none but strongly prejudiced persons longer disbelieved.
The good news that here at last was protection from the world's terror, was published far and near. It might be supposed that all would gladly hail and quickly avail themselves of the protection. Not so. Mighty indeed is human prejudice, invincible when fortified with religious superstition. Nowhere in the civilized world outside of Aristopia was there sufficient freedom from bigotry to allow vaccination to be adopted, for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were the acme of religious fanaticism in the world's history. The pulpit everywhere thundered against the impiety of vaccination. Smallpox was a wise dispensation of Providence to rid the poor man of the burden of his numerous family; it was a fitting punishment for the sins of the proud and impious; to attempt to escape from or abolish it was sacrilege. Passages of Scripture were searched out and pieced together to prove that vaccination was even anti-Christ. The miracle-mongers of the Church did not fail to find warning portents. Ox-faced boys and cow-faced girls were known (it was said) to be born of mothers who had been vaccinated. God's wrath was
