The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1910-01-12
AUDI ALTERAM PARTEM.

Editor Advertser:--In your issue Of
the Sth inst, under the heading, Vac
cination Problem" you say;
up to the time of the last legisla-
ture there was a compulsory vaccina-
ton law on the statute books, but the
usual fight was started against it, and
as a result it was wiped out and an
other law substituted which makes it
hard for the authorities to protect the
health of the children and of the com
munity.'
IT, sir. you desire the public to I'M
! derstand that the new law makes it
difficult to protect the health of the
children and of the community be-
cause of impediments it puts in the
way of vaccinating children, then
must say, your dictum will appear to
many as incredible as the "quicunQue
vult" of theology That inoculating
the clean healthy body of a child with
the excretions from running sores on a
sick calf, can possibly conduce to the
child's health, or to that of the COM
munity is, again | say it, incredible.
AS to the business of such process pre-
venting smallpox let me speak pre-
sently. Solons or not, the members
of the last legislature only did what
the mother OF parliaments before them
had done, for in 1907 compulsory vac
cination was done away with in Great
Britain. That a majority of medical
men think such legislation worse than
foolish, does not make it so, numbers
have no special merit of themselves,
unless they happen to be on the side
of truth. Many learned and thought
fuf men, the world over, look upon
the whole story of Vaccination from
the days when Jenner was fussing
round the diseased teats of the Glou-
cestershire dairy-maids' cows, even to
these times, as an error that has prov
ed misleading and disastrous beyond
expression. Let it be remembered
that, for eighty years after Munro, M.
D., F. r. s., of Edinburgh, had called
attention to the wrongfulness of vene-
section, the practice of bleeding con-
tinued and ! am old enough to have
seen scores of people depleted of their
life's blood Also it is well to bear in
mind that, incubation for smallpox
was practiced with the full approval
of the medical profession for 100 years.
1t is now prohibited by law and it's
practice punished as a penal offence.
w Scott Tebb. NJ. D., M. A., (Can-
tab, a physician, and the son of
physician, says, in his exhaustive work
"A Century of Vaccination" p. 403,
lin due course of time the tradition Of
the dairy maids of Glouchestershire
will take its proper place among the
legends and folklore of the past; and
if allowed to prophecy, l cannot help
thinking that another generation will
look back with amazement and incre-
dulity that for 100 years the people
of Great Britain should have worship
ped at the shrine of a strange, un-
reasonable and mischievous super
stition"
Dr. Charles Creighton, who for his
pre-eminent professional and scholar
ly abilities was chosen to write the
article on Vaccination for Encyclope-
dia Britannica, says, the "Anti-Vac-
cinators have knocked the bottom out
of grotesque superstition" Further
says this accomplished physician,
"the history of vaccination from it's
beginning to its present position is a
refreshing illustrator of the truth
that medical science is human first
and scientific afterwards"
DR. Miller an eminent physician of
Pittsburg, writing to Ebert Hubbard,
says, Vaccination is a crime
We must defeat the effort of the man
who would make sick an entire com
of well people in the fear that
a small portion of 1t may get sick.
We must denounce the idea that a
healthy person is a menace to any
body We must see that our children's
education is not predicated on the
point of a poisoned quill"
1t may, sir, be difficult for laymen
to get at the truth of the pro and con
the subject of vaccination,
especially if they have a weakness for
reading medical journals. In verifi-
cation of this let us mention the oft
repeated statement of the immensely
greater mortality from smallpox in