Page:Vaccination a delusion.djvu/17

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CHAP. I
EARLY FAILURES OF VACCINATION
11

lished many letters and pamphlets against it up to the time of his death in 1815.

Mr. "William G-oldson, a surgeon at Portsea, published a pamphlet in 1804, giving many cases in his own experience of small-pox following vaccination. What made his testimony more important was that he was a believer in vaccination, and sent accounts of some of his cases to Jenner so early as 1802, but no notice was taken of them.[1]

Mr. Thomas Brown, a surgeon of Musselburgh, published in 1809 a volume giving his experiences of the results of vaccination. He had at first accepted and practised it. He also applied the "variolous test " with apparent success, and thereafter went on vaccinating in full confidence that it was protective against small-pox, till 1808, when, during an epidemic, many of his patients caught the disease from two to eight years after vaccination. He gives the details of fortyeight cases, all within his own personal knowledge, and he says he knew of many others. He then again tried the " variolous test," and found twelve cases in which it entirely failed, the result being exactly as with those who were inoculated without previous vaccination. These cases, with extracts from Brown's work, were brought before the Royal Commission by Professor Crookshank. (See 4th Report, Q. 11,852.)

Again, Mr. William Tebb brought before the Commission a paper by Dr. Maclean, in the Medical Observer of 1810, giving 535 cases of small-pox after vaccination, of which 97 were fatal. He also gave 150 cases of diseases from cow-pox, with the names of ten medical men, including two Professors of Anatomy, who had suffered in their own families from vaccination. The following striking passage is quoted:—"Doctrine.—Vaccination or Cow-pox inoculation is a perfect preventive of small-pox during life. (Jenner, etc.) Refutation.—535 cases of small-pox after cow-

  1. The cases of failure of vaccination here referred to are given in Mr. William White's Story of a Great Delusion, where fuller extracts and references will be found.