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VACCINATION. To the Editor of "The Bulletin."
Sir: In a discussion on the reliability 6* vac clnation aa a preventive of small-pox, the asser- tion w»g a.ade that In the three last epidemieV of thi^t 'disease In England the mortality was gre^J- «rt la the last one; necessarily since Jenner's d f covery. Please give some statistics on this su 1ect.
<In 1837 the British Parliament received an- swers from 542 physicians of all nationalities to questions which were asked them in reference to the utility of vaccination, and only two of ] them spoke against it. Nothing proves this util- i ltv more than the statistics then obtained. Es- i pecially instructive were the figures compiled In an epidemic of small-pox at Chemnitz, Germany, In 1870-71. Its population was 64,225, of whom 53.831 were vaccinated. 5.712 were unvaecin ■ ated. and 4,652 had had the small-pox b Of those vaccinated, 953. or 1.77 per cent, be- came affected with the disease; of the unvac- cinated, 2.643, or 46.3 per ceu:., suffered frxm it. The mortality of the vaccinated was 0/73 per cent.' and of the unprotected 9.16 per Summary of recent statistics indicates that' 1 general cases the danger of infection is six t!im as great and the mortality sixty-eight, times u srreat In the unvacciuated as in the vaccinnti'i', During the Franco-Prussian war there wp.s jj epidemic of small-pox in France; the Frety army, whose vaccination was not carefully c) ried out. lost 23,400 from small-pox; the q man army, where the men had been thorough Inoculated, lost only 450 men.)
Harvey Cushing / John Hay Whitney Medical Library
HISTORICAL LIBRARY
Yale University Gift of Dr. Alfred Evans
VACCINATION DEFORMITY.
VACCINATION
A CURSE
And a Menace
TO
PersoQal Liberty,
WITH
Statistics Sljowiijg Its Dangers and Criminality
BY J. M. PEEBLES. A. M., M. D., Ph. D.
AUTHOR OK
'THE SEERS OF THE AGES," "DEATH DEFEATED OR THE PSYCHIC SECRET »T HOW
TO KEEP YOUNG," "THREE JOURNEYS AROUND THE WORLD." " HOW TO
LIVE A CENTURY AND GROW OLD GRACEFULLY," "THE SOUL'S
PRE-EXISTENCE," "THE CHRIST QUESTION SETTLED,"
"IMMORTALITY AND OUR DWELLING PLACES
HEREAFTER." ETC., ETC.
BATTLE CREEK, MICH.,
THE TEMPLE OF HEALTH PUBLISHING CO.,
UPTON COURT,
1900.
cc**T /900
Copyright, 1900
By j. m. Peebles.
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2012 with funding from
Open Knowledge Commons and Yale University, Cushing/Whitney Medical Library
http://www.archive.org/details/vaccinationcurseOOpeeb
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
Page, a brief sketch from jenner to the present .... ii
CHAPTER II.
VACCINE STOCK AND COMMERCIAL VACCINATION . . . . 41
CHAPTER III.
VACCINATION FAILS TO PROTECT . 56
CHAPTER IV.
VACCINATION LEGISLATION S9
CHAPTER V.
LOCAL CONTESTS ON THE VACCINATION QUESTION .... 123
CHAPTER VI.
VACCINAL INJURIES AND FATALITIES . ..... 167
CHAPTER VII.
SYPHILIS AND LEPROSY TRACEABLE TO VACCINATION . . . 2IQ
CHAPTER VIII.
MISCELLANEOUS FEATURES OF VACCINATION 259
PREFACE.
No man, conscious of his moral integrity, intellectual abil- ity and studied efforts to benefit humanity, will ever apologize for speech or book ; hence I make no apology for publishing the following pages.
The vaccination practice, pushed to the front on all oc- casions by the medical profession, and through political conni- vance made compulsory by the state, has not only become the chief menace and gravest danger to the health of the rising gen- eration, but likewise the crowning outrage upon the personal liberty of the American citizen.
The immediate occasion which induced me to take up the pen against this great medical evil of the times, was the clos- ing of the public schools in San Diego, Cal., (February, 1899), against all children who failed to show a certificate of vaccina- tion. Emerging from that heated contest, with my feelings and convictions roused to their highest tension, these pages were thrown off at welding heat ; and if they are pervaded with sar- casm and irony as well as sterling fact and solid argument, they will serve all the better for popular appeal to the masses, who need rousing to a realizing sense of the unmitigated scourge that lurks on the point of the vaccinator's lancet. The general public are not aware ; the householders of the land have not given this subject that attention which, as parents and guard- ians of little children, it is their solemn duty to do. I send forth this book to open their eyes, to rouse their conscience. and to discover to them a cruel and insidious enemy where they have been cajoled into the belief they have a friend.
For the last thirty years I have made a practical study of the workings of vaccination in the various countries of the globe. I have personally investigated it in Trebizonde, Asiatic
D PREFACE.
Turkey, while there holding a Consular appointment under Genei al Grant ; in South Africa ; in New Zealand and Aus- tralia ; in British India and Ceylon ; in Egypt, China and the countries of Europe ; in Mexico and the Islands of the Pacific, not omitting our own United States. I have for many years been familiar with the heroic struggle of reformers in England for the repeal of the compulsory enforcement of vaccination, for resistance to which thousands among the laboring poor have been fined and imprisoned. In all hot countries the princi- pal mode is from "Arm to Arm" vaccination, on account of the unruly, uncertain behaviour of the ordinary putrid calf pus. This mode has spread syphilis and leprosy among the native inhabitants until the indigenous populations of the Sandwich Islands and the British West Indies are threatened with extinc- tion. Yet the fee-hunting doctors are incessantly hounding the legislatures for more stringent compulsory enactments, by which they will be enabled to inflict and repeat this degrading rite upon the defenceless natives for the enhancement of their revenues.
