A CONTROVERSY ON VACCINATION A Boston newspaper recently made the statement that the people of New Hampshire "subsist on politics all the year round." What he probably meant was that it is characteristic of Granite State folk to hold strong opinions. There are a number of questions upon which our people differ vitally and which are the subjects for discussion in many a village store and city lounging place. The GRANITE MONTHLY feels that its pages should be an open forum for honest opinion on both sides of these controversies. In the following articles Dr. E. C. Chase of Plymouth, one of the two members of the medical profession who were in the last Legislature, and Arthur Brooks Green, of Lincoln, scientific engineer, graduate of Exeter and Harvard, represent two fields of thought on the much debated question of compulsory vaccination. The fact that there is a hot clash of opinion between them and that each passionately believes in the truth of his cause is shown by the italicized words. A controversy on another question will appear next month. Why I Voted Against the Anti-Compulsory-Vaccination Bill BY DR. E. C. CHASE "There is no one so blind as the one who won't see." HE subject of small pox is so old TH and so much has been said and written about it that it seems as though nothing more can be added. However, as I listened to the arguments against vaccination last winter in the House of Representatives, and before the committee of Public Health, I soon realized that the laity were very ignorant in regard to the matter. The chance of their being informed was very small, for there is no one so blind as the one who won't see. I also discovered that it was entirely useless to try by argument or proof to convince the majority of that house that the laws that had been worked out by intelligent and painstaking men in years past and placed on the statute books were of any use. As regards small pox and vaccination, if any intelligent person would take the pains to look up the account of the ravages and desolation that the disease has wrought since the earliest history of the world, and run uncontrolled until Dr. Jennings about 127 years ago discovered vaccination, and then follow up the change that has been made since that time in nearly stamping out the disease in almost every civilized country of the world, there would not be any chance for an argument against vaccination. It is probably admitted by almost everybody that small pox is not a de sirable or a pleasant feature of any community. One malignant case of that dread malady is a more effective argument than the words of any physician. Consequently, admitting for the moment that the process of vaccination carries with it a certain hazard, it is still necessary for the opponents of vaccination to prove that there are other means of preventing small pox epidemics. This they have never done. Upon the floor of the Legislature a gentleman from Concord, Mr. Kendall, told of his experience near the Canada line when a terrible epidemic was raging on the Canada side and scarcely a case appeared across the line. Germs and microbes have little respect for a boundary line and it would seem that the compulsory vaccination which New Hampshire had and Canada lacked was the determinant factor. The return of small pox to Colorado and other states after the repeal of the vaccination law would indicate the same thing. But vaccination at the present time could scarcely be called a hazardous op eration. Almost every instance of blood poison and other ill effects which was presented before the Health Committee occurred from fifteen to twentyfive years ago when surgical science lacked the thorough practice of sterilization which characterizes it to-day. The oft quoted case of small pox in the Philippine Islands, small pox which was said to have occurred under a thorough system of compulsory vaccination, actually occurred at a period when the American authorities had entrusted these measures to native officers and doctors. The task was poorly executed by the natives, a terrible epidemic broke out, and the American government was obliged to take over the duties of health preservation once more. The epidemics were immediately suppressed, which is ample proof of the fact that vaccination was the only safe precaution. I am loath to have the efforts of our State Board of Health, who have worked hard and long for the interest, welfare and health of the people of our state, who have advised and framed such laws as seemed best for us for that purpose, set aside. Nor do I wish to see the disease that has for so long a time been I kept down be allowed to spread again as it did in the middle ages. Some of the uninformed ask why we do not vaccinate everyone instead of taking the innocent little school child. The answer is very simple. This would be done if an epidemic should start, but we are trying to get everyone protected when there is no epidemic, and as every child is supposed to attend school it is thought best to have it attended to at the beginning of school life. If the law is obeyed and all children vaccinated they are immune for life. If that course is kept up it is obvious that we soon shall all be protected. I fail to see why I should leave the trail that my medical forefathers have blazed, that has proved to be of such wonderful benefit to the human race, and wander off upon some untried path, and so I refused to vote for the bill. Why I Oppose Compulsory Vaccination BY ARTHUR B. GREEN "The man had become so learned that he refused to learn." a physician is engaged in private practice, his patients come to him of their own free will expecting to receive and pay for his careful advice and treatment. Under the conditions of private practice, therefore, there is little need for public discussion of what the patient may seek, or the physician may give. On the other hand, if the physician joins with others in large numbers of his own particular school and urges a uniform measure for adoption by the public, which embraces patients of all schools, then the matter assumes public importance and should be discussed publicly. This is the case with vaccination. If, then, this practice is to receive undivided public support, there is a tremendous burden of proof thrown upon those who advocate it, and this proof must not rest on medical technicality, but it must be perfectly plain to every intelligent per son. Unfortunately the practice of vaccination has got its support from physicians of a single definite school of thought and from such laymen as have not investigated the matter from any other point of view than that of the physicians of this one school. They have sought to show by means of statistics that vaccination prevents small-pox; that vaccination is not harmful; and that vaccination is the only way in which to eliminate small-pox in epidemic form. They have, however, omitted to show the one point necessary to establish their case beyond any shadow of a doubt, and that is, they have not been able to advance a single instance in which the population of a territory subject to regular vaccination has developed a diminished general death rate. But inadequacy is not the only charge to be brought against the small-pox sta tistics which are quoted