A Royal Commission's arithmetic. A criticism of vaccination statistics and a plea for fresh figures and fair inferences / by Alexander Paul.

  • Paul, Alexander.
Date:
1897
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A Royal Commission's arithmetic. A criticism of vaccination statistics and a plea for fresh figures and fair inferences / by Alexander Paul. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    and thought-stimulating Dissent of Dr. Collins and Mr. Picton. It is the natural fate of most minority reports (or dissents, as they are called when the minority is smaller than a quorum of the Commission) to be overshadowed for a time by the document that carries the majority of signatures; and Dr. Collins and Mr. Picton are at present under this additional disadvantage, that there is still an unaccountable indisposition on the part of the editors of most influential newspapers and magazines to allow the controversy on vaccination to be effectively pursued in their pages. The prevailing view was aptly described in The Daily News on one of those rare occasions when it was impossible for the morning journals to ignore the question, which they usually consider it mischievous, or wofse, to raise. The occasion was the appearance of the Eoyal Commission's Final Report, and what the editor of The Daily Neios said, in effect, was that to be asked to consider evidence as to the efficacy of vaccine lymph was like being asked to revise one's opinion on the law of gravitation. Mr. Malcolm Morris availed himself of his privilege of writing in The Nineteenth Century, to refer to the Commission's work as superfluous, and to say that the medical profession was alone competent to judge in this matter, and that the opponents of vaccination were for the most part incapable of appreciating scientific evidence. And even the courteous editor of The Nineteenth Century (so I learn from The Vaccination Inquirer for January) refused, in a letter to the President of the Anti-Vaccination Society, to permit of any reply to Mr. Malcolm Morris. ISTo one can doubt that the editor of The Nineteenth Century is honestly of opinion that the evidence in favour of vaccination is so overwhelming that to treat it as an open question would be to trifle—and to trifle dangerously—with the public. Therefore, he declines to take the responsibility of doing so. This so-called responsibility is the bugbear of the whole controversy. One