and is not infectious. Small-pox, on the other hand, is not limited to the female sex as in cow-pox, nor to one portion of the body: it presents different physical signs, and, furthermore, is tremendously infectious, and the course and symptoms of the two diseases are totally different. Therefore there is no analogy between the two. Badcock, of Brighton, accepting this theory, however, inoculated a number of cows with small-pox, and fancied that it should have come cow-pox. But instead it never produced anything but small-pox. So much had this question obscured the minds of the medical profession that the French savants formed the Lyons Commission to go thoroughly into the whole thing, and Mons. Chauveau, the eminent French scientist, after experimenting, told his Government that it was totally impossible to convert small-pox into cow-pox. The fact is, as Dr. Creighton said, to try and turn small-pox into cow-pox you may as well try to convert a horse chestnut into a chestnut horse. If they can turn cow-pox into small-pox I say let them do the conjuring trick backwards, and then I'll believe them. (Cheers.)
Look at the absurdity of the whole thing! For the sake of argument take it for granted that cow-pox is small-pox, and that to vaccinate is to give small-pox. Then, according to Jenner's theory, after inoculating with small-pox the person should not take it, like his case of James Phipps. But is it not a fact that you can be successfully re-vaccinated frequently? If, therefore, vaccination is a form of small-pox, it does not prevent you having "small-pox" again. If once vaccinating does not prevent your being re-vaccinated, how can it protect against the genuine article? (Cheers.) If it can't protect you against the bite of a cat, how can it against the scrunch of a tiger? Why, these Gloucester doctors, in boasting of their re-vaccination, are absolutely
DAMNING THEIR WHOLE CREED,
for if their theory were correct they have no business to be able to be re-vaccinated at all! But I may be told, this may be true enough. There may be no science in it—and I have no hesitation in saying that the gentlemen alluded to by the Chairman, Dr. Crookshank and Dr. Creighton, have knocked the bottom out of this grotesque superstition and shown that vaccination has no scientific leg to stand on—but there are some remedies, which, though you can't prove the physiological effect they have or see the science that belongs to them, yet you know by experience will produce certain results. Now let us test vaccination by this law,
The teaching of Experience.
I have clearly proved that there is no science in vaccination; now we will see what experience has to say upon the subject. Since the passing of the Act in 1853 we have had no less than three distinct epidemics. In 1857-9 we had more than 14,000 deaths from small-pox; in the 1863-5 epidemic the deaths had increased to 20,000; and in 1871-2 they totalled up to the tune of 44,800. It might be asked: Did not the population increase? Between the first and second epidemics
