In the beginning was the lymph

In mid-June of 1871, the Lancet reported a court case that it considered to have disturbing implications. ¹ A man named apparently no more than ‘Jones’ who ‘had not a farthing of money, [had been] removed in [a] prison van’ from Islington police court after saying that ‘he and his family were often without food’. He had broken the 1853 and 1867 Vaccination Acts that required all parents to have their children vaccinated against smallpox. An epidemic was currently raging in Islington and indeed in Europe.