Report of the executive committee for the years 1905 / The Jenner Society.

  • Royal Jennerian Society.
Date:
1905
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Report of the executive committee for the years 1905 / The Jenner Society. 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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    vaccination would disappear and a large number of school children would be allowed to be vaccinated without any opposition. The suspension for a definite period of the requirements of the law in the case of objecting parents would not, of course, interfere with the vaccination of those infants whose parents had no objection to the operation. The offer of vaccination in infancy would still be made to all parents, as it is now, and in this way a considerable number of infants of merely neglect- ful or indifferent parents would be brought under protection. Nor would the objecting parent be unreasonably prejudiced by obtaining only an order of suspension instead of one of total exemption, as he does at present. If, when the liability of the child to be vaccinated became automatically renewed, at the school age, the parent still persisted in his objection he would only have* to repeat/his former declaration and a further suspension would be granted. The liability of the child to be vaccinated in case of risk of catching small-pox when the disease was prevalent in its immediate neighbourhood, would, of course, only be enforce- able by a petty sessional court who would have to be satisfied that a real danger existed. As to Compulsion. Although the opponents of vaccination assert that they will be satisfied with nothing less than the complete erasure from the Statute book of all provision for promoting it, their preliminary attack will, as has been above observed, be directed ostensibly against the enforcement of vaccination in any form. If they can carry this point they will have established a substantial basis for further operations. It seems useless to suggest to those who take up this irreconcileable position that, so far as absolute compulsion in the matter of infant vaccination is concerned, it has never existed at all, for it has always been possible to accept the alternative of paying a fine. And even now a parent who objects to have his infant child vaccinated has only to comply with the very reasonable requirement that he shall state his objection with the formality which will show that he has some appreciation of the responsibilty he incurs in doing so, to obtain exemption from further proceedings. If he, either from negligence or from what is idiomatically called “ sheer cussedness,” fails to avail himself of the concession which Parliament has provided, he has no one but himself to thank if he is haled before the magistrates and fined for his contumacy. There is, however, a large class of parents who do not entertain any conscientious objection to vaccination but who simply neglect to comply with the requirements of the law