[THE FALLACY OF VACCINATION By Alexander Wilder, M. D.
Copyright 1899, The Metaphysical Publishing Co., New York.](https://escapingmasspsychosis.substack.com/p/the-fallacy-of-vaccination?utm_source=email)
"Bad begins and worse remains behind.''-HAMLET.
The fourteenth day of May, 1896, was observed at several places in Europe as the centenary of the introduction of vaccination among the resources of the healing art. The event thus commemorated ,was the performing of the first operation by Edward Jenner upon a young lad named James Phipps with the result of successfully producing the characteristic vesicle of the vaccine disease.
The celebration, however, attracted but little attention; partly because those who credit the utility of the peculiar operation are indifferent to its early history, and partly because the modern notions respecting it are very widely different from those promulgated by Jenner himself. Besides, there is among profounder thinkers and observers a growing conviction that vaccination, so far from being a benefit to mankind, is itself utterly useless as a preventive, irrational and unscientific in theory, and actually the means of disseminating disease afresh where it is performed. Hence, while governments are stepping outside of their legitimate province to enforce the operation, the people who act from better information upon the subject, are steadily becoming adverse.
Several years ago compulsory vaccination was submitted to the voting population of Switzerland by the referendum, and every canton but one gave a majority against it. In other countries the governments act arbitrarily, and have conferred despotic powers upon privileged professional men, and so the practice is enforced without mercy. Its advocates have taken little pains to convince those who distrust its utility, but instead have resorted to the employment of other and often reprehensible means. Children are excluded from the public schools unless they have been vaccinated, and the attempt is made to worry and coerce the parents and guardians into compliance with the arbitrary condition by prosecutions for truancy. In many instances they have succumbed from a feeling of utter helplessness, precisely as men submit to the bastinado inflicted by Oriental despotism. In other cases, they have followed as in a groove, without considering what was right or wrong, reasonable or fallacious. Advantage has been taken of the prevalent inattention to the matter to foist upon the statutes various health regulations and other requirements, often in flagrant violation of personal rights, and with no adequate justification. Passengers upon ocean steamers are forced to submit to the operation, unvaccinated children are excluded from schools, and persons employed in factories, warehouses, and the civil service are compelled to submit to be vaccinated on penalty of losing their places. Soldiers in the army and seamen in the navy are also obliged to submit as a matter of discipline, as a century ago they were inoculated perforce for small-pox.
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