x. Against the hypothesis that vaccination may be protective in some cases (relatively and contingently), and add fuel to the flames in others, i.e., decrease the morbility and increase the mortality: Against this hypothesis it will be objected that the mortality is much greater in variola than it is in varioloid. This, I submit, proves nothing, because the unvaccinated belong almost exclusively to the social residuum in whom all diseases are relatively very fatal. Vaccination has been comme il faut now for many years, and hence almost everybody who is anybody has been vaccinated. Nearly all the anti-vaccinists have themselves been vaccinated. Now that the mental elite of the world are rising against vaccination, I venture to foretell that in the future the mortality in their unvaccinated offspring will be very small; probably only those who inherit the PURULENT DIATHESIS; will die, and many of these wouhomoeoprophylactically vaccinated in refracted dose.
This question crops up and presents itself to one’s mind thus: Vaccination protects from variola say the vaccinators.
Quoth the anti-vaccinators-That is impossible, because some of those who have been vaccinated do get variola, and the mortality from variola actually increased, so where is the prevention?
How can these things be?
Let us ponder these points. And first of all let us not confound morbility with mortality. We really want three words to express our meaning well. Firstly, mortality or the number of deaths; secondly, morbidity, or the quantity of ill-health of the living; and thirdly, morbility, or the number of those who actually take a given disease. I ask forgiveness for this word- coining; no one need use the words if they are needless or objectionable, but it seems to me that these three ideas must be accurately expressed if we are to adequately discuss the question.
In judging of the ill-effects of vaccination, only the mortality is considered as a general rule by the pro-vaccinists. By giving attention to vaccinational morbidity (the vaccinosis of this little treatise). I have been enabled to do some notably good clinical work, and I put the facts observed before the world as a duty, and really unwillingly, as I am sure to be much misunderstood, but that cannot be helped, and besides I am now wandering away from my text.
Before we can scientifically reckon with vaccination we must take accurate account of the morbility as well as of the mortality and morbidity. The practical physician alone has the necessary scope for making observations in respect of the morbidity arising from vaccination, i.e., vaccinosis. Unfortunately it is by completely ignored as a general rule.
Any statistician can observe and arrange the facts relating to its morbility, and the Registrar General might be got to deal with them as he does with those relating to mortality. But. I must submit that mortality statistics alone without morbility statistics cannot possibly lead to any real settlement of the vaccination question, for we want to know not only how many die of small-pox, but also how many get it and get over it.
Herein, it seems to me, lies the kernel of the nut.
And not only do we want to know how many get small-pox and recover and how many get it and die of it, but also what is the morbidity of those protected by the vaccination.
What is the ordinary liability of the perfectly healthy to catch small-pox, i.e., what is their prospective morbility, morbidity, and mortality?
Assuming that vaccination does protect, relatively and contingently, what do we pay for the protection, not in money, but in vaccinial morbidity, or vaccinosis? It seems to me probable that ordinary Jennerian vaccination is not efficiently protective in those whose proneness to catch small-pox is very great, while it is efficiently protective where the proneness to catch small-pox is less.
If we reflect upon this for a while we shall see that there is nothing unreasonable in this proposition.
The unvaccinated are not equally prone to catch small-pox; we vaccinate them all alike.
Now is it even conceivable that the vaccination has rendered them equally immune, when some of the unvaccinated were already immune? My line of argument here stands thus:-Vaccination is preventive of small-pox when the proneness to catch it is small; and when the proneness to catch it is small, those who do get small-pox do not die of it, therefore vaccination affects the morbility rather that the mortality of small-pox. I refer to ordinary Jennerian vaccination, and not to microscopic homoeoprophylaxis.
If I am right then we can affirm on aprioristic grounds that ordinary microposic vaccination will diminish morbility but increase the mortality, i.e., fewer will get it, but more will die: the mortality will be greater.
How so? Vaccination is a homoeoprophylactic diseasing measure: one disease is given to prevent a like one-vaccinia to prevent variola. If the diseasing process of vaccination fail to protect, then the vaccinated person will be more likely to die because there is the homoeoprophylactic aggravation: the two diseases combine to kill the patient just the same as too much of the homoeopathic remedy will aggravate the disease to which it is highly homeopathic-with perhaps, the like result.
This is manifest, for in vaccinating a person we are diseasing him; we communicate vaccinosis to him; if he, in addition to the vaccinosis, now get small-pox, he is the more likely to die the worse he has the vaccinosis.
If you represents the prospective mortality of the unvaccinated, and x the difference between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated, i.e., vaccinosis, then the chances of dying of the vaccinated person who gets small-pox are y+x.
Against the hypothesis that vaccination may be protective in some cases (relatively and contingently), and add fuel to the flames in others, i.e., decrease the morbility and increase the mortality: Against this hypothesis it will be objected that the mortality is much greater in variola than it is in varioloid. This, I submit, proves nothing, because the unvaccinated belong almost exclusively to the social residuum in whom all diseases are relatively very fatal. Vaccination has been comme il faut now for many years, and hence almost everybody who is anybody has been vaccinated. Nearly all the anti-vaccinists have themselves been vaccinated.
Now that the mental elite of the world are rising against vaccination, I venture to foretell that in the future the mortality in their unvaccinated offspring will be very small; probably only those who inherit the PURULENT DIATHESIS; will die, and many of these would be saved if homoeopathically handled, or homoeoprophylactically vaccinated in refracted dose.
Burnett was one of the first to speak about vaccination triggering illness. This was discussed in his book, Vaccinosis, published in 1884. He introduced the remedy Bacillinum. He authored twenty books, including the much loved "Fifty Reason for Being a Homeopath." He was the editor of The Homoeopathic World.