XLIV

A CHAPTER OF INCIDENTS

Leaving his medical practice in the hands of his manager, in Battle Creek, Dr. Peebles returned to his home in San Diego November, 1898- to spend the winter in the midst of sunshine and flowers. Still vigorous in body and mind, and not feeling any abatement in his impulse to labor, he devoted himself assiduously to literary work, putting the finishing touches on two books for the press, editing his Temple of Health, contributing voluminous articles to the spiritual press, and participating in a heated controversy in San Diego over the question of compulsory vaccination in the schools. This controversy became so spirited, that Dr. Peebles offered to open his own house for a school to those children whom the school board" should expel on account of the refusal of the parents to comply with the law. Not only this, but he offered to pay one hundred dollars toward the support of this school. The old school physicians generally favored the law, but two or three took sides with Dr. Peebles. The parents also became highly wrought up over the issue, and for a time it seemed that the winter school would be broken up. The Sun and the Vidette generously opened their columns to Dr. Peebles, from which we subjoin a few paragraphs:—

"Every man's house is his castle, and upon the constitutional grounds of personal liberty, no vaccination doctor, lancet in one hand and calf-pox poison in the other, has a moral right to enter the sacred precincts of a healthy home and scar a child's body for life.

That the eighty-five doctors, or the most of them, favor it, counts but little. Doctors without exception once favored bleeding in fevers. Both Washington and Byron, it is believed, died from blood-letting. Doctors do not bleed

men nowadays; nor will they vaccinate in the near future. 'Only about one' doctor, we are gravely told (there are some eighty-five or ninety in San Diego) speaks against vaccination so much the worse for the doctors! 'Only about one.' Well, I am proud to be that one! for in fact, with the right, is a majority. Truth is never in minority-and laggards often find it out to their disadvantage.

"In Rhode Island, after a committee of the senate had heard evidence on both sides of the question, it repealed the compulsory vaccination law by a majority of 16 to 9. Petitions should be hurried on to Sacramento demanding that this disease-breeding law be promptly repealed.

"A late press dispatch informs us that Wm. Nagengast of Cleveland, O., aged eleven years, was vaccinated in the free dispensary on January 4. His arm soon became terribly swollen. The same night he exhibited symptoms of lockjaw, and the next evening he died, suffering intense agonies. In London, from 1859 to 1896, there were one thousand two hundred and seventeen admitted deaths from vaccination. There were doubtless five times this number, say the minority reports, but they were 'hushed up to prevent vaccination from further reproach.""

Under date of April 14, he writes:

"Editor Sun: Honoring your manhood and admiring the breadth of thought and freedom of expression that characterize your daily columns, allow me to say that the heads of twenty-three families have called upon me at my residence during the past week, saying: 'What shall we do, doctor, about having our children vaccinated? We think vaccination dangerous. We do not believe in it, and yet we want our children to attend school and be educated. What shall we do?'

"My invariable reply has been. I am not my brother's keeper.' You must exercise your own judgment. I am frank, however, to tell you what I should do.

"First I should send my children to school unvaccinated with any pox-lymph virus, and put the responsibility

upon the official authorities for refusing to educate them in the schools, for the support of which I have been taxed, I should then, as they have done in Philadelphia, commence legal proceedings.

'Queensland, Australia, has no compulsory vaccination law; and grand, conservative old England, after a dozen years' fight of the people, assisted by the ablest members of Parliament, against a majority of the doctors (who evidently had an eye to business), passed what has been termed the 'conscience clause' as an addendum to the vaccination bill. This was signed by the queen, August 12, last year. Therefore, any person now going before the registrar of the district and making declaration before the justice of the peace that he conscientiously believes vaccination to be detrimental to the health of the child, is exempt from arrest or penalty. All honor to England.

"Accordingly, in the single city, or 'town' of Oldham, Lancashire, England, 43,000 certificates of exemption under the conscience clause,' had been issued up to the first of March. Other cities and towns are doing nearly as well. Shame, shame, to San Diego, to thus snail-like drag — drag along in great reforms behind England, Australia, and some of the isles of the ocean.

