As far as combatting the cases of smallpox, which arose from time
to time, the main means employed in Leicester, as elsewhere, were vaccination,
isolation and limewashing where the infected had been dwelling. In all
this the Medical Officer of Health was involved. Between the years 1859-1861
there were only six deaths from smallpox and all were dealt with by the
Medical Officer of Health, John Moore. The numbers between 1864 and
1868, rose to 120 though the new Medical Officer of Health, J. Wyatt Crane,
argued that this would have been very much worse but for the efficiency of
v.accination. In 1871-1872 a smallpox epidemic swept the country, and
though on the admission of Dr. Crane vaccination had been "sedulously
attended to", he had to admit in his 1872 report, that there had been 314
deaths since the epidemic.
As a result of the apparent failure of vaccination to afford protection
against smallpox, apathy towards the practice increased, and the mood soon
gave way to active hostility, especially after the Act of 1871 confirmed the
principle of compulsion.
Because of the reluctance of many parents in Leicester to submit their
children to vaccination, and the fact that neither compulsion nor prison was
proving effective, an alternative method of preventing smallpox spreading,
gradually came to compete with vaccination. This method which came to
be practiced by the Local Board of Health in Leicester from 1877 onwards,
adopted the practice of quarantine and isolation in cases where an outbreak
of an epidemic disease was suspected.
In October, 1876, Mr Hughes, the candidate, speaking at a Liberal
Meeting, . acknowledged that he had suffered severely from smallpox
although he had been vaccinated. He said: -
"But if a gentleman like Mr. P. A. Taylor had sat day after day on a
commission concerning the subject and could not come to a certain
conclusion upon it, he did not see how he could." Mr. Taylor says, in
the "Monthly Review", "That after examining the evidence upon which
faith in vaccination was based, much to his own surprise he was led
gradually to the conviction that the cherished system of vaccination
was a mere delusion-a baseless superstition; that it afforded no protection
from smallpox etc., etc." He goes on to say : - "So believing,
I should have been a coward to conceal my opinion, but, far beyond
this, I felt a special duty to atone for the mistake I had made in signing
a report favourable to vaccination" (as a member of the Select Committee
of 1871).
On 21 October 1842s the Leicester Board of Guardians drafted a
memorandum to the Local Government Board in London requesting modification
in the existing prosecution machinery especially since the "Leicester
Method" was proving so successful in preventing the spread of any cases
of imported smallpox.
The last decade has witnessed
an extraordinary decrease in vaccination, but nevertheless, the
town has enjoyed an almost entire immunity from smallpox, there never
having been more than two or three cases in the town at one time. Under
such a system the Corporation have expressed their opinion that
vaccination is unnecessary, as they claim to deal with the disease in a
more direct and much more efficacious manner. This, and a widespread
belief that death and disease have resulted from the operation of
vaccination, may be said to be the foundation upon which the existing
opposition to the Act rests".
против тяжелых и критических госпитализаций и 93 ∙ 3% (95% ДИ 91 ∙ 5–94 ∙ 
