Mr. Wheeler's Third Speech.

Mr. Wheeler—I will answer your three questions now.

1st.—How is it that it is impossible to inoculate a person with small-pox who is vaccinated?

I say it is not impossible. Jenner himself managed it, as you will find by Baron's Life.

Dr. Wyld—I have just read Baron's Life of Jenner, and I deny the statement. (Cries of "Where's the book?")

Mr. Wheeler—On page 445 of the first volume of Baron's Life, and page 29 of the second volume, you will find the proof. Jenner says—"The insertion of variolous virus will produce, upon a person who has previously had the cow-pox, a pustule capable of communicating the small-pox."

2nd.—Why are there seven times as many unvaccinated die as vaccinated in the hospitals?

This also is not the statement of a fact. The classification is made on the entrance of the patient into hospital, when the marks cannot be seen, and Dr. Russell in the Glasgow Hospital Report shows, that in consequence of their not being crowded, they kept the patients until recovery, and that the vaccine marks in some cases reappeared, and the hospital register was altered from un-vaccinated to vaccinated. This was the case, sir, with those who recovered, but how about those who died? Why they, of course, remain to improperly swell the unvaccinated death roll. And in London the hospitals have not been so favourably placed, and we hear nothing of such a change of registration. But if unvaccinated die at thirty-three per cent, now, they must also have done so before inoculation and vaccination were invented. And yet Jurin, in 1723, estimates the deaths from the natural, and unvaccinated small-pox when people were not inoculated at one in six. The report I hold in my hand states that out of 14,808 cases of smallpox in the small-pox hospitals of London during the year 1871, page 25 11,174 were vaccinated. That is from the report of the medical officers. I have given you facts which you can verify. I repeat that seventy-five per cent of the cases in the Metropolitan Small-Pox Hospitals in 1871 were vaccinated. More than that, these persons in 1871 died at just the rate Jurin records in 1723. There cannot, therefore, be any reduction in the number of deaths in any way. And the explanation is, that the classification is incorrect, and the error is made by recording those only as vaccinated who show marks on entrance. The disease obliterates the marks, and, consequently, those severely affected who yield nearly all the deaths are recorded as unvaccinated.

Dr. Wyld's third point is that vaccination from the calf will not produce syphilis. Here I propose, in a few seconds, to run through the calf lymph case. Will you be good enough, Dr. Wyld, to tell me the source of your lymph? I presume it is Worlomont's or Martin's? (No answer.)

Well, calf lymph has been used since 1815. It has been used in Brussels, in Paris, Rotterdam, Berlin, St. Petersburg, and America, and Dr. Seaton in his report is dead against the practice. Dr. Ballard and Dr. Seaton have both been to the Continent to report upon it; and upon their report Dr. Seaton says—First, as to its origin—that it was from no distrust of their lymph that the calf lymph was produced (p. 174; Report, 1870); that it was not from Beaugency stock alone; and that it often failed in the commencement at Brussels, &c., and was renewed from Paris. Secondly, as to its success in producing vesicles. He says the failures at Paris were 21 per cent., and at Rotterdam 12 per cent., and that success at Brussels was too favourably recorded, the number of vesicles being not more than two-thirds of the insertions. I say that in no place has calf lymph been adopted first of all because of syphilis. And in France and Belgium, the countries where it has been most adopted, they have not a compulsory law—to their honour be it said. Dr. Worlomont says that in Belgium the use of calf lymph was resorted to because parents were reluctant to bring their children for vaccinifers. They had to bribe the parents, he says, to bring their children in order to get lymph. Dr. Martin, of America, has sent me, an anti-vaccinator, several letters and much information, for which I honour him. Dr. Martin records that for a long time he vaccinated with human lymph on one arm and with cow-pox from the heifer on the other, and that it was because he saw the constant appearance of erysipelas on the arm done with human lymph page 26 that he abandoned the practice. He says: "During the 16 years in which I supplied humanised virus the presence of this pest—erysipelas—in my own practice, and in that of my correspondents, was the one great and serious drawback—the one formidable source of anxiety and blame." That is the reason for the use of calf lymph; it had nothing to do with syphilis in the first instance. The fear of syphilis is used to bolster up the practice. What better should we be if we adopted calf lymph? Dr. Seaton informs us that "the natural cow-pox by artificial transmission through a succession of animals, undergoes just the same sort of modification that it does by transmission through the human system of children" (p. 182; Report, 1870). This is in direct contradiction to Dr. Wyld. But if we have to trust to this calf-to-calf system, will it protect from small-pox? Dr. Seaton says, emphatically, "I think it must be obvious that, by the adoption of such a practice, we should be greatly weakening our defences against small-pox. The chance of protection to each individual would be largely diminished, and the danger to the community of spreading the small-pox greatly increased." And, further, he says, "Striking exemplifications of the danger to the community of confiding in animal vaccination during an outburst of smallpox has been given during the recent epidemic at Paris." "The failures have been quite remarkable" (p. 188).

And as to Dr. Wyld's third question: Can you deny that syphilis cannot be communicated by calf lymph? I think I can say it is. For Dr. Seaton is pretty emphatic in a foot-note on this point, He says: "Dr. Worlomont informed me that on more than one occasion practitioners who had vaccinated children with some of his animal lymph had told him of symptoms following, which, if they had not known the source of the lymph, they would have considered an imparted syphilis; and there have been lately lively discussions in France over some cases of syphilis appearing in children who had been vaccinated from a heifer, the local syphilitic symptoms manifesting themselves, it is said, at the vaccinated spots, at the termination of the vaccine process—cases which, no doubt, had humanised lymph been used, would have been alleged to be cases of infection introduced by it" (p. 188; Report, 1870). That, Sir, seems to me to completely answer the whole of Dr. Wyld's case. In every instance it fails. In every period of this superstitious usage it changes and alters to meet the notorious want of success. The failure is complete.

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The practice of vaccination is based upon this monstrous dogma, that you must disease the infant life of the whole world; that, further, you must disease the human life of all the world at puberty. And I say that that is a proposition so monstrous, that the sanction of no Legislature, the sanction of no Senate, the sanction of no Throne, can long maintain it.