in support of vaccination. The figures themselves have been highly colored to say the least; have been usually selected by medical authorities whose mission in life they conceive to be to advance the theories of their own particular school, and almost never by laymen. It was found in England not long ago that when the office of caring for vital statistics was taken from a physician and placed by law in the hands of a layman there gradually developed some surprising changes in the causes which were set down for death. It was not longer possible to record a death from measles in an unvaccinated person as being due to smallpox, or a death from small pox in a vaccinated person as being due to measles. Small-pox figures were badly garbled in another instance when the advocates of vaccination pointed to the fact that in the Franco-Prussian War the German soldiers were well vaccinated, and the French were not, and that there was a widespread epidemic of small pox among the French soldiers, while the German soldiers were practically free from the disease. The fact of the matter was that the statistics in the first place had not been accurately kept at least on the French side, and that when the facts which were available were finally sifted out carefully, it appeared that the statement was true-but the French soldiers contracted their small-pox after being made prisoners in German camps, while active French soldiers on the fighting front were practically free from that disease. Perhaps the one area of the earth's surface in which the last twenty years have seen the most rigid enforcement of compulsory vaccination is the area of the Philippine Islands under the jurisdiction of the United States Government. Periodic and regular vaccination of the populace was begun there in 1905, and up to recently strong claims. have been made as to the absence of small-pox in this tropical country. Most rigid was the enforcement of vaccination in Manila. In some other parts of the Islands, particularly in the part known as Mindanao, the religious beliefs of the people led them to resist the in-roads of the vaccinating physicians. In the year 1918 the Philippine Health Service was obliged to report the most serious epidemic of small-pox in the history of the Islands. Not only was the epidemic severe and widespread, but the percentage of deaths among those who took the disease was amazingly high. The peculiar fact to be noted is that the percentage of mortality, that is, the ratio of deaths to cases was 65.3% in Manila, the best vaccinated region, and 11.4% in Mindanao, the least vaccinated region. Unfortunately, however, the health authorities failing to learn a lesson from this harrowing experience determined to vaccinate even more thoroughly, and forced their practice upon the territory which had formerly resisted it. As a result the epidemic instead of being stamped out spread to the districts in which it had been slightest. I said at the outset that it was not enough to stamp out small-pox, but the general death rate must be decreased. We have seen that vaccination does not stamp out small-pox, and here is an indication from the report of General Leonard Wood in 1921 that vaccination in the Philippines actually had the effect of setting up if not small-pox itself, then certainly a great number of other maladies of an acute and serious nature. He says, "There has been a steady increase in recent years in preventable diseases, especially typhoid, malaria, beriberi and tuberculosis." I also said at the outset that the physicians who urge vaccination upon us have tried to show that vaccination is the only way in which to prevent small-pox. I have shown that it has not prevented small-pox and that it has set up most terrible and serious consequences in its own account. I would add that physicians who offer vaccination as the only preventive ignore part of their own field of knowledge. The pure homeopathists practice a preventive against small-pox which is administered internally, which has no harmful effects, which is not given wholesale in the same way to every body, but is given in a way to account for the differences between persons and the differences between the forms in which small-pox occurs in fact. Instead of giving a single remedy for all cases, the pure homeopathists have a whole list of remedies from which to select in the given case. Consequently, the patient may have the benefit of a careful study. of the particular kind of epidemic smallpox against which he is to be protected. This method has gained recognition in one of our progressive states. It is an amusing experience and il lustrative of the type of mind which backs up a compulsory medical outrage that one of these pure homeopathists in a state which did not recognize his method of protection made it a practice to immunize the children of his patients internally as I have described. Then after a period to send them to a brother physician of the other school for the regular vaccination, by the injection of virus into the blood. After a period of some five years this neighboring allopathic physician awoke to the fact that none of the vaccinations made on children coming to him from the homeopathist had been successful. Instead of seeking out his homeopathic brother for an explanation, he simply refused to vaccinate any more children that came from his office. The man had become so learned that he refused to learn. HOW ONE COMMUNITY TURNED THE TIDE BY EARL P. ROBINSON, COUNTY AGENT LEADER OME places they are talking Sab about quitting farming and moving to the city. But over in Epsom they say that the carpenters are all rushed with work and have more jobs scheduled with farmers than they can do in weeks. And furthermore, the writer did not hear the doctrine of reduced production advanced. He did learn that many were increasing their enterprises. In fact the activity of carpenters is in considerable part due to the expansion of business on poultry farms, and in lesser degree to the setting up of new poultry establishments. Since there are so many communities in Northern New England where a decreasing population, a decreasing number of farms in operation and a reduced acreage of crops and number of livestock indicate communities hastening on to dissolution, it seems the part of wisdom for all public spirited citizens to study communities that seem most successful in stemming the tide and swinging back toward vigorous and healthy development. Epsom is such a community. Once a thriving dairy town with milk shipped out to Manchester and Boston, it later experienced hardship, discouragement and defeat. Then something happened. They gave up dairying for poultry. The story of the beginnings appears to be about like this. Mr. S. W. Bickford, becoming dissatisfied with the unsettled condition of and small returns from dairying about fifteen years ago, began to look around for a more remunerative type of agriculture, and noticed Mr. A. N. Peaslee of South Pittsfield, who had been in the poultry business for years and appeared to be very successful. Mr. Peaslee was helpful in his advice and encouragement with the result that Mr. Bickford got a good start with poultry more than a dozen years ago, and has progressed rapidly since then. |