Reverend William Hume-Rothery Ethically and Logically Refutes Vaccination (1872)

Reverend William Hume-Rothery was an Anglican minister in the Church of England and served as president of the Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League.

In 1872, he published the book Vaccination and the Vaccination Laws: a Physical Curse and a Class-tyranny. This is a very important work in the field of vaccine awareness. In this book, Hume-Rothery proves to be an excellent writer and uses his gift to dismantle the vaccine paradigm (in those days based on the smallpox vaccine) both ethically and logically. The book also includes powerful testimonies of deaths and injuries caused by vaccination.

Read the book in its entirety here. Below are some excerpts where Rev. Hume-Rothery ethically and logically refutes vaccination, including the following topics:

• Vaccination is doing evil that good may come
• Vaccination naturally causes death and disease
• Vaccination opposes God’s established order of nature
• Smallpox vaccination causes harm by denying the body’s ability to purify itself
• Vaccination is a substitute for sanitation which can prevent disease
• On vaccinators not learning from their mistakes
• The need to follow the truth regarding vaccines
• From priestly to medical despotism
• Vaccination as a sin against God
• On statistical manipulation and morality
• Vaccination’s questionable efficacy
• A call to action to end the vaccination madness

Vaccination is doing evil that good may come
(see Romans 3:8)

“The theory of this so-called Vaccination is that we must do evil that good may come : create a disease to prevent a disease; a minor, which may be followed by life-long sufferings or a speedy and untimely death, to prevent a major, which might never occur, and could not possibly occur if the laws of health were faithfully obeyed. This theory would justify every description of wickedness within certain bounds. It, and the practice alluded to, which is based upon it, must, therefore, be indefensible on any Christian or rational ground whatever.” (p. 2)

Vaccination naturally causes death and disease

“It being an unchangeable law of God, that whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap, if we allow surgeons to sow rotten tissue in the blood, by the rite of Vaccination, it must inevitably follow that we shall reap a miserable harvest of disease and death.” (p. 2)

Vaccination opposes God’s established order of nature

“The practice called Vaccination is in violent opposition, as any one may see, to the Divinely-established order of nature, the effect of which, in every living organism, is always to expel an invading evil, never to engraft one, to promote perfection. It must, therefore, be injurious to the nature which the All-good and All-wise Creator has given us. Surely no conscientious man, with his mind open to this fact, would be a party to the perpetration of this unnatural deed upon the tender body of a helpless babe.” (p. 1)

“The blood, which is the life of the flesh, is so jealously guarded from whatever might be injurious to health, that nothing from without immediately enters it. The skin, the lungs, and the digestive apparatus, which are the organs provided for conveying nourishment to the blood, are endowed with a discriminating and sifting power, so that they may exclude or reject, as is done in normal conditions, whatever might be detrimental to the system, and accept only what is necessary to repair and sustain it. Now, by lancing or tattooing the skin, and putting the product of a sore directly into the blood, the protection established by the All-wise Creator is infringed, and the bodily organism deprived of its right of selection of such substances as are needed for its well-being, whilst a poison, which has been expelled by Providence in nature is nevertheless forced into the blood of a healthy babe. A practice which begins by outraging some of the simplest laws of physiology, to say nothing of the insanity of its fighting against God, is self-condemned, and can be productive of nothing but mischief.

“Dr. Tanner informs us that “there are some poisons, as that of the viper, which although most deadly when introduced into the blood through a wound, are harmless when swallowed;” and that “it is well known that the poisons of venomous reptiles may be smeared upon the lips and tongue, or even swallowed with impunity,” though any of them inserted into the blood would be speedily followed by a fatal result. (See Memoranda on Poisons, by Dr. Tanner, pp. 3, 124, & 125). [Editor’s note: there could be some circumstances where consuming snake venom could be deadly, such as due to mouth lacerations or digestive problems; Hume-Rothery’s point, however, still stands.]

“By the right of the analogy as here presented, it may be seen how exceedingly dangerous is the practice of wounding the arm of a babe, and putting an animal poison, called vaccine, directly into its blood. With this truth upon his heart, no good man could consent to be a Vaccinator, or approve the venomous practice of Vaccination.” (p. 2)

Smallpox vaccination causes harm by denying the body’s ability to purify itself

“A clear view of the cause of smallpox is alone sufficient to convince any rational mind that Vaccination is, at least, an insane and useless practice.

“Impurity having entered the blood from an impure source, which may be a poisoned atmosphere, polluted water, sewer-gas, an ill-ventilated house or factory, or an ash-pit or midden radiating pestilence, the vital powers of the body, if strong enough, throw it out, under the direction of Providence, from the centre to the circumference, it may be in the shape of smallpox, from which the poison may be rapidly exhaled.

“Small-pox, then, must be a purifying process. Now, if when the blood has been poisoned, this eruptive method of eliminating the poison were prevented, let us say by Vaccination, performed either in infancy or at a later period, the inevitable consequence would be that the poison, imprisoned in the blood, would produce either a sudden death, or lay the foundation of some internal disease which would lead to death.