Moreover, vaccination is a "civilized" practice. English, French, German, and American physicians, by means of com- pulsory vaccination laws which they have lobbied through the various governments and legislatures, have the masses of the people, and especially the native populations of the countries which their respective governments rule, at their mercy. The native Hindoo and the tropical islanders know full well the ca- lamitous results of arm to arm vaccination, but are powerless to protect themselves. In the United States and Great Britain, the evil assumes other and equally portentuous forms which are fully set forth in the following chapters.
Compulsory vaccination, poisoning the crimson currents of the human system with brute-extracted lymph under the strange infatuation that it would prevent small-pox, was one of the darkest blots that disfigured the last century. Its pall,
PREFACE. 7
though partially lifted, still rests like a deadly nightmare upon the body politic, and, sad to state, the medical profession — save a few of the most broad-minded and enlightened — have been the chief instigators. They encouraged it just as they en- couraged and practiced in the past profuse bleeding — just as they encouraged catharsis, with the inflamed gums, loosened teeth and the mercurial sore-mouth. And there are medical Bourbons today that will salivate. Thirty years ago physicians would not allow their fever patients a drop of cold water to cool their parched tongues. Many died pleading — begging for water, water!
The majority of doctors are behind the times. They may have diplomas, but they are laggards. They are not students. Many of them prefer the billiard-room to the post-graduate course. They prefer the club-room to the medical laboratory, the cigar to the clinic. They are fossils and away behind in the researches that gladden this brilliant era.
While copious bleeding with much of the old "shot-gun" practice has been relegated to the dreamless shades of the past, they still compulsorily poison with cow-pox lymph ; and then piteously complain that "medical practice does not pay" — that multitudes prefer psychic physicians, hypnotic practitioners, os- teopathists, mental healers and sanitarium treatment to theirs. Of course they do. This is natural ; for just in the ratio that the latter increase do graveyards grow lean and coffin-makers' occupations are in less demand.
It is admitted that prevention is preferable to cure. And there is not an intelligent medical practitioner in the land who will unqualifiedly risk his reputation upon the statement that vaccination is a positive preventative of small-pox. Volumes of statistics as well as the highest medical science of this coun- try, Canada, England, and the Continent would be directly against him. The most that any physician of good standing now contends for is that vaccination modifies the disease. This
8 PREFACE.
is stoutly denied. On the contrary it rather aggravates the dis- ease as there are two poisons now in the system instead of one for nature to contend against. It is sanitation, diet, pure air, calmness of mind, confidence, and cleanliness that modify the small-pox ; all of which modifiers are infinitely cheaper, safer, and in every way preferable to cow-pox poison, which, if it does not kill, often marks, maims, and sows the seeds of future ec- zema, tumors, ulcers, carbuncles, cancers, and leprosy.
We have at our command testimonies — scores of testi- monies— proving beyond any possible doubt that men unvacci- nated have nursed small-pox patients in hospitals at different times, for years, and never took the disease, while on the other hand we have, with the dates and figures, the most positive proof that those who had been vaccinated — vaccinated two and three times — took the disease when exposed, and died there- from. These facts are undeniable.
Time, at my age. is too precious to parry words with mere ordinary physicians : hence, will only add that when laymen or medical practitioners tell me that calf-lymph vaccination, how- ever manipulated, prevents or modifies the small-pox, they most severely, painfully, try my patience. I do not tell them they are falsifiers, but do state emphatically that if I should say that cow- pox vaccination invariably prevented or modified small-pox I should consider myself either a most pitiable ignoramus or a most infamous falsifier of facts ! Such is my position, and med- ical men, considering it, can pose upon just which horn of this dilemma — this downy couch — they find the most comfortable.
The time has come for scholarly men, for cultured, inde- pendent physicians to speak out plainly against this baleful scourge — to take a brave stand for the right and defend it though the bigot's fire be kindled, or the crimson cross again be built.
Compulsory vaccination and class legislation of all kinds in the interests of any one profession, are opposed to the genius of
PREFACE. 9
unfoldment, the spirit of the age, and to the Constitution of the United States. They are smitten with dry rot and stamped with the black seal of death. They are going graveward, and fee- hungering physicians are the principal mourners. This is em- phatically an age of research and progress. Nature, afire with the indwelling Divinity, and voiced by the law of evolution, says, grow — grow or die, giving place to something better. The good and the true, only, are immortal.
Previous to the Reformation the state stood behind the priest and enforced his edicts, from whence thousands of vic- tims fell before the steel and the flame of a merciless persecu- tion. Today the state stands behind the commercialized, fee- hunting doctor, to enforce his vaccination fraud against the lives and health of millions of little children. It is especially for the removal of this disgraceful compulsory curse that I speak as with a tongue of flame, that I make my earnest, impassioned piea. Restore the American citizen to his liberty in matters medical as we have guaranteed his liberty in matters religious, and then if the medical profession have any specific of value to offer, the common sense of the people will come to know and adopt it.
J. M. PEEBLES, M. D.
Battle Creek, Michigan.
Our quotations from distinguished American physicians and laymen: Dr. Alexander Wilder, Dr. Leveson, Dr. Foote, Dr. Winterburn, Dr. E. M. Ripley, Dr. T. V. Gifford, Frank D. Blue, Esq., Hon. A. B. Gaston, W. H. Burr, Esq., Washington, D. C, the Rev. I. L. Peebles, Methodist Episcopal Conference, Mississippi, and others. From such English authorities as Wil- liam Tebb F. R. G. S., W. Scott Tebb M. A., M. D., (Cantab) D. P. H., Dr. Alfred R. Wallace, Dr. Creighton, Dr. Crook- shank, Dr. Ross, Dr. Hitchman, Dr. Sir J. W. Pease, Dr. Wil- liam Rowley, F. R. C. P., John Pickering, F. R. G. S., E. S. S., F. S. A. etc., Dr. T. Mackensie, F. R. C. P. From members of
IO PREFACE.
the Parliamentary Commission, and the brainiest men of Europe, are not only copious, but convincing to demonstration. The statistics in this volume, gathered from official reports and tabulated with the greatest care, — are strictlv, positively relia- ble.
