My life : a record of events and opinions - Wallace-online.org

330 MY LIFESome of these I was able to test by reference to theoriginal authorities, and also to the various Reportsof the Registrar-General, Dr. Farr's evidence as tothe diminution of small-pox before Jenner's time, andthe extraordinary misstatements of the supporters ofvaccination.Mr. Tebb supplied me with a good dealof anti-vaccination literature, especially with " Pierce'sVital Statistics," the tables in which satisfied me thatthe claims for vaccination were enormously exaggerated,if not altogether fallacious. I also now learntfor the first time that vaccination itself produced adisease, which was often injurious to health and sometimesfatal to life, and I also found to my astonishmentthat even Herbert Spencer had long ago pointed outthat the first compulsory Vaccination Act had led toan increase of small-pox. I then began to study theReports of the Registrar-General myself, and to drawout curves of small-pox mortahty, and of other zymoticdiseases (the only way of showing the general courseof a disease as well as its annual inequalities), andthen found that the course of the former diseaseran so generally parallel to that of the latter as todisprove altogether any special protective effect ofvaccination.As I could find no short and clear statement ofthe main statistical facts adverse to vaccination, Iwrote a short pamphlet of thirty-eight pages, entitled" Forty-five Years of Registration Statistics, provingVaccination to be both Useless and Dangerous."This was published in 1885 at Mr. W. Tebb'sexpense, and it had the efifect of convincing manypersons, among whom were some of my personalfriends.A few years later, when the Royal Commission onVaccination was appointed, I was invited to become