Note 20 — Chapter V · CRITICAL REMARKS ON THE “FINAL REPORT”

It is a common practice of vaccinists to quote the German Army as a striking proof of the good effects of revaccination; but as our own Army is as well vaccinated as the Army surgeons with unlimited power can make it, it is unlikely that the Germans can do so very much better. And there is some reason to think that their statistics are less reliable than our own. Lieut.-Col. A. T. Wintle, (late) R.A., has published in the Vaccination Inquirer extracts from a letter from Germany stating, on the authority of a German officer, that the Army statistics of small-pox are utterly unreliable. It is said to be the rule for Army surgeons to enter small-pox cases as skin-disease or some other “appropriate illness,” while large numbers of small-pox deaths are entered as “sent away elsewhere.” We had better therefore be content with our own Army and Navy statistics, though even here there is some concealment. In 1860 Mr. Duncombe, M.P., moved for a return of the disaster at Shorncliffe Camp, where, it was alleged, 30 recruits were vaccinated, and six died of the results, but the return was refused. A letter in the Lancet of July 7, 1860, from a “Military Surgeon” stated that numbers of soldiers have had their arms amputated in consequence of mortification after vaccination; and a Baptist minister and ex-soldier, the Rev. Frederick J. Harsant, gave evidence before the Commission of another Shorncliffe disaster in 1868, he himself, then a soldier, having never recovered, and having had unhealed sores on various parts of his body for more than 20 years. Eighteen out of the twenty men vaccinated at the same time suffered; some were months in hospital and in a much worse condition than himself (6th Report, p. 207). In the same volume is the evidence of twenty medical men, all of whom have witnessed serious effects produced by vaccination, some being of a most terrible and distressing character.