In an article, “Vaccination In Italy“, which appeared in the New York Medical Journal, July 1899, Charles Rauta, Professor of Hygiene and Material Medical in the University of Perguia, Italy, wrote:
“Italy is one of the best-vaccinated countries in the world, if not the best of all. For twenty years before 1885, our nation was vaccinated in the proportion of 98.5 percent. Notwithstanding, the epidemics of smallpox that we have had have been something so frightful that nothing before the invention of vaccination could equal them. During 1887, we had 16,249 deaths from smallpox; in 1888, we had 18,110, and in 1889, 131,413.”
“Vaccination is a monstrosity; a misbegotten offspring of error and ignorance. It should have no place in either hygiene or medicine. Believe not in vaccination; it is a world-wide delusion, an unscientific practice, a fatal superstition with consequences measured today by tears and sorrow without end.”
