated. Now, has Dr. Wyld produced any statistic to show decimation? None whatever. I have shown you the utter fallacy of this; it is pure conjecture, like so many other similar statements, and we don't want conjecture and supposition. Another strong point is, that the enormous mortality shown as taking place in England 200 years ago is only estimate, and is not correct as a record of fact. It is only a calculation. I wish we had Dr. Greenhow's tables here to show you; they would exhibit the utter fallacy of this argument. Dr. Greenhow puts the mortality of London for some years at 80 per 1000. The birth-rate could not be half that, so that in a few years there would not be a soul left.

But has the death-rate decreased in consequence of vaccination? In the Life of Jenner you will find these words,—"On accurate calculation it was found that one in forty-seven died in England in 1801." That is nearly 22 per 1000. What is it to-day? 22 per 1000. It has been very near that ever since Major Graham began his work, excepting in cholera years, and when scarlet fever was epidemic. You will find that although 23,000 people died of small-pox in England in 1871, the deaths from all causes were page 20 300 per million less than in the previous year. That is to say, the death-rate was slightly reduced notwithstanding this enormous mortality from small-pox.

When there is a great prevalence of small-pox the general death-rate is not increased. That is true through all the epidemic years. So far as we can gauge, there is no increase of mortality from small-pox. Let us look again at Dr. Greenhow's tables. You will find in the Blue-book this note : "Several of these years were years in which small-pox was very prevalent;" and these years are in the years selected to give the mortality as compared with our day. Further than that, 1665 is included into Dr. Greenhow's estimate of the mortality. That was the year of the plague! Can any one be surprised at the mortality? And why has the plague gone? Because our population has been more rationally treated, and because of improved conditions of living and sanitation. One hundred millions have been spent upon sanitary works. Dr. Farr states that in many towns the death-rate has been reduced by sanitary improvement as much as 5 per thousand. Sir James Simpson said that vaccination saved 80,000 lives a-year in this country. That would reduce the death-rate from 22 per thousand to 18. In 1838, the first year of registration, there were very few people vaccinated. There was no compulsion, and people did not like it, for they saw that small-pox had been reduced without it, and were quite willing to let it alone. In 1838, with very few persons vaccinated, the mortality was 22 per thousand. I want to know how the 80,000 lives saved are to be accounted for. If saved, they must have been shown in the death-rate, and they never yet have been. I think that is enough to prove that vaccination is inefficient, as has been admitted by Dr. Wyld. If once vaccinated is inefficient, will twice be efficient for protection? If Dr. Wyld had taken the trouble I have in going through these Returns,^* I think he would not have talked as he did about re-vaccination. 43,000 out of 83,000 small-pox deaths, from 1850 to 1872, were under 5 years of age. Re-vaccination would do nothing for those who die far from puberty; and if vaccination cannot protect under five years, it never can protect at all. I told you that Jenner went through a long development, but we have not heard a word about that from Dr. Wyld, or any expla- page 21 nation of it. I told you he began with a tremendous statement, which gradually came down to nothing. We have been told that the vaccine gets weakened through 80 years. But where will you begin to look for the weakening? Suppose we begin in 1812, when Jenner lived. You will find from one of his letters that this weakening was alleged in his time, not long before his death. He says—"They attribute the lessened activity of the matter which may fall into their hands, and the disposition to produce imperfect vesicles, to the great length of time which has elapsed since it was taken from the cow, and the great number of human subjects through which it has passed." These are nearly the words of Dr. Wyld. What does Jenner say to that? "This is a conjecture which I can destroy by facts." So far Edward Jenner. There is no weakening, he says. In truth there is not. The doctrine of Edward Jenner has been weakness itself from the first. Is that an answer to Dr. Wyld? Jenner adds—"If there were a real necessity for renovation, I should not know what to do, for the precautions of the farmers with respect to their horses have driven the cow-pox from their herds." Is there any need to go further than that? We are told that Jenner was not infallible. But no doctor knows anything about this subject if Jenner did not None of the innovators in this practice have anything new. Neither Dr. Worlomont, nor Dr. Martin, nor Dr. Wyld have anything new. They are but imitators; and if Jenner was mistaken, then so most grievously are they.

I understood Dr. Wyld to say that Jenner published many of the answers to his circular? Is that so?

Dr. Wyld—I said, "letters."

Mr. Wheeler—Ah, yes, letters from medical men; but I was not speaking of letters. I have quoted from the letters of medical men who helped him, and without whom he would not have done anything; but I was speaking of the circular Jenner sent out two years before he died, and I repeat that not a single medical reply to that circular was published. The circular was issued after 18 years' experience of vaccination; 18 years of development and paring down of the original claim until nothing was left. Mr. Simon also sent out a circular in 1856, and 542 answers were published, which contain a great amount of information, some of which was against vaccination; of this, and of the anti-vaccinators' arguments, he said that he did not feel called upon to answer "all this rubbish." That was in the 1857 Blue Book. There is nothing page 22 scientific about vaccination, and nothing certain about it, except its failure. The compass guides the mariner with accuracy over pathless seas; and astronomers predict eclipses with unerring accuracy. The compass and the eclipse are facts; and observed and applied natural laws are the basis of science. But Jenner's case is different; there all is uncertainty and error.

In 1815 he declared that medical men would stop the protection because they performed vaccination carelessly. And yet the same year Von Sœmmering writes him that mankind were for ever delivered from the small-pox. Dr. Sacco, Jenner declared, never failed, because he "knew what he was about," and used nothing but the lymph from the horse's heel—"virus," I call it, that is its proper name. Time after time the thing has been modified until now the original source of the virus is ignored, and what with careless vaccination, and the fear of imparting disease, the doctors are in an amazing dilemma. Hence the new departure or "revival" of Dr. Wyld and his calf lymph. As to Phipps, I never said anything about his being protected by his vaccination; I merely said he was 20 times inoculated. As to vaccinated people being incapable of receiving small-pox inoculation, Dr. Kirkpatrick states in his book, which was published soon after Jenner was born, that four per cent, could not be inoculated. Dr. Jenner also stated that there were numbers whom he could not inoculate. And ancient authors estimate a large portion of the population as incapable of receiving the infection.

Mr. Wheeler was here told that his second time was up.