Letter
Category
Manuscripts and documents
Date
Unknown
Materials
Paper
Measurements
112 x 177 mm
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Tyntesfield, North Somerset
NT 27412.34
Summary
Eight page letter from Weston super Mare dated, Nov. 13 '79, from F.W. Newman.
Full description
Letter headed + I suffer frequent catarrh, very hostile to company Weston s. M Nov 13/79 My dear Girdlestone We have of late often talked of you, & I have resolved to call on your father to learn about you. But resolutions like “the forlorn hope” get broken in the attacks.+ We are glad to hear of your welfare & happiness, and shall be better pleased when we hear that you have suitable sufficient work. I suppose I must first answer your challenge concerning Vaccination. It is, by a disavowal of the whole pretended argument from Statistics. Those who so reason shut their eyes to other complete refutation, & hold a logic which is to me contemptible. I would sooner reason with a Catholic about the Athanasian Creed on the melting of St [-----] blood than with a Vaccinationist dealing in Statistics. Those who produce these “overwhelming” arguments, (“sixty to one”) generally show credulity otherwise; viz. in so magnifying the fatality of non vaccination, is to imply that Small Pox is far more fatal now to the unvaccinated than it was under the much reprobated treatment of last century’s physicians. They often make false returns, when the marks of vaccn (sic) cannot be seen in a patient. But the whole talk about Small Pox is stuff and nonsense [underlined x 2]; for the statistics of these men (statistics compiled and paraded by themselves) shows that the years of prevalent Small Pox are years of less mortality. Neither Parlt (sic) nor the Faculty have the smallest pretence to make a fuss about this discord. Apparently it is a beneficial eruption which on the whole saves life. The same appeared of Cholera, to the amazement of physicians. It carried off lives which would have only been victims to some other disease. To suppress the sources of cholera & of Small Pox, is excellent; but this is just what the doctors divert us from in the latter case, by ridiculously making out that a negation (non-Vaccn) is the cause [underlined x 3] of Small Pox and Vaccination its only needful prevention. Not to remove the causes, but hinder its exhibition, can only drive the eruption in, thereby (according to all known analogies) increasing disease. That eminent chemist and able man Dr Lyn Playfair asserted in Parlt (sic) that Vaccination saves 80,000 lives every year; so marvellously had he been bamboozled by Vaccination Statistics. The London returns some 8 or 10 years back proved that the Small Pox hospital had twice as many vaccinated patients as it ought to have from the proportion in the population, with some other results disagreeable to the doctors. When Jacob Bright these in Parlt (sic) orders were forthwith given to omit such returns in future years so that they can no longer be quoted. But I distrust my memory as to details. Surely you will agree with me that it is a shameful waste of public energy to order the compilation of tables concerning two things, (as a ground of argument) which have no previously proved relation nor plausible argument for their relation. It only throws dust into the eyes, while it pretends to be Science. An Austrian physician lately suggested, what monstrous error would result from tables in which Diphtheria and Small Pox were bracketed: i.e. from the absurd assumption that any scientific conclusions can be drawn from such a pair. The doctors are shameless in arrogance. They went on+ for 20 years flatly denying that arm to arm transfusion of pus might communicate and had communicated other blood diseases & especially syphilis. They haughtily called those who alleged the fact Quacks at last they are compelled to admit that the fact is so; yet they are not one whit less dogmatic, nor show the slightest humility for their rude, offensive and false language. Dr Seatin the great official Vaccinationist has stated that many punctures are often needed to make Vaccn (sic) successful; yet all Physiologists say that one puncture injury poison multiplies itself in the blood. To evade reasonable objection the zealot plunges into worse and worse cruelty. Nearly to the present day they call Vaccn (sic) a sure preventive of Small Pox; and never confess their monstrous errors which are wholly uncandid shifts on to new pretences. This Dr Seatin described the material with which under his orders English children are poisoned; viz. matter from a small pox patient is put into the cow, then matter from the cow is presumed not to communicate small pox but only cowpox, and to prevent smallpox!! But the Dublin Local Government Board has officially forbidden this very process as a sowing of Small Pox; in short, as an illegal Inscalation of the disease. Yet no symptoms of humility, no retraction, no public justification of the contrary camp comes from the English doctors. As soon expect the College of Cardinals to admit an argument true which assails Romish assumptions, as the English Medical Faculty to abandon the Vaccn (sic) which for 80 years they have cherished as a darling child, making it a good source of patronage and position. They have to confess themselves dupes and virtual impostors. They will never do it. Why am I to be called on to take up arguments again? Statistics arbitrarily imagined and inducted with the avowed intention of terrifying+ us with the bugbear of Small Pox and soothing us with the comfort of Artificial Disease as its remedy. (+ Herbalists, Hydropaths and Thermopaths find Small Pox a most tractable disease. Our doctors refuse to try their remedies.) Disease is often the source of much misery and not seldom fatal. Message from Val and Ann – we have not finished transcribing this letter but have got to page 6 (about 6 lines down). The letter is at the top of the not done pile.
Provenance
Purchase from the estate of the late Lord Wraxall with the assistance of the NHMF and donations from members and supporters.