Passing into the poorer part of the city, at length we reached a cobbler’s shop with a few pairs of roughly-made boots on sale in the window.  In the shop sat Mr. Samuels, a dour-looking man of about forty.

“Here is the doctor, Samuels,” said Strong.

“All right,” he answered, “he’ll find the missus and the kids in there and a pretty sight they are; I can’t bear to look at them, I can’t.”

Passing through the shop, we went into a back room whence came a sound of wailing.  Standing in the room was a careworn woman and in the bed lay two children, aged three and four respectively.  I proceeded at once to my examination, and found that one child, a boy, was in a state of extreme prostration and fever, the greater part of his body being covered with a vivid scarlet rash.  The other child, a girl, was suffering from a terribly red and swollen arm, the inflammation being most marked above the elbow.  Both were cases of palpable and severe erysipelas, and both of the sufferers had been vaccinated within five days.

“Well,” said Stephen Strong, “well, what’s the matter with them?”

“Erysipelas,” I answered.

“And what caused the erysipelas?  Was it the vaccination?”

“It may have been the vaccination,” I replied cautiously.

“Come here, Samuels,” called Strong.  “Now, then, tell the doctor your story.”

“There’s precious little story about it,” said the poor man, keeping his back towards the afflicted children.  “I have been pulled up three times and fined because I didn’t have the kids vaccinated, not being any believer in vaccination myself ever since my sister’s boy died of it, with his head all covered with sores.  Well, I couldn’t pay no more fines, so I told the missus that she might take them to the vaccination officer, and she did five or six days ago.  And there, that’s the end of their vaccination, and damn ’em to hell, say I,” and the poor fellow pushed his way out of the room.

It is quite unnecessary that I should follow all the details of this sad case.  In the result, despite everything that I could do for him, the boy died though the girl recovered.  Both had been vaccinated from the same tube of lymph.  In the end I was able to force the authorities to have the contents of tubes obtained from the same source examined microscopically and subjected to the culture test.  They were proved to contain the streptococcus or germ of erysipelas.

As may be imagined this case caused a great stir and much public controversy, in which I took an active part.  It was seized upon eagerly by the anti-vaccination party, and I was quoted as the authority for its details.  In reply, the other side hinted pretty broadly that I was a person so discredited that my testimony on this or any other matter should be accepted with caution, an unjust aspersion which not unnaturally did much to keep me in the enemy’s camp.  Indeed it was now, when I became useful to a great and rising