The whole trend of the higher thought and study is against vaccination. To this end the learned Rev. I. L. Peebles, of the Mississippi M. E. Conference, says (page 28) in his crisp and stirring booklet, entitled, "Opposition to Vaccination :" "If I had ever suggested to a legislator to enact a law enforcing vac- cination, I should repent of it as long as I lived, either for being so cruel or so ignorant. Physicians and legislators who are par- ties to this filthy, poisonous butchery, and who practice it with- out having studied it most thoroughly and prayed over it most earnestly, should be ashamed of themselves. Let us remember that it is cruel enough to maim, scar, or butcher a person when he wants us to, but how much more cruel to butcher him by force !"
CHAPTER I.
A BRIEF SKETCH OF VACCINATION FROM JEN- NER TO THE PRESENT.— PRELIMINARY.
Since the dawn of history the most dreaded scourge of mankind has been the prevalence of Zymotic diseases — small- pox, plague, yellow fever, typhus, scarlatina, diphtheria, etc. In certain years, at particular recurring periods, these diseases contribute a very large percentage to the total death rate, es- pecially among urban populations. They are contemplated in the popular mind as being so swift and merciless, that whole communities stand in helpless terror at their approach ! The desolation which has sometimes been reported from distant cities is apprehended to be as complete as that left in the path of a cyclone, or like the cindered remains of a great conflagra- tion. The most dreaded among these zymotic diseases is small- pox, because it is equally present and at home in all climates. But the popular notion that small-pox was a veritable plague until inoculation and vaccination provided a "sure and infalli- ble defence" against it, is altogether erroneous. It is certainly taken far greater account of since the days of Jenner than dur- ing the eighteenth century, and there are strong reasons for concluding that the special prominence given to it of late years, is due to the clamor of doctors who desire to have the state guarantee an unfailing resource for fees by making vaccina- tion compulsory.
The people cannot be too often reminded that the native
12 VACCINATION A CURSE.
soil wherein small-pox most thrives and fattens, is "filth." It ever follows close upon flagrant violations of the law of cleanli- ness. Where large populations are crowded in the midst of wretched surroundings, reeking with filth and vicious in their dietetic and drinking habits, there expect a fearful fatality when once the small-pox has entered their foetid precincts. The in- dividual or the community that has a wholesome diet, pure blood, sanitary surroundings, immunity from poverty and free- dom from blood poisoning incident to vaccination, need have no more fear of small-pox than from a mild attack of measles. Until scientific sanitation began to engage the attention of state and municipal authorities, the plague returned as punctually to the cities of Europe as small-pox has during the last century. Now the percentage of fatality, not only in small-pox but in all zymotic diseases, is steadily declining, as sanitation becomes more rigidly enforced in crowded districts, in spite of vaccina- tion and other silly and reactionary devices which the doctors from time to time, aided by legislation, continue to inflict on mankind. Alfred Milnes, M. D., M. A., of London, well re- marks— "What About Vaccination?" page 17:
''Small-pox is one of a group of allied diseases, called the Zymotics. The name means that the disease is due to a process of fermentation. But for common-sense purposes, it is better to call these diseases by the plain English name of filth diseases. They are diseases which take their rise in filth, which are na- ture's punishment for filth, which are both frequent and virulent where filth prevails, and which can be cleared away by the clear- ing away of filth. Now, in the eighteenth century, in the latter part of which Jenner lived, it must be confessed that the English people had not yet awoke to the beauty and the necessity of cleanliness. Filth was universal, and small-pox was terrible. Not so terrible as many persons want to make out, but still a formidable danger."
A. M. Ross, M. D., in his vigorous pamphlet, "Vaccination
A BRIEF SKETCH FRONf JENNER TO THE PRESENT. 13
a Medical Delusion," writes : —
"Wherever the streets are narrow, the lanes and courts filthy ; where cesspits abound and filth is allowed to accumulate and ferment ; where the weak, intemperate and unclean congre- gate together, and where the children are ill-fed and badly clothed — there small-pox makes its home and riots in filth and death."
The modes of treatment which have from time to time been invented to combat small-pox, have been for the most part em- pirical experiments and make-shifts, without any rational found- ation in science, which have been abandoned, one after another, but not until thousands of lives were destroyed and hundreds of thousands were cursed with grievous and incurable ailments ; net until self-sacrificing reformers had spent valuable lives in assailing the petrified superstitions of doctors and politicians. Once committed to an error, it is amazing with what conserva- tive persistence public bodies will continue to defend it. To re- peal a measure once adopted would seem to be a tacit confes- sion of fallibility, and fallibility is a human defect which legis- lative bodies are slow to admit.
The earliest form of treating small-pox in Europe seems to have been imported from the same region the disease came from, namely, from the far East, which reached England by way of the Saracens at the time of the Crusades, or by way of the Moors who reached Spain. This earlier mode of dealing with small-pox was styled "the red cloth treatment." A priest and physician of the fourteenth century, John of Goddesden, England, wrote a treatise on this form of cure. The patient was wrapped in red cloth, while window curtatins and drapery of red were also provided for the sick room. It was thought this treatment conduced to throw the morbid symptoms out to the surface ; and as matter of fact, it was sinless and harmless in comparison to the thrice accursed practice of vaccination.
14 ' VACCINATION A CURSE.
SMALL-POX INOCULATION.
About eighty years before Jenner's discovery — 1721 — a practice was introduced in England, called Inoculation, which was accomplished by taking pus matter direct from small-pox patients and introducing it into the blood of healthy individ- uals. Sometimes the virus was introduced into deep incisions, but more often from the point of the lancet just under the skin. The milder method was introduced by Gatti, a French physician, and adopted by Sutton and Dimsdale in England about 1763.
