Compulsory vaccination, antivaccination, and organized vaccination / by George Dock.

  • Dock, George, 1860-1951.
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Compulsory vaccination, antivaccination, and organized vaccination / by George Dock. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    Extracted from the American Journal of the Medical Sciences, February, 1907 ■;0\CA£ . msTonicAL 33 ; LIBRAHV J» oo COMPULSORY VACCINATION, ANTIVACCINATION, AND ORGANIZED VACCINATION. By George Dock, M.D., PROFESSOR OF MEDICINE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, ANN ARBOR, MICHIQAN. The antivaccination movement in the United States is becoming widespread and troublesome. The first suit at law against legalized vaccination was brought in 1890.' Since then there have been many, and although the decisions almost unanimously favor the health authorities, litigation seems on the increase. For the last eight years we have been passing through an epidemic of smallpox, and this showed, in strong colors, the need of more vaccination rather than less. I believe that legal regulation is needed, but I also think, and shall try to show, that our present laws are unsatisfactory in their results. If laws are made, they should be so constructed and enforced as to secure the sanction of public opinion. I need not discuss the fiction that in a republic- an laws come from the people. This at least is true, that some kinds of laws cannot be enforced unless they have popular acquiescence. Unpopular health laws affecting the person will find difficulties such as arise in the execution of sumptuary laws, like those regulating the use of tobacco and alcoholic beverages. Even among people with despotic or paternal government, with highly organized civil service and active police, vaccination is sometimes defeated. Mothers suck out the virus from their children's arms with great danger to themselves; older subjects wash out their wounds; dishonest physicians give false certificates; venal officials connive. In our own country some legally qualified practitioners of medicine are opposed to vaccination and give certificates for absurd substitutes, such as variolinum, or diluted smallpox virus, given by the mouth. What we need, in my opinion, is not statutory compulsion, our first antidote against all evils, from corsets to obnoxious corporations, but an organized and scientific procedure that shall have the confi- dence and support of a large majority of the people, and shall have no weak spots in any part. Many antivaccinationists are both