W. Halket, associate of the medical reform society, London, authored in perhaps 1870 the aptly titled book, Compulsory Vaccination!! a Crime Against Nature!! an Outrage Upon Society!! A Libel Upon the Wisdom and Goodness of the Creator!! A Medical Delusion!! A Legislative Blunder!! And a Dark Blot Upon our Civilization!!
In this book he rips into vaccination as a blasphemous and murderous violation of nature that parents must resist, even to the point of martyrdom. As he says,
This compulsory Vaccination, which is a wanton outrage upon nature, a stupid blunder of man, betrays also an unaccountable blindness, ignorance, or entire suppression of natural instincts on the part of those who submit to it. Natural instincts, as well as the most enlightened reason, alike rebel against it. What a sad spectacle to behold, a profession and a government thus at open war with nature, both combining–whatever their intentions may be–to maim, wound, and slaughter the innocents; to commit this irreparable injury upon young helpless humanity, and their natural guardians (parents), through ignorance, cupidity, or stupidity, permit the deed to be done. The late Sir Robert Peel and two of our most eminent English judges declared that the people of England would never submit to this unnatural and compulsory Act. But, alas! the people of England have disappointed them this time; they have turned their backs to the smiter, and allowed their natural rights to be trampled in the dust. This compulsory Act is a violation of natural and parental rights, of the liberty of the subject; it is also a violation of the laws of nature, which are the veritable laws of God.
I would put the question to every father and mother,–Will you allow your children thus to be poisoned, corrupted, to sicken and to die, at the bidding of an Act of Parliament, instigated by a section of the medical profession? Endure any evils that heaven may send you–for which there is no remedy–with cheerfulness and resignation. But will you endure this? A plague sent you by man, and which heaven never intended you should endure at all.
O arise! awake! or be for ever fallen.
I would ask every mother to resist, as many mothers are now nobly resisting, this cruel, unnatural, and barbarous law, which compels them to carry their children like lambs to the slaughter. Be imprisoned, fined, suffer for it–die for it, if that were necessary, sooner than submit to this monstrous unnatural tyranny. Other vile and despotic laws, that touched man on less tender points than this, have had their martyrs; and why not this? It were better to die at once, with a consciousness of your innocence, than to live to see and to feel that you had been the means, at the bidding of any government or profession, of infusing disease and death into the blood of your children. Death, surely, is preferable to such a life. Resistance to this Herodian enactment is obedience to heaven’s first law. We are satisfied that He who said, “Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not,” who took them up in his arms and blessed them, would not have stood by and seen them thus treated without making again a free use of his stripes, and of that treatment which the money-changers received in the temple, turning the tables against them, giving them also to understand that He made the human body pure, as a temple for the living God; but they had corrupted it with the diseases and abominations of beasts.
To heal the sick, to remove the causes of disease, is the work of the physician; but to inflict diseases on those who are in health by Vaccination, or by any other means, is not his work. Who hath required this at his hands?
Who shall say that the Creator did not make his work perfect and complete, that He did not place every element or principle in the blood of the child necessary to its health, where the laws of its being are observed? Yet Vaccination stands forth to assert this monstrous blasphemy!
W. Halket, Compulsory Vaccination!! a Crime Against Nature!! an Outrage Upon Society!! A Libel Upon the Wisdom and Goodness of the Creator!! A Medical Delusion!! A Legislative Blunder!! And a Dark Blot Upon our Civilization!! (London: 1870?), 17, 18.
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