PART I.
Small-pox Mortality and Vaccination
HAVING BEEN LED TO INQUIRE FOR MYSELF AS TO THE EFFECTS OF VACCINATION in preventing or diminishing Small-pox, I have arrived at results as unexpected as they appear to me to be conclusive. The question is one which affects our personal liberty as well as the health and even the lives of thousands; it therefore becomes a duty to endeavour to make the truth known to all, and especially to those who, on the faith of false or misleading statements, have enforced the practice of vaccination by penal laws.
I propose now to establish the following four statements of fact, by means of the only official statistics which are available; and I shall adopt a mode of presenting those statistics as a whole, which will render them intelligible to all. These statements are
(1) —That during the forty-five years of the Registration of deaths and their causes, Small-pox mortality has very slightly diminished, while an exceedingly severe Small-pox epidemic occurred within the last twelve years of the period.
(2) —That there is no evidence to show that the slight decrease of Small-pox mortality is due to vaccination.
(3) —That the severity of Small-pox as a disease has not been mitigated by vaccination.
(4) —That several inoculable diseases have increased to an alarming extent coincidently with enforced vaccination.
The first, second, and fourth propositions will be proved from the Registrar-General’s Reports from 1838 to 1882; and I shall make the results clear and indisputable, by presenting the figures for the whole period in the form of diagrammatic curves, so that no manipulation of them, by taking certain years for comparison, or by dividing the period in special ways, will be possible.