established in neighboring cities, an effort was made to enforce compulsory vaccination. The result was, that large numbers of the Catholic working population resisted and even threatened bloodshed. The clergy at first tolerated and even encouraged this conduct; the Abbé Filiatrault, priest of St. James's Church, declared in a sermon that, "if we are afflicted with small-pox, it is because we had a carnival last winter, feasting the flesh, which has offended the Lord; . . . it is to punish our pride that God has sent us small-pox." The clerical press went further: the Étendard exhorted the faithful to take up arms rather than submit to vaccination, and at least one of the secular papers was forced to pander to the same sentiment. The Board of Health struggled against this superstition, and addressed a circular to the clergy, imploring them to recommend vaccination; but, though two or three complied with this request, the great majority were either silent or openly hostile. The Oblate Fathers, whose church was situated in the very heart of the infected district, continued to denounce vaccination; the faithful were exhorted to rely on devotional exercises of various sorts; under the sanction of the hierarchy a great procession was ordered with a solemn appeal to the Virgin, and the use of the rosary was carefully specified.
Meantime, the disease, which had nearly died out among the Protestants, raged with ever-increasing virulence among the Catholics; and the truth becoming more and more clear, even to the most devout, proper measures were at last enforced and the plague was stayed, though not until there had been a fearful waste of life among these simple-hearted believers, and germs of skepticism planted in the hearts of their children which will bear fruit for generations to come.[1]
Another class of cases in which the theologic spirit has allied itself with the retrograde party in medical science is found in the history of certain remedial agents; and first may be named cocaine. As early as the middle of the sixteenth century the value of coca had been discovered in South America; the natives of Peru prized
- ↑ For the opposition of conscientious men to vaccination in England, see Baron, Life of Jenner, as above; also vol. ii, p. 43. Also, Duns's Life of Simpson, London, 1873, pp. 248, 249. Also, Works of Sir J. Y. Simpson, vol. ii. For a multitude of statistics showing the diminution of small-pox after the introduction of vaccination, see Russell, p. 380. For the striking record in London for 1890, see an article in the Edinburgh Review for January, 1891. The general statement referred to was made in a speech some years since by Sir Spencer Wells. For recent scattered cases of feeble opposition to vaccination by Protestant ministers, see William White, The Great Delusion, London, 1885, passim. For opposition of the Roman Catholic clergy and peasantry in Canada to vaccination during the small-pox plague of 1885, see the English, Canadian, and American newspapers, but especially the very temperate and accurate correspondence in the New York Evening Post during September and October of that year.
