might not have it at all. This filtered through to the Ottoman Court, and in 1721 Lady Wortley Montagu, wife of the then Ambassador, was so struck with it that in her letters to London she told them that everybody in Turkey was being inoculated with small-pox. Coming from such a person and from the very cream of Society the people were taken with it, and it became the fashion through the length and breadth of England to inoculate with small-pox. But they soon found that it spread the disease tremendously. It was between 1700 and 1800 that small-pox was so rife. You don't see so much now. Why? They were then giving people small-pox right through the country by inoculation. Dr. Bond talks about the unanimity of the profession. Why, the whole profession were unanimous about that then! They said inoculation was the thing and that it must be done. Talk about the unanimity of the profession! That goes for nothing; we have
PRINCIPLES TO DEAL WITH,
not the unanimity or otherwise of the profession. (Cheers.) Majorities are never a proof of truth. The consequence was that small-pox spread, for though a person inoculated might have it mildly he was able to give it to others much more severely. Dr. Lettsom, writing in 1806, tells us that whereas small-pox deaths for 42 years before inoculation were only 72 per thousand, they were 89 per thousand in the 42 years after. Consequently the doctors were getting staggered, though they carried this out unanimously for 80 years, and when Jenner came forward and said, "Here's a mild kind of small-pox; it's not infectious; it is certain to stop the small-pox;" why the doctors at once fell in with it and received it with open arms. The people craved for it, and instead of wanting to get the small-pox over as before everyone began to cry for the cow-pox which Jenner brought before their notice. In the first twelve months the King had accepted it, the Queen and her courtiers had fallen in with it, and the illegitimate sons of the Duke of Clarence were vaccinated with it. (Laughter.) And when they saw this done honest mothers knew their doom. And depend upon it, my friends, such was the terror of small-pox inoculation at that time that if you and I had been living then I am quite sure we should have joined the "genteel mob." Two years after that the whole of the London doctors signed a testimonial and declared that this discovery was such that persons once vaccinated were for ever protected against small-pox. We have found out since then by experience that doctors are as liable to make mistakes as other people. It would have been just as well, before putting their pens to a testimonial like that, to have remembered the old proverb, "Never prophesy until you know."
They very soon
BEGAN TO TALK ABOUT COMPULSION.
In 1840 vaccination was paid for out of the public rates, and the doctors said inoculation must be put down. The vaccinators and inoculators—there were two sets of doctors then, as now—fought against one another like the pro-vaccinists and the anti-vaccinists at the present time. The vaccinists were in a majority, and could not rest until they had the inoculators put down. Consequently in 1840 an Act was passed
