The compulsory vaccination and re-vaccination of prisoners is a merciless and indiscriminating rule, as witness the following case of Catharine Thomson, whose death was reported in the Glasgow Evening Citizen of January 2nd, 1895:

"The woman was forcibly re-vaccinated in Duke Street Prison on or about December 13th. Seven days afterwards, on her release from prison, her arm was swollen and inflamed, and from the vaccine wound a dark coloured matter was running. The woman complained of extreme pain in her arm, and in a lump that came in her breast. The inflammation increased until it extended from the tips of the fingers to the face, round the lower jaw, and embraced the shoulder and part of the breast. The woman continually complained of the pain, and of a coldness in the arm and down the side. A neighbour was kind to her and rubbed her shoulder with mustard oil to relieve her, but with little effect. The woman, on her release from prison, attempted to follow her usual occupation as charwoman, but had to desist, her arm was so bad. She got weaker daily, and died on January 1st, some 17 days after vaccination. Before her death her cry was 'The vaccination has killed me; what call had they to vaccinate an old body like me?' The official finding as to the cause of death was effusion into the pericardium due to inflammation; heart disease; both lungs and liver diseased. The certificate of death is no doubt perfectly proper, but might it not be advisable that more care should be exercised in the choice of subjects for the lancet? Vaccination is surely gone mad when a poor, puny, miserable old creature, with heart, lungs, and liver diseased is operated upon.

"W. G. UNKLES."

Passing over such features of the vaccine coercion as summonses, fines, distraint sales, by which parents are rewarded for their devotion to their principles-mentioning but incidently the extra compulsion applied to our soldiers, sailors, policemen, postmen, and other Government employees, which is no trifling subjection, and again,

the compulsion which is employed in public works, in public schools, and in many private families-we have to consider the heartlessness of the workhouse vaccinations. In this case you frequently see a mother who suffers from compulsion in the first instance, in that she is compelled, through starvation, to go to the workhouse to give birth to her child. Children born under such circumstances have no ordinary difficulties to contend with, for endowed with but a feeble physical vitality, they would need the tenderest nurture, and much more favourable surroundings to give them anything like a fair chance in the struggle for existence, without having inoculated into their systems a disease which causes such a constitutional disturbance as does cow-pox, as usually applied. But what will be said of vaccinating such children when but a few days old ?1 Yet with the sanction and under the authority of the Local Government Board this is the habitual practice in some of the Metropolitan workhouses." A circular addressed to Clerks of Guardians, dated January 27th, 1881, and sent to all the Unions, says:—

"Some Boards of Guardians have passed a resolution requiring the medical officer, subject to the exercise of his judgment as to making exceptions in particular cases, to secure the Vaccination of all children born in the workhouse as soon as possible after birth; and it has been found practicable, as a rule to vaccinate children when six days' old, and to inspect the results on the thirteenth day, as the mothers, in such cases, rarely leave the workhouse within a fortnight after their confinement."

1 All children born in prisons are vaccinated "as soon after birth” as the medical officer thinks it safe and desirable to perform the operation.

2 The Camberwell Guardians deserve the thanks of all humane people for checking this brutal practice of vaccinating new-born infants in workhouses.

Exercising his judgment, the medical officer of the Lambeth Infirmary was in the habit of vaccinating children 24 hours old! I am not aware that the custom in this institution has been altered or humanised. This is indeed a striking example of how a mere official may "exercise his judgment." Happily this instance has no parallel, to my knowledge; but my object in citing it is to show to what extent the abuse may be carried, and that there is nothing to prevent any doctor who chooses, to satisfy a caprice, from doing the same. There are, however, plenty of milder cases, such as vaccinating. infants under seven days old, and so on.

THE EVANGEL OF SANITATION.

A word as to sanitation. Who but ignorant reactionists would think of enforcing on us by pains and penalties a silly and injurious rite in preference to a sound body and a sanitary life. Darlington, for instance, has had national experience on a small scale. Small-pox used to be a constant pest in a part of the town which, under the Artisans' Dwellings Act, was demolished. This deadly place, this plague-spot, disappeared, and with it nearly all the small-pox. Only a very few cases have since been in the town; but typhus went at the same time. The two diseases travel hand in hand, and the sanitation which banishes the one as surely stamps out the other. The case of Leicester, now so well-known, is undoubtedly the most striking example of the value of sanitary measures. This is ably presented in the Fourth Interim Blue Book of the Commission on Vaccination, by Mr. J. T. Biggs, of Leicester, who ably held his own against the banded critics whose professional reputations are involved in Jennerism. In Leicester actual legal

powers do not exist; vaccination is wholly optional. All the thirty importations of small-pox between 1874-89 inclusive, were, says Mr. Biggs, promptly stamped out, and in that period of sixteen years the town saved £11,120 by their system. The saving of life that would result if the Leicester ratio could be spread over the whole populalation of England is given by Mr. John Pickering, F.S.S., in his work on "Sanitation and Vaccination," viz. :

"No fewer than 146,992 lives would have been saved annually, which were otherwise lost presumably through the untoward influence of vaccination. Even if we allow the 46,992 lost lives to be deducted from the calculation for possible error, the result is sufficiently appalling to arrest the attention of the most thoughtless mind in the country."

What but sanitation and science destroyed the terrible sting of those most mortal of plagues-e.g., sweating sickness, black death, Oriental plague, and the lesser scourges? Yes, what of the more devastating European plagues, in comparison with which small-pox is a trifle? What protects us from such epidemics now? Isolation and disinfection; sufficient and good sanitation; better homes. and better food. For a verity, these. Had England -say of 1660-79-been left as she was, with one-fifteenth part of it lakes, stagnant water, and moist places, the chill damp of marsh fever everywhere, houses of wood and mud, small, dirty, ill-ventilated, no sunlight, the floors covered with foul-smelling rushes or straw, the food scanty (little varied, with few vegetables, and little fruit and much salted meat); would any form of inoculation have accomplished what sanitation has done? You think not, yet it is now proposed to inoculate and re-inoculate with animal poisons for all and such zymotics! One thing is certain, cleanliness is becoming

the evangel of our time. True, side by side with its growth grows the craze for inoculation. But the process of forcing the human body into febrile states is vain and culpably erroneous. Prophylaxis depends upon hygienic discipline and on sanitary environment. Shams must go. The only perfectly clear and intelligible course is to teach that zymotic diseases, if at all, are alone preventable by cleanliness. While the laws of health are totally disregarded, one or another of the epidemic forms of disease will keep knocking at the gate to remind us of our duty— that what we need are good conditions of living, and wholesomeness of food, clothing, and abode. No good ever came of vaccination since it was discovered, and no good ever can. The civilisation and cleanliness which banished the plagues of the seventh century will do the same with small-pox: for vaccination will not, whether with human lymph, or calf lymph, or kind; or with one mark, four marks, twenty marks; and in the form and application in which it is compulsory on child life and adult life, it is an utter and disgusting failure. The people of this country would never submit to compulsory vaccination and re-vaccination again and again, said by the secretary of the Jenner Society to be the only efficient protection, which is tantamount to keeping the body for ever in a state of fever and poison, on the supposition that if you have one disease you cannot take another, until that has run its course-a generalisation which will not bear the test of inquiry, like all generalisations of such a nature, and which is, indeed, far from being well-founded. Such an assault of the person is, however, altogether out of reckoning; we have to deal in the present case with vaccination in its compulsory aspects only.