Widnes Examiner. — 1886-08-14 (Widnes, Cheshire, England)

CLIFFORD DIX.  THE EARLESTOWN ANTINACCINATORS.  Sir,—Your issue of the 7th inst reports an interesting discussion at a meeting of the Warrington Board of Guardians, also a letter signed "Justice," on which I should like to make a few remarks.  It is a pleasure to note that the Guardians take a lenient view of the law-made crime of non-vaccination by p oceeding only once against defaulters, and that the magistrates also temper justice with mercy by imposing a mitigated penalty ; but still the injustice remains of treating as lawbreakers and criminals God-fearing citizens and loving parents, whose only offence is that of refusing to bow down to the dictates of a medical priesthood, and to submit their children to certain disease and possible death. Mr. Harrison referred to " Jenner'a discovery," which was no discovery but merely the appropriation of a local tradition. taught him by the dairymaids, and which farmer Jesty had put into practice years before. He next stated as a reason why vaccination must be a good thing" that they found very rarely indeed any medical man venture to oppose the practice." Mr. Harrison must be strangely ignorant of the history of medicine to talk such rubbish. Did he ever know any profession to reform itself? Did doctors abandon bleedine, salivation, inoculation, excessive purgation, or any other of the "destructive arts of healing" until the stir erior intelligence of the public revolted against such murderous blunders and compelled them to do so ? History answers no. Does he imagine that they will new voluntarily give up a nostrum which the State in the blindness of ignorance has established and endowed, and which yields them an annual income of over a million pounds sterling, unless they are forced to do so ? Let a member of their own profession reply. In vol. viii. of "The Medical Observer," London, 1810, the editor gives details of 97 fatal cases of smallpox after vaccination, and of 150 cases of injury arising from vacciliation, together with the addresses of ten medical men, including two professors of anatomy. who had suffered in their own families from vaccination. Concerning these remarkable evidences, Dr. Maclean observes:—" Although numerous, they are few in 'comparison tc what might be produced. . . . It will be thought incumbent on the vAccinators to come forward and disprove the numerous facts decisive against vaccination here stated on unimpeachable authority, or make the amende honorable by a manly recantation. But experience forbids us to expect any such fair and magnanimous proceeding, and we may be assured that under no circumstances will they abandon so lucrative a practice. until the practice abacdons them," Now for tbe anonymous writer who, under the signature " Justice," upholds the vilest injustice that ever desecrated the name of law, or trod mercilessly under foot the most of human and parental rights—the crying injustice of compulsory vaccination, a law which none but tyrants could have passed; which none but slaves should obey. When a law comes into conflict with reason, right, and truth, resistance, not servile obedience, is the duty of every citizen. 'roe responsibility of Guardians and Magistrates to God and man is above their responsibility to the law of the land, which, as in the else before us, may be vile and corrupt and oppree'd to the commonweal. " Justice" need not fear that "the structure of antivaccination will be scattered to the winds." It stands on too firm a basis for that. Already. the law is virtually a dead letter in Leicester, Keighley, Dewskury, and other towns; whilst house to house canvasses Tonducted in 40 towns and villages hive attested the fact, long known to the leaders of the agitation, that over 90 per cent of the adult householders of those towns are opposed to compulsory vaccination. And if " Justice " survives a few years more he may possibly see the same fate befall vaccination as happened to the antecedent medical delusion inoculation, which, after a reign of 120 years, was in 1840 made a penal offence.—Yours very truly,  WM.