“If, then, Vaccination were even a preventive of small-pox, whilst the originating cause of the disease remained untouched, it would nevertheless be a curse instead of a blessing.” (p. 2)

Vaccination is a substitute for sanitation which can prevent disease

“As impurity is the cause of small-pox, impurity in the blood being expelled in impurity on the skin, it is clear that nothing can prevent small-pox (or any other disease), but genuine purity. …

“[S]o long as the laws of health are violated, God’s air polluted with smoke, God’s water fouled with refuse, and God’s poor children herded together in places unfit for human abode, disease must be the Providential consequence, that we we may thereby learn that disorder is disorder, and may thence be induced to reform our lives and our ways, Vaccination, or any other device, as a substitution for obedience, must, thank God, prove itself to be wretchedly disappointing.” (p. 2)

On vaccinators not learning from their mistakes

“The cry for re-vaccination is a proof of the signal failure of vaccination, of unwillingness to learn a lesson from experience, and of blind determination to uphold the system of Jenner, notwithstanding the evident collapse which falsifies his teaching respecting it.

“Perseverance in a good cause is commendable ; but to repeat a practice which is not justified by principle is simply to repeat a crime. To continue in such practice, in defiance of the light shining around, is to continue in darkness.

“When the prodigal in the parable found that husks would not sustain him, he abandoned them, and returned to his Father’s home. Had pro-vaccinators the practical sense represented by the prodigal, they would not, after witnessing the disappointing character of vaccination, recommend re-vaccination, but would openly and gladly repudiate the whole system as a deplorable mistake.” [p. 2]

The need to follow the truth regarding vaccines

“Truth comes simply to save and to bless. Kind Reader, whether will you confess the Truth before men or deny it; faithfully obey it, or condemn and crucify it? May you forsake all, take up your cross, and follow the Truth, assured that you are thus following the leading of God’s Providential Love.”[p. 3]

From priestly to medical despotism

“Our forefathers had to war against priestly despotism. It is our lot to battle against medical assumption and medical despotism.” [p. 3]

Vaccination as a sin against God

“Let us now see what is the real value of medical supposition in reference to State blood poisoning, usually called vaccination. The medical world is divided in opinion upon this point, men of eminence having discarded the practice as a crime against nature, and a sin against God.” [p. 3]


On statistical manipulation and morality

“Figures are not truth, per se; they are artificialities, which may be applied to confirm either truth or untruth, but they have no power to change the one into the other. All the statistical tables that men can construct cannot make it right to do wrong ; cannot justify the artificial creation of a disease, which may be the means of transmitting the most loathsome disease, indeed any kind of constitutional disease, or may so poison life as to be the cause of death, to prevent a suppositious disease which may never arise, and could not possibly arise except as the consequence of a breach of the laws of health.” [p. 5]

Vaccination’s questionable efficacy

“The black death, sweating sickness, and plague disappeared without any process analogous to vaccination. If small-pox had not been kept alive by innoculation and “vaccination,” might it not have vanished too? As small-pox and cow-pox can co-exist in the same person, is it not absolutely impossible for the latter to prevent the former ? As vaccination proposes not to remove any one of the causes of small-pox, but only so to affect the body that small-pox cannot appear upon the skin, would it not, when the blood is polluted by any of these causes, be, could it attain its object, an unmitigated calamity?” [p. 9]

A call to action to end the vaccination madness

“For the sake, then, of peace and order: for the sake of national health and purity ; for the sake of the Great Parent of all, who never made little children for doctors to practise their filthy blood-poisoning on, and of poor human parents who suffer untold agonies in witnessing the cruel blighting and tortures it so often inflicts on their helpless little ones, look back to any one of the cases I have recorded, Reader, and realise your own feelings had this been your darling !—for the sake, too, of old English courage and pluck and manliness, I call upon all true Britons to rise and demand of their rulers, of their members of Parliament, their Boards of Guardians, and all the rest, that this plague of the Vaccination Laws—worse than any small-pox epidemic, any black death, any plague of old, because so subtle and continuous in its operation—be stayed at once and for ever ; that men be at least left free to choose whether they will fall into the hands of God rather than of doctors, in preferring the risk of natural to the certainty of artificially created disease, the limits or consequences of which in “the blood, which is the life,” no man can determine : and then we may hope it will not be long ere the common sense and better judgment of a more enlightened age will learn to reprobate as it deserves, and utterly exterminate in practice, if it cannot wholly banish from remembrance, that loathsome offspring of an age of infidelity and materialism (which would have had us believe that a bestial disease could better the humanity), that most foul and offensive medical delusion yelept Vaccination.“ [p. 18]

Reverend William Hume-Rothery, Vaccination and the Vaccination Laws: a Physical Curse and a Class-tyranny (Manchester: W. Tolley, 1872).

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