Small-pox inoculation, the forerunner and parent of vac- cination, like its successor, was derived from a superstition practiced by the common people, which has come to be styled "the tradition of the dairy maids." Tenner derived his earliest idea of vaccination — while yet a student of medicine — from a young country woman who had contracted cow-pox. Small- pox inoculation was derived, not from scientific experimenta- tion, but from a superstition practiced by the common people in India since the sixth century. The fad having once become the fashion, the doctors adopted and bowed to it as a fetish which must not be questioned ; and after the people had thor- oughly learned by sad experience that it was a public curse and not a blessing, rose in revolt against it, still the doctors — who were now reaping a fat revenue from the practice — continued in the vigorous defence of the superstition, and in the persecu- tion and misrepresentation of the reformers who had arisen to overthrow it. Mr. Porter, who was English ambassador at Constantinople in 1755, informs us, (Gentleman's Magazine, for October of that year) : "It is the tradition and opinion of the inhabitants of the country that a certain angel presides over this disease. That it is to bespeak his favor and evince their confidence that the Georgians take a small portion of variolous matter, and, by means of scarification, introduce it between the thumb and the forefinger of a sound person. The operation is
A BRIEF SKETCH FROM JENNER TO THE PRESENT. 15
supposed to never miss its effect. To secure beyond all uncer- tainty the good will of the angel, they hang up scarlet cloths about the bed, that being the favorite colour of the Celestial in- habitants they wish to propitiate."
We may well inquire : how did this superstition reach England, obtain royal patronage, receive sanction by the Royal College of Physicians, and dominate all classes of society for more than half a century before it was finally overthrown and superceded by another superstition that has not discounted one whit the mischief which the earlier superstition had accom- plished? The story may be briefly told. One Timoni, a Greek physician in Constantinople, in a letter addressed to Dr. Wood- ward, professor of physic, first brought the subject to English notice. This letter was printed in the Philosophical Transac- tions for 1714. But the real credit — or discredit — of the intro- duction of the practice into England, was due to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, whose husband was ambassador to the Porte in 1716. Lady Montagu wrote a friend in England, de- tailing the process of "ingrafting" as a preventative against small-pox. This famous letter was written in 1717, but the in- oculation craze was not fairly inaugurated in England until 1 72 1. In 1724 Steele congratulated Lady Mary for having "saved the lives of thousands of British subjects every year." Voltaire was in England about this time, and became an ardent worshipper of the newly imported fetish. He knew well how to reach the feminine portion of the population of his native France. He assured them that the charms of the ladies of Cir- cassia were due to this ingrafting practice, and that thousands of English girls had adopted this method of preserving their health and beauty. So it was not long before inoculation also became the rage in the kingdom of Louis XV.
In the same year that inoculation reached England (1721), 244 persons were inoculated in Boston, Mass., by Dr. Boylston, of whom six died. Numerous deaths also followed the practice
l6 VACCINATION A CURSE.
in England, and by 1728 it became quite generally discredited; but in 1740 it again revived, and for thirty years held full sway. This revival was largely due to the luck of two doctors, Robert and Daniel Sutton, who gave minute attention to hygiene, by which their inoculated patients generally went through with a very mild form of small-pox, which all would invariably do un- der a thorough system of sanitation. But this simple secret was not generally understood in those days, and so the brothers Sutton not only received great credit, but reaped a very hand- some profit through their device of cleanliness. Their practice became very popular, receiving patronage from the nobility who paid them immense sums for their services. As small-pox induced by inoculation was infectious, the same as when taken in the natural way, enterprising inoculators persuaded whole parishes to submit to it, so that all having it at once, none would be expected to catch it by subsequent exposure. The rich har- vest of money accruing from the practice, therefore, became a powerful motive in the defence and perpetuation of the sys- tem, precisely as vaccination today, enforced by legislators and boards of health, gives lucrative employment to a class whose self interest prompts them to every specie of subterfuge and special pleading to perpetuate the compulsory clause in vacci- nation legislation.
After the fruitless trial of nearly a century, it was discov- ered that inoculation was sowing the seeds of a long train of diseases, in their most fatal form, communicating infectious complaints from one person to another — cancer, scrofula, con- sumption, and other more loathsome diseases were spreading to an alarming extent. It was seen and confessed by hundreds of physicians that the net result of this practice was a multipli- cation of ailments and an enormous increase in the total mor- tality. Dr. Winterburn. of Philadelphia, writes, — "The Value of Vaccination," page 18: —
"From the most trustworthy sources, however, it is evi-
A BRIEF SKETCH FROM JENNER TO THE PRESENT. 17
dent that just as now we have epidemics of measles, and other of the zymoses, varying greatly in intensity and fatality, so in the pre-inoculation period there were epidemics of small-pox of great fatality and others of very moderate intensity. But after the introduction of inoculation, the ravages of small-pox increased, not only directly as the result of inoculation, but each new case became, as it were, a centre of disease, from it spread- ing in every direction, often with great virulence. It spread small-pox just as the natural disease did. It could be propa- gated anywhere by sending in a letter a bit of cotton thread dipped in the variolous lymph. In this way, not only the num- ber of cases, but, also, the general mortality was very greatly increased. But so hard is it to alter the ideas of a people after they have crystallized into habit, that although it was evident that epidemics of small-pox often started from an inoculated case ; and although the most strenuous efforts were made to supersede it by vaccination, inoculation continued to flourish for nearly a century and a half. It was found necessary in 1840 to make inoculation in England, a penal offense, in order to put an end to its use. Even that has not prevented its secret prac- tice by the lower orders, where ideas die hardest, and the rite is even now probably more than occasionally performed."
SMALL-POX INOCULATION. Some knowledge of the history of small-pox inoculation is important at this time, since it furnished so many exact par- allels to the history of vaccination. With few exceptions medi- cal men defended it, made light of its multiform dangers, and held it up to public attention as the great desideratum of the common security and welfare. They juggled with statistics the same as vaccinators do today to defend their practice, point- ing out that 18 per cent, of small-pox patients died who took the disease in the natural way, while only one in ninety-one of the inoculated died. But at last the real facts — tragic and un- welcome though they were — confronted both doctor and lay- man in such a signal and alarming manner, that Parliament was invoked to put an end once and forever to the inoculating rite.
l8 VACCINATION A CURSE.
Nevertheless, as we shall presently see, no sooner was this su- perstition abandoned, than the medical profession adopted an- other which was destined to curse the world in a ten-fold greater ratio, and while they petitioned Parliament to make the earlier practice a penal offence, they likewise made their new fad obligatory and compulsory. Hence the last estate of the people was made far worse than their first, for now the liberty of the citizen to defend the health of his family was cancelled.
The first Compulsory Vaccination Act passed by Parlia- ment also contained this clause, retiring inoculation to the limbs :
"Any person who shall after the passing of this Act pro- duce in any person by inoculation with variolous matter, or any matter, potency, or thing impregnated with variolous matter, or wilfully by any other means whatsoever produce the disease of small-pox in any person shall be guilty of an offence, and shall be liable to be proceeded against summarily, and be con- victed to be imprisoned for any term not exceeding one month."
Arthur Wallaston Hutton, M. A., makes the following sig- nificant observation, — "The Vaccination Question," page 14: —
"In the early years of the present century, when medical men, with almost complete unanimity, were seeking to replace the variolous inoculation by the vaccine inoculation, they con- fessed, or rather urged, that the earlier practice had destroyed more lives than it had saved. And this was undoubtedly true. For not only did the practice inflict the disease on the person inoculated, but that person became a new center of infection, from which small-pox could be and was occasionally 'caught' in the natural way. * * * * * * * We talk of small- pox inoculation, as if it were an uniform practice ; whereas it really varied as much as vaccination does now. It might com- municate the disease in its most deadly form, or it might do just nothing at all, beyond making a slight sore, which proved, if tested, no defence against subsequent exposure to the infec- tion of small-pox. Disastrous, however, as the practice was — and so clearly is that now recognized that for the last fifty years the practice has been penal — it may be admitted that there was 'something in it,' and that, in the special cases of medical
A BRIEF SKETCH FROM JENNER TO THE PRESENT. 19
men and of nurses, it might still be resorted to with advantage, if performed in isolation hospitals. For although some consti- tutions are so susceptible of small-pox (as others are of other fevers) that one attack does not afford security against a second or even a third, the general rule is that one attack does confer subsequent immunity ; and a person inoculated when in good health, and when there is no severe epidemic about, might con- ceivably pass through the ordeal with less risk than if a natural attack of the disease had been waited for and incurred."
JENNER AND VACCINATION.
As we have seen, the inoculation superstition was the chief medical curse of the eighteenth century. It sent multitudes to untimely graves, and permanently impaired the health of other multitudes, since the septic poisoning from within reached the very fountains of life and laid the foundations for a long train of incurable diseases. In the final summing up its pledges were broken and its flattering promises were unfulfilled. Yet vicious as it proved, it was superseded at the hands of Jenner by a fallacy still more monstrous, until the nineteenth century, which, notwithstanding its boasted civilization, has been more cursed by the doctors than was the eighteenth.
Edward Jenner, born in 1749, at Berkley, introduced vacci- nation in England in 1798. He is credited with the fanciful dis- covery that by poisoning the blood with cow-pox, a future at- tack of small-pox would be prevented. This delusion has been so completely disposed of by Dr. Creighton and Prof. Crook- shank that I need devote but little space to the Jenner episode. In the first place, Jenner was far from being a learned man. In the department of exact research he was a blunderer, yet his personal qualities were amiable and attractive. He was in the habit of writing verses and had a faculty of making fast friends. His medical degree was confered with the simple preliminary, not of an examination, but the payment of a fee of fifteen guineas to the University of St. Andrews. And his Fellowship
20 VACCINATION A CURSE.
in the Royal Society — according to the admission of his latest biographer, Dr. Norman Moor, by a procedure which amounted to a fraud. In the field of natural history, where he made some pretensions, his knowledge was scanty and empirical. His pub- lished observations on the cuckoo, — Phi. Trans. Vol. LXXVIII — read in 1788, called out a witty and critical tract entitled, "The Bird that Laid the Vaccination Egg."
In strict truth, Jenner was not the discoverer of vaccina- tion. Many of the common folk in his time, chiefly dairy maids, had already noted the fact that those who took the cow-pox were less susceptible to small-pox ; and years before Jenner took the matter up, a Dorsetshire farmer, named Jesty, inoculated his wife and two sons with the cow-pox, in the conviction that this would prove a preventive.
THE COW-POX.
This is a filth disease, a "bad disease" whose original source is in the human degenerate ; a disease communicated to the cow's teats by stable boys who not only suffer from the "bad dis- ease," but whose hands are soiled by grooming the greasy heels of diseased and ill-kept horses. Bear in particular remem- brance, that the cow-pox is not natural to the bovine species. Bulls and steers are never troubled with it ; neither are heifers without the voluntary and conscious agency of man. It is only milch cows that catch the disorder. Dr. George W. Winter- burn, whom I have already quoted, writes : —
"This disease which is called cow-pox in cows, is known as grease in the horse. Grease is a disorder resulting from inflammation of the sebaceous glands of the skin, about the heels of a horse, and is properly called eczema pustulosum. The disease originating from a scrofulous condi- tion, supervenes from exposure to wet, and from subsequent lack of cleanliness, and is always the result of carelessness on the part of the groom. The discharge from these vesicular pus- tules is often profuse, very irritating to the surface over which
A BRIEF SKETCH FROM JENNER TO THE PRESENT. 2 1
it flows, and foetid. * * * * This purulent matter, car- ried on the dirty hands of farm-laborers to the teats or other sensitive parts of the cow, produced the disorder which has been misnamed cow-pox."
And these are the vile forms of corruption, charged with a deadly virus — sometimes horse-grease, sometimes srnall-poxed cow virus, but more frequently syphilized cow-pox — which Jen- ner pronounced "a sovereign remedy against small-pox," and who declared to the British Parliament when he applied for his £30,000 reward : "Whoever is once vaccinated with cow-pox is forever afterward protected from small-pox." Yet in spite of Jenner's promises, and notwithstanding the civilized world has been vaccinated and re-vaccinated ad nauseum, the world continues to suffer from small-pox epidemics, just as it did dur- ing the inoculation times, while such mitigation as we really en- joy is due—in spite of vaccination—to an increased sanitation ob- servance of more rational habits of living. Following up Jen- ner's observations, Arthur Wallaston Hutton remarks, — "The Vaccination Question," page 19 : —
"His theory was that the disease of the horse's hoof, known as 'horse-grease,' was the source of human small-pox and also of cow-pox ; and in this way the relationship was established to his own satisfaction. Neither proposition is true ; nor indeed did Jenner care to maintain the truth of either proposition when the merits of vaccination had once become established in peo- ple's minds; but the theory justified or seemed to justify him in describing cow-pox as variolae vaccinae or 'small-pox of the cow;' and it is really this theory which has mis-directed pretty nearly all the observations that have been made on vaccination right down to the present day. Sir John Simon, a living author- ity on the subject, explains that persons vaccinated cannot take the small-pox, because they have had it already ; and this be- lief is still shared by hundreds and thousands of people."
Again the same high authority says : —
"But what is in truth the nature of cow-pox? It is an ail- ment, not of cattle, but of the cow, as its name implies, exclu-
22 VACCINATION A CURSE.
sively, and of the cow only when she is in milk ; and it is fur- ther a disease of civilization. It does not occur when a cow suckles her own calf ; nor, for that matter, does it occur where cow-stables are kept decently clean. Jenner observed that it did not occur when the milkers were women only ; and hence his theory that the disease originated in 'horse-grease,' his asser- tion being (first stated as an hypothesis, and then, a little lower down, as a thing which 'commonly happens') that the disease was communicated to the cow's teats by a man-milker who had just dressed the diseased horse's heels. Other observers also professed to have noted that the disease only occurred where there were both men and women milkers ; but they drew an- other inference as to its origin, for which they found confirma- tion in the disease's popular name. Apparently it is in some way due to the friction of the teats by the milker's hands ; it oc- curs spontaneously (i. e. apart from inoculation) only where cows are milked; and its name had reference not to small-pox but to "great-pox," with which its analogy was popularly and cor- rectly discerned. Presumably it is a consequence of its partly human origin that it is so easily (and ordinarily without danger) inoculable on man, which other diseases of animals are not. That, however, is mere conjecture ; what is now certainly estab- lished beyond all reasonable doubt is that cow-pox bears no pathological relation to small-pox. The similarity in name is the only connection ; for, though there is a superficial resem- blance between the vaccine vesicles and the variolous pox, the two diseases are really quite distinct. The definite establish- ment of this fact, which of course upsets the whole alleged scientific basis of vaccination, is due to the labors in recent years of Dr. Creighton and Professor Crookshank, though the real character of cow-pox had long ago been suspected."
In an article communicated to the Academie de Medicine in 1865, by Auzias-Turenne, I quote the following language: "Between syphilis and cow-pox the analogy may be a long way followed up, * * * but, happily, for the vaccinated, cow- pox passes through a rapid evolution, and does not leave viru- lent remains for so long a time or so frequently as syphilis."
In that thorough and carefully written work of Dr. Creigh- ton, published in 1887, he was the first to demonstrate Jenner's
A BRIEF SKETCH FROM JENNER TO THE PRESENT. 23
mistake. He set out to find some explanation for the com- plaints that were continually multiplying of the communication of syphilis by vaccination. The results of his investigations were embodied in the volume, "Cow-pox and Vaccinal Syphilis." His early judgment was that the communication of two diseases by one and the same act was improbable ; but as the evidence he accumulated became overwhelming, he at last gave up every doubt that these syphilitic symptoms are part and parcel of the cow-pox itself, which is sure to make its presence felt if inocu- lated in the system through the ordinary process of vaccination.
In the same year that Creighton published his book, estab- lishing the connection between syphilis and cow-pox, Prof. Crookshank was pursuing independent investigations into the micro-pathology of a cow-disease that had broken out in Wilk- shire, which the Agricultural Department of the Privy Council thought might bear some relation to scarlet fever in man. In this investigation, Crookshank also critically examined the na- ture and origin of cow-pox, with the result that his researches fully bore out and confirmed Dr. Creighton's conclusions. "In fact," says Hutton, "the syphilitic nature of cow-pox is the theory which now holds the field ; and it is hardly contested by the advocates of vaccination, who are content to rely solely on the evidence of statistics." How horrid to contemplate !
We are therefore face to face with the gravest, and at the same time the most disgusting, aspect of the whole vaccination problem. Note that the cow-pox is not a natural bovine dis- ease ; that only milch cows contract it, and this invariably through human agency. Long before Creighton and Crook- shank wrote, it had been suspected by high authorities, that man is not only the medium of transmission of horse-grease to the cow's udder, but that he communicates a loathsome virus from his own person as well. Therefore the horse-grease dis- ease in the cow, is a very different malady from the cow-pox, which is derived from man and from man alone ! Let us be
24 VACCINATION A CURSE.
frank. A large percentage of vaccination practice has inocu- lated whole communities with the thrice accursed syphilitic taint, according to the brand or stock of vaccine used ; for be it known, that vaccine corruption has now become an ordinary article of commerce, the same as baking powders and "em- balmed" beef. I shall hereafter show that the vaccinator can rarely be certain of the quality of his stock, or of the extent of harm that will result from his practice.
The identity of cow-pox and syphilis was first definitely pointed out by Dr. Hubert Boens-Boissan in 1882 ; and Dr. J. W. Collins in his "Sir Lyon Playfair" pamphlet gives 478 cases of "vaccino-syphilis," details of which have been published by various medical authorities, both in England and on the conti- tinent.
When these facts shall be fully realized by a much crucified and long suffering public, it will not take long to put a stop to the compulsory feature of this infamous crime. We shall then no longer submit the bodies of our defenceless children to the assaults of salaried, place-hunting doctors, nor longer tolerate the flagrant usurpations of parliaments and legislatures over our personal liberties and the sacredness of the family circle.
Now, to return to Jenner. His first vaccination was on a boy named James Phipps, who later died of pulmonary con- sumption. This was in 1787. Two years later he vaccinated his own son, then a year and a half old, with swine-pox, which at that time was considered as protective as cow-pox ; and had not this mode been considered too disgusting for popular ap- proval, it would in all likelihood have taken precedence over cow-pox vaccination. Thereafter Jenner repeatedly inoculated his child with small-pox. But being delicate in health he died in his twenty-first year.
Dr. John Hunter, the noted physiologist in Tenner's time, expressed a wise judgment on the de-merits of Jenner's system. He wrote : —
A BRIEF SKETCH FROM JENNER TO THE PRESENT. 25
"The introduction by inoculation of mineral or vegetable poisons into the blood is hazardous, and in certain quantities may be destructive ; but the introduction of animal products from another living body, be it a man, a cow, or even an ass. is infinitely more pernicious, because allied to it in being vital- ized."
In 1797 Jenner made an abortive effort to get his treatise incorporated into the transactions of the Royal Society. Then he turned his attention to the feminine portion of English so- ciety, and soon enlisted the enthusiastic support of many ladies of the aristocracy, a number of whom became amateur vacci- nators in their respective parishes. In this way the practice was soon made so fashionable, so popular, and lucrative withal, that it soon became the rage among the English people. Even the clergy took it up, one of whom vaccinated three thousand per- sons in three years. Indeed, vaccination came so near being converted into a religious rite, that christening and vaccination of children were performed on the same day.
After vaccination had been on trial for three years, before people or Parliament had any means of knowing whether Jen- ner's promise that vaccination would number the days of small- pox, the king signified to his prime minister his wish that Par- liament should award to Jenner a benefaction, and the Com- mons cheerfully responded, voting him £30,000.
When Jenner was confronted with a large number of glar- ing failures in high life — of cases he had pronounced as "suc- cessfully vaccinated," who came down with small-pox, in the confluent form, he came forward with a new doctrine to repel his opponents, viz : "that as cases of small-pox after small-pox were not uncommon, vaccination could not be expected to do more than small-pox itself." Remember, this pitiful plea was not brought forward until the failures of cow-pox to protect had become multiplied and notorious. Dr. W. Scott Tebb, of London, in his valuable and exhaustive work, "A Century of Vaccination," writes, page 16: —
26 VACCINATION A CURSE.
"On all these grounds, I demur to the theory of identity, and hold that small-pox and cow-pox are antagonistic affec- tions— that cow-pox, instead of being, as Dr. Barton maintains, of a variolous, Is, in fact, of an anti-variolous nature — that it alters and modifies the human constitution so as to render some individuals wholly, others partially, and for a time, unsusceptible of small-pox.
"At the end of 1798, six months after the publication of Jenner's 'Inquiry,' the case for vaccination stood thus : Most of the children's arms had ulcerated, and the variolous test, in the few cases in which it had been applied, had produced equiv- ocal results. Moreover, all Jenner's stocks of lymph had been lost, so that no further experiments could be made. Dr. Bed- does, of Bristol, in writing to Professor Hufeland, of Berlin, said : 'You know Dr. Jenner's experiments with the cow-pox ; his idea of the origin of the virus appears to be quite indemon- strable, and the facts which I have collected are not favorable to his opinion that the cow-pox gives complete immunity from the natural infection of small-pox. Moreover, the cow-pox matter produces foul ulcers, and in^hat respect is a worse dis- ease than the mildly inoculated small-pox."
NO IDENTITY BETWEEN COW-POX AND SMALL- POX. In the course of vaccine practice much confusion has arisen from the careless manner of diagnosing the cow disease. A variety of opposing symptoms have long been known to fol- low in eases of vaccination with pus taken from the cow. Thence it came to be asserted that there was a genuine cow-pox and a "spurious cow-pox." In cases of failure the spurious va- riety was made to do duty. Jenner held that cow-pox was small-pox of the cow, hence the misleading name he gave it, variolae vaccinae. Dr. George Pearson, a cotemporary of Jen- ner, objected to this designation, asserting that "cow-pox is a specifically different distemper from the small-pox in essen- tial particulars, namely, in tin nature of its morbific poison, and in its symptoms." More recentl) Dr. George Gregory — quoted
A BRIEF SKETCH FROM JENNER TO THE PRESENT. 27
by Dr. Tebb — opposed the identity theory.
Winterburn says — "Value of Vaccination," page 41 : —
"Experimenters, entitled to respectful attention, have shown that it is a delusion to suppose that the inoculation of cows with small-pox has ever produced cow-pox ; it produces small-pox and nothing else. The small-pox may be induced on the horse or cow by variolation, but the variolous inoculation is never transmuted into grease in the horse, or cow-pox in the cow." This is undeniable.
Dr. Seaton, a high authority, says : "It is quite out of the question that cow-pox on the human subject should have been transformed into small-pox." The two diseases, therefore, be- ing specifically different, neither can have any effect to ward off the other. Why not inoculate with erysipelas to prevent small- pox? It would be just as rational, just as scientific, and to my mind, just as efficient.
Dr. George Wyld, whose acquaintance I made in London, and whom I know to stand very high as author, physician, and scientist, endorses the conclusions of the French Academy. He says : —
"I find that many medical men are under the false impres- sion that all that we require to do is to inoculate the heifer with smal)-pox matter, and thus get a supply of vaccine lymph. This might become productive of disastrous consequences. Small- pox inoculation of the heifer produces not vaccinia, but a mod- ified small-pox capable of spreading small-pox amongst human beings by infection."
It will hence be seen that a large share of modern vacci- nation is really only a modified form of inoculation. It is neither cow-pox nor horse-grease, but small-pox propagated from human beings, through calves, to human beings again. This fact, horrible as it is, admits of no denial.
We must therefore accept it as proven : Cow-pox is not small-pox in the cow, but it is "horse-grease" in the cow, whose udder often becomes secondarily infected with syphilis. Therefore when we submit to the official vaccinator, or we shall be treated to inoculation of virus from a small-poxed
28 VACCINATION A CURSE.
calf, or to the cow-pox virus often taken from a syphilizecl calf. Think of it, fathers and mothers, when the "Health Board" closes the door of the schoolroom yon are taxed to support, requiring your children to present a certificate of vaccination; requiring that their bodies be submitted to the dangers and degradation of vaccine corruption ! May your souls rise up in indignant pro- test against the sacrilegious invasion of the home which the American constitution has sanctified to liberty; aye, in pro- test against this infernal rite, becoming the hag of the pit! Think of it, mothers, who would bring your daughters up to be healthy, and clean, and chaste, that your state and city should have delegated the privilege to fee-hunting doctors, to break down the protective walks you have builded about your little ones, and poison the fountains of their life blood with a virus of contagion which may mock your solicitude and disappoint the fondest hopes you have cherished for the future of your pos- terity. Think of it, ye fathers and mothers of daughters, that your state and municipality should put you under compulsion to observe a rite which is liable to taint those daughters with the virus of the scandalous disease, the out-lawed disease, the disease whose home is the polluted den of the "Stingaree," the disease against which civilization revolts — aye, the disease too loathsome to name, except in whisper ! Is it not quite time the curses of the vaccine dispensation were numbered?
SMALL-POX HABITAT. Small-pox is a disease of towns, of the crowded, filthy quarters of towns. It is a disease of the poor, and particularly of the children of the poor. The average small-pox death rate in towns is fifty to seventy-five per cent, greater than in the country , while towns that have a large proportion of park space are greatly favored over those where this important feature is lacking. The epidemic in England of 1871-72 was notably se- vere in the mining districts where population is over-crowded.
A BRIEF SKETCH FROM JENNER TO THE PRESENT. 2g
In the miserable dwellings of the poor, air and light — two most important essentials of health — are woefully deficient. In the beginning of the eighteenth century the government pursued the self-destructive policy of putting a premium on these prime- essentials by taxing the windows of the poor. Every aperture that would admit air or light into a dwelling had to pay for the privilege to exist. Even a window to light a stairway, garret, or cellar, was rated among the luxuries and had to be taxed. So windows could not be afforded by the poor, and which thousands who lived in filth and squalor, did not care to afford. We should hence feel no surprise when we learn that small-pox has always been chiefly confined to the lower strata of society. In Austria it is fitly named the "beggar's" disease, and in all countries it is most at home in crowded and unclean quarters. Concerning the epidemic of 1852, Dr. Rigden writes — "Medical and Surgical Journal, Dec. 22, 1852, — "The most severe cases, and the greatest number, existed, generally speaking, in the dis- tricts most thickly populated by the lower orders, and most badly drained."
In the debate on the Compulsory Vaccination Bill in 1853, Lord Shaftsbury pointed out "that the small-pox was chiefly confined to the lowest class of the population, and he believed that with improved lodging houses the disease might be all but exterminated."
After the Warrington epidemic in 1873, the Royal Com- mission pointed out, that all but eleven of 445 infected houses were rated at less than £16 per annum, and 406 of them at £8 or lower ; and Dr. Coupland found at Dewsbury the disease was confined almost exclusively to the filthy working class.
Again, small-pox is a disease of children, like measles and whooping-cough, and predominantly, as already stated, the children of the poor. In the eighteenth century, small-pox mrortality in the manufacturing towns fell almost entirely among children under five years of age. In Kilmarnock, from 1728 to
30 VACCINATION A CURSE.
1763, the infant small-pox mortality was 90 per cent. In Man. Chester, from 1769 to 1774, it was 94 per cent. In Warrington. for the same period, 94 per cent., Chester, in 1774, 89 per cent., and Carlisle, from 1779 to 1787, 95 per cent. Hence, in the eighteenth century small-pox was predominantly a disease of infants. This continued to be the case until the 1837 epidemic, when the average percentage fell to about 50 per cent. Since 1873 there has been a marked shifting in the small-pox death rate in England and Wales. Here are the figures from the forty-third annual report of the Registrar General (1880, page 22), quoted by W. Scott Tebb : —
England and Wales. — Mean annual deaths from small-pox at successive life-periods, per million living at each life-period.
Under 5. 5. 10 15 25 45 up Vaccination optional, 1847-53. . 1,617 337 94 io9 66 22 Vaccination compulsory, 1872-80 323 186 98 173 141 58
This increase in the adult mortality, we shall hereafter see, is principally due to compulsory vaccination, and was therefore considered a sufficient ground for the repeal of the law.
SPREADING OF SMALL-POX.
The history of small-pox in Leicester, England, has fur- nished conclusive testimony that this disease can be kept within narrow limits without any assistance from the hungry army of vaccinators. In 1872 Leicester was a much vaccinated town; but the large small-pox mortality during the epidemic of that year, generated such an emphatic protest against vaccination thai the percentage of vaccinations to the number of births be- gan to rapidly decline. By 1885 they dropped down to 39 per cmt. ; in 1886 to 23 per cent.; in 1887 to 10 per cent.; then to 6 per cent.; and since 1891 has almost entirely ceased. From j 872 to 189s only 23 deaths from small-pox were recorded for Leicester.
Now in defence of the Leicester system — which is simply a system of thorough sanitation — the report of its medical of-
A BRIEF SKETCH FROM JENNER TO THE PRESENT. 31
ficer for 1893 tells a story which should be dinned into the ears of every health board throughout the civilized world, — a story of cleanliness as the preventive par excellence of small-pox. Addressing his townsmen, the Leicester health officer said : —
"You are entitled to great credit — more especially in the case of small-pox, which, by the methods you have adopted, has been prevented from running riot throughout the town, thereby upsetting all the prophecies which have again and again been made. I need only mention such towns as Birmingham, War- rington, Bradford, Walsall, Oldham, and the way they have suffered during the past year from the ravages of small-pox, to give you an idea of the results you in Leicester have achieved, results of which I, as your medical officer of health, am, justly, I think, proud." Sanitation is the all-potