Catoctin clarion. [volume] (Mechanicstown, Md.) 1871-1940, 1908-10-29
COMPULSORY VACCINATION
KNOCKED OUT.
Illinois Supreme Court Declares a
Healthy Child Cannot be Depriv-

Ell or School EdncatlOil.
The Supreme Court of Illinois has
knocked out the compulsory vaccination
law declaring it to be unconstitutional.
The decision is as follows:
"a healthy child cannot be deprived
of the right of public school education,
simply because it has not been operated
on by surgeon with intent to render
this child immune from certain disease.
This case is an attempt to have Writ of
Mandamus issued compelling School
Board to accept as pupil a certain child
that has not been vaccinated. This
Court does not find that a healthy child
is dan ger, or menace to pupils or teach
ers. Therefore to deprive him of school
privileges is to him wrong and an in
Justice. In the case at the bar the child
is not on trial. OF himself he could new
err BE- expected to go to physician and
asked to be vaccinated. All of his in
stincts are against the operation. 1fany
one is guilty of violation of the law it is
the parents or guardians of the child. If
they are guilty of crime let them be
fined or imprisoned, but we see no pre-
cedent in American law for visiting
hardship upon children because their par
ents have done wrong. This point seems
to be covered by the Constitution which
expressly provides against strange and
unusual punishments. And most certain
ly the law does not provide that the in
nocent shall suffer for the guilty.
"rhis Court does not attempt to decide
whether vaccination is a prophylatic
against disease-we merely hold that it
has not been shown that a healthy child
is menace or danger to his fellows.
That the young shall be educated is very
desirable; and the attempt to deprive
certain children of the right of public
school advantages is very serious mat
ter. The dangers arising from ignorance
and idleness are quite as immanent as
that arising from smallpox.
ITO use the leverage of coercion or in
limidation, with patental love as full
crum, and thus force parents to do GER
tain things against the conscience is
neither ethical nor equitable. AS legal
resort it is unjustitiable.
Counsel has intimated that while the
child may not at present be danger to
his school fellows, yet the fact that he
has not been vaccinated will in after
years make him danger to society.
"This is too anticipatory for this Court
to consider, but granting the argument
we do not see how the enforced illiteracy
and ignorance of the child is going to
limit the dangers of infection. if unhap-
PLY he shall at some future time con-
trait smallpox All that we now de-
eide is that the public school system shall
not be misused for the punishment of
delinquent parents. Let the Writ of
Madamus asked for be issued"
In regard to the above decision the
Waynesboro. Pa, Herald, says:
"Illinois is the first state to stand out
boldly against vile practice more con-
sonant with state Of society in darkest
Africa where the fetch doctors still treat
patients with horrid rites of the ignorant
savage. To pollute the springs of life
with the rotten filth of dead animal It's
sue swarming with millions of disease
germs in the hope of comforting immuni
ty from disease which never attacks
clean persons is not doctrine to appeal
to the people of this century. 1t is worse
than paradoxical to ask person to keep
his streets and his dwelling in good SAN
itary condition and the skin of his body
clean and then inject under that protec-
tive skin the rotten pus which nature in
adherence casts off from a fostering
sore.
1.-The same unfortunate doctors who
are so vocferously persistent in advocat-
ing compulsory vaccination to preventC0
smallpox stand agape and utterly help
less in the presence of cancer which each
year kills far more than the former dis
ease and each year is increasing more
rapidly than any other known disease.
They know nothing of it's cause, its cure,
or even it's nature. In treating it they
blunder blindly from a nostrum to the
knife with only one thing certain death.
This, everyone who has given any atten-
ton to the matter, must have discovered,
cancer in it's various forms is only in
creasing with resistless certainty in those
nations given to the vaccination craze
1t is not particularly astute man who
is needed to see that there is at least
plausible connection between the cancer
jawed bovine and poor rotting human
being. into whose veins the rotten bovine
pus has been pumped by jealous ex-
FOUNDER of the virtues of incubation.
The connection is more than plausible
when it is looked into more carefully to
find that statistics are so strongly mass
ed that their very volume becomes terri
bly, convincing.
'In Pennsylvania the next legislature
must deal with the question of compul-
sorry vaccination as it affects our schools.
The state superintendent of public in
struction has plainly put the incongruity
of a compulsory school law and a vacci-
nation law drafted as ours is to defeat
the school law. That education is of
vastly more Importance than the doubt
full remedy for an easily preventable dis
ease, is certain, and it may be that since
Illinois has so bravely pointed the way to
Scotch the head of the vaccination snake