Vaccinationist

What, then, must they think of the law which requires that a like foul virus shall be perforce injected into their own veins, to befoul the whole current of their blood and to introduce all manner of diseases? “But care is taken to have the lymph fresh and pure from the heifer,” say the vaccinationists.

That smallpox could ravage London in the mid-nineteenth century, despite the existence of a new medical measure to prevent it, was a source of great frustration to the vaccinationists. In 1840 the epidemiologist William Farr railed against the fact that five children a day were dying of smallpox in London.