"There are not only thousands of our citizens, but there are members of the health and school board, just as strenuously opposed to compulsory vaccination as I am. I speak by the book. But it is the law.' Granted. 'It has been sustained by the supreme court.' Then in the name of law and order, why was it not enforced by the previous health and school board authorities? Did they not know their duty? Why were they not dismissed from office or fined $500? Who was responsible for that gross, official neglect? and why this vaccination law been virtually a dead letter throughout California these past ten years? And what has caused this present health-spasm? There is no smallpox in our city and it is the general opinion that there has been none.

Finally, this so-called compulsory law, now the terror

of many parents, is NOT law. That only is a law which is based upon the principle of justice, of right and of personal liberty. Enactments are not necessarily laws. Enactments made by one Legislature are very often repealed by the next. The fugitive slave law' was once pronounced 'law' by politicians influencing even the supreme court and yet a band of Quakers, with myself and many others, deliberately violated that law defied it, in fact, as often as possible, by helping such frightened fleeing negroes as Fred Douglass on their way toward the freedom of the British flag in Canada. The framers of that law are now remembered only in pity, or deserved infamy. And so history will brand the mark of Cain upon the Legislature that ten years ago passed that infamous, unconstitutional, compulsory vaccination enactment. I would not - will not obey. Arrest me, jail me, imprison me behind iron bars. I would stay there and rot in prison before I would obey it. And futher, in the future, I will vote for no member of the Legislature till I knowpositively know, how he stands upon this vaccination question. We must organize for the battle as they did for years in England; we must call meetings and distribute literature."

In the midst of this controversy, he wrote the Banner of Light under date of March 4, 1899:

"A vaccination law, passed some ten years ago by the California Legislature, has remained nearly a dead letter, but now, with no smallpox in our midst, the board of health in this city, afflicted with a sort of health spasm, has proposed (and many think in the interests of hungry doctors) that vaccination be enforced by vaccinating all of the school children in San Diego, a city numbering over 22,000. And further, the threat is thrown out that unless parents comply and have that putrid calf-lymph brute poison thrust into their children's arms, these children are to be denied the privilege of attending the schools.

"I repeat, the battle is on. My whole nature is aroused, and I have written articles in every San Diego newspaper except one against the enforcement of the unjust law. Of

the eighty-five resident doctors in San Diego, only three or four are opposed to vaccination, and these, with one exception, are too cowardly to stand up and say so; or, to sign a legislative petition to repeal the law, or to so amend as to make it optional with the parents. The school board has not yet issued the order, though the health board is urging them to do so. The war paint is on and I am in for the fight.

The public is thoroughly awake. Yesterday at the Mother's Club meeting in our city, the lower room in the schoolhouse was literally packed to hear the vaccination question discussed. Though many doctors were invited to come and defend vaccination, only two made their appearance. These spoke in its defense. I was present, clad in war armor, with my left hand full of anti-vaccination documents, sent me by Wm. Tebb of London, Prof. Alexander Wilder of Newark, and others. The discussion was hot. Thank the gods, a large portion of the mothers present were opposed to vaccinating the children. My opposition was vehement, if not violent. I defied the law. I pronounced it unconstitutional; and, treasonable or not, I advised the mothers present to positively refuse to have that damnable poison put into their children's arms a poison that upon the highest medical authority does not prevent smallpox, but kills thousands every year. Foolishly vaccinated a second time myself when in San Francisco in 1861, I was in bed three weeks from the poison, I came near losing my arm, and I felt the effects of it for several years.

"What the doctors call pure virus, I publicly pronounced filthy impure, calf-lymph cussedness. I was accused by the Christian opposition of using 'swear-words.' I did not. It was only emphatic Bible language. During the discussion, I advised that instead of vaccinating and poisoning the blood of our clean, sweet-faced children, that the doctors, druggists, lawyers and preachers of San Diego be vaccinated, and the dear innocent children be spared. This was not a popular presentation to vaccinationists, and yet two-thirds of the ladies present cheered me roundly. Oh! that our mothers, wives,