1905 Vaccine Law

[Guest guest]

All, I will loose most of my bookmarks by the 8th, so I'm going through them

to see what to save. It's very painstaking.

I thought this would be of interest. It's quite long, so I copied and pasted

a little snippet.

http://biotech.law.lsu.edu/cases/vaccines/son_v_Massachusetts.htm

The latest case upon the subject of which we are aware is Viemeister v.

White, President & c., decided very recently by the Court of Appeals of New

York, and the opinion in which has not yet appeared in the regular reports.

That case involved the validity of a statute excluding from the public

schools all children who had not been vaccinated. One contention was that the

statute and the regulation adopted in exercise of its provisions was

inconsistent with the rights, privileges and liberties of the citizen. The

contention was overruled, the court saying, among other things: " Smallpox is

known of all to be a dangerous and contagious disease. If vaccination

strongly tends to prevent the transmission or spread of this disease, it

logically follows that children may be refused admission to the public

schools until they have been vaccinated. The appellant claims that

vaccination does not tend to prevent smallpox, but tends to bring about other

diseases, and that it does much harm, with no good.

[75] " It must be conceded that some laymen, both learned and unlearned,

and some physicians of great skill and repute, do not believe that

vaccination is a preventive of smallpox. The common belief, however, is that

it has a decided tendency to prevent the spread of this fearful disease and

to render it less dangerous to those who contract it. While not accepted by

all, it is accepted by the mass of the people, as well as by most members of

the medical profession. It has been general in our State and in most

civilized nations for generations. It is generally accepted in theory and

generally applied in practice, both by the voluntary action of the people and

in obedience to the command of law. Nearly every State of the Union has

statutes to encourage, or directly or indirectly to require, vaccination, and

this is true of most nations of Europe. . . .