This same tract is full of other equally gross misstatements. It tells us, in large, black type, “_With due care in the performance of the operation, no risk of any injurious effects from it need be feared._” The Registrar-General himself shows us that this is false in his Report for 1895, Table 17, p. lii.:
Year. Deaths. 1881 58 1882 65 1883 55 1884 53 1885 52 1886 45 1887 45 1888 45 1889 58 1890 43 1891 43 1892 58 1893 59 1894 50 1895 56
An average of 52 children officially murdered every year, and officially acknowledged, is termed “alleged injury,” which need not be feared! And these cruel falsehoods are spread broadcast over the country, and the tract bears upon its title-page—
[_Revised by the Local Government Board, and issued with their sanction_].
As the tract bears no date, I cannot tell whether it is still issued; but it was in circulation up to the time when the Commission was sitting, and it is simply disgraceful that a Government Department should ever have given its official sanction to such a tissue of misrepresentations and palpable false statements. For these 785 deaths in fifteen years, and 390 in the preceding twenty-two years (classed as from erysipelas after vaccination), no one has been punished, and no compensation or even official apology has been given to the thousand sorrowing families. And we may be sure that these acknowledged deaths are only a small portion of what have really occurred, since the numbers have increased considerably in the later period, during which more attention has been given to such deaths and more inquests held. It is certain that for every such death acknowledged by the medical man concerned, many are concealed under the easy method of stating some of the later symptoms as the cause of death. Thus, Mr. Henry May, Medical Officer of Health, candidly states as follows: “In certificates given by us voluntarily, and to which the public have access, it is scarcely to be expected that a medical man will give opinions which may tell against or reflect upon himself in any way. In such cases he will most likely tell the truth, but not the whole truth, and assign some prominent symptom of the disease as the cause of death. As instances of cases which may tell against the medical man himself, I will mention erysipelas from vaccination, and puerperal fever. A death from the first cause occurred not long ago in my practice; and although I had not vaccinated the child, yet, in my desire to preserve vaccination from reproach, I omitted all mention of it from my certificate of death.” (See _Birmingham Medical Review_, Vol III., pp. 34, 35.) That such _suppressio veri_ is no new thing, but has been going on during the whole period of vaccination, is rendered probable by a statement in the _Medical Observer_ of 1810, by Dr. Maclean. He says: “Very few deaths from cow-pox appear in the Bills of Mortality, owing to the means which have been used to suppress a knowledge of them. Neither were deaths, diseases, and failures transmitted in great abundance from the country, not because they did not happen, but because some practitioners were interested in not seeing them, and others who did see them were afraid of announcing what they knew.”