“The process of vaccination consists in injecting into the skin the liquid that is obtained by applying the discharge from the body of a small-pox patient to the udder of a cow. Vaccination is a barbarous practice, and it is one of the most fatal of all the delusions current in our time, not to be found even among the so-called savage races of the world. Its supporters are not content with its adoption by those who have no objection to it, but seek to impose it with the aid of penal laws and rigorous punishments on all people alike.”
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Source: A Guide to Health (1921), Part II, Chapter VI 'Contagious Diseases: Small-Pox'.
About this quote
The medical claim here reflects an early-twentieth-century fear of vaccination that modern science does not support; the practice is safe and has saved countless lives. What still holds is the narrower point beneath it: unease at having a measure forced on people by penal law rather than explained and freely accepted.
When to use it
- A workplace imposes a new policy by decree, and staff resist far more than if it had been explained first.
- A town wins support for a recycling rule by persuading residents instead of threatening fines.
- A parent finds a teenager keeps a curfew he helped set far better than one simply handed down.