I think the majority of women, mothers at any rate, will agree with me in deploring the new Vaccination Bill which has just passed through - the: House: of Commons and bids: fair to run through the Lords in the same casual fashion. Being so near the end of the session I can only think that members' brains must be tired and unable to. work as freely as usual, as I feel certain the day must come when they will bitterly deplore last week's work. The conscience clause, which I think got' the bill through, was the suggestion of the First Lord of the Treasury; it enacts that anyone who conscientiously believes that vaccination will be harmful to his or her child;-may, when it has arrived at the age of four months, make a statement to that effect in the presence of two Justices of the Peace and be exempted from any penalty and receive a certificate to that effect to delver up to the vaccination offices of the district, notifying his conscientious scruples. "Thus compulsory vaccination is at an end and greatly the fact is to be deplored. is argued by those who approve of this bill that gtevous wrong tas, sometimes been wrought upon unoffending. children. and harmful diseases introduced into their systems by the use of bad vaccine. That this has been so in the past we all but it was and is perfectly easy to it by using necessary precautions wiping out or condemning vaccination altogether. I happened to be in Gloucester some. two years ago, shortly after the awful epidemic of small-pox that raged there. The sights I saw I shall never forget. Gloucester is one of the towns which has always fought against vaccination but there are very many poor children there now who have cause bitterly to de-lore the fact; numbers of them are quite faces so terribly disfigured that the remainder of their li necessarily be marred through this terrible scourge, and~all this might have been avoided through the simple precaution of can tell the same "fought the same battle with equally' disastrous results, It seems awful to think that if this new bill is to remain in force we may hare not two but twenty, or even more, towns in which the same dread sights may meet our eyes. Even if at rare intervals one does find @ case where vaccination has proved harmful sorely it is better that the few should suffer for the benefit of the many, and Iam told that the percentage is daily growing leas in the face of scientific research and the use of glycerinated lymph which removes all possibility of danger. We all know the antipathy of the lower classes to vaccination, interfering as they say it does with thei' true liberty; it is quite safe to prophesy that numbers of them will avail themselves of the, conscientious scruple clause unless at the Jast minute the Lords throw out the Dill, which is a consumiation devoutly to be looked for.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.