Newark evening star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1909-1916, 1914-10-08
WOULD EBATE
WITH WORL ON
VACCINE MERITS
Anti-compulsory Society Men,
bers Challenge Contagious
Disease Bureaus Head.

James c. Corlies and Richard Min
thorne, of the Anti Compulsory Vac
cination Society of New Jersey. have
challenged DR.. Edward e. Worl, SUI
perintendent of the Newark Board of
Health's bureau Of contagious dis
ease, to a debate on the merits of
vaccination.
In q recommendation of compul-
sorry vaccination of school children,
made to the Board of Health this
week, DIR. Worl said:
Vaccination and revaccination,
properly performed and kept cleanly,
are complete protection against
smallpox
The "antis" have replied as fol-
lows:
October 8, 1914
To the Editor of the Evening Star:
IN looking over DR.. Edward E.
Worl's report, made to the Board of
Health Tuesday night, 1t seems
some things that could have been
stated were left out. If the object is
to conserve the public health and
safeguard the Taxpayers pocket,
why not employ the best available
means? Why conflne the operation
to school children alone, which care
fully studied records show comprise
only one-fourth of the population of
our city and are far less susceptible
to disease than the adult population
Our own statistics, as well as that
of other cities, show the age rang
ing between five and nineteen years
(school period) the case rate, also
the mortality is ten times less than
that of the other three-fourths of the
population. Furthermore, the chill
1FaV 6xF Of haf nv
ment, are confined to circumscribed
limits, and therefore must necessar-
lily have less opportunity to come in
contact with contagion and infection,
and also act as carriers of disease
why not exempt the children and
compel the larger and more suscep-
tible body to undergo the torture
those, who while following their va
rious vocations, travel into all parts
of the world and come in direct con-
tact with all kinds of conditions, and
by their constant changing from
place to place act as prolific carriers
of contagion. The doctor says vac
cination is a medical treatment to
protect against disease but does it?
Just at the present time smallpox Is
raging to q fearful extent In Japan
(see New York Medical JournaD,
and the reports state 1t Is of such
virulent character that the au-
thorities have resorted to the ex-
treme measure of killing some OF the
advanced cases to arrest Its spread
which vaccination has failed to do
Japan has practiced q most rigid
kind of compulsion for twenty-four
years, requiring every man, woman
and child to be vaccinated and re-
vaccinated, beginning with the child
when five months old,
"In the national government report
for 1910 there appears to have been
over $4,000 cases, all of which had
been vaccinated and revaccinated,
with an accompanying mortality of
thirty-two and one-half per cent.
Last December there occurred an
epidemic of smallpox among the
crew of 500 on the battleship Ohio,
every one of whom had been .vacci-
mated and revaccinated within a pc
Rod of two years. The Medical Re-
port shows there followed twenty
nine cases and six deaths, a case rate
greater than there is any record of
before Sir Edward Jenner foisted his
swine-pus, horse grease, cowpox de-
coction upon the people.
"If a similar attack under parallel
conditions should visit Newark, we
would awake to the fact there would
appear 13, 900 cases of smallpox fol-
lowed by 900 deaths. Did compulsory
vaccination spread smallpox in Ja-
pan? 1t certainly has not prevented
it. We send to Japan for much of
our smallpox virus.
I'VE will be greatly pleased to
meet Dr. Worl or any other yaccin-
list in a public discussion of this
subject Will he accept the chal-
lenge?
JAMES c. CORLIES,
"RICHARD MINTHORNE,
ANTI Compulsory Vaccination So
ciety of New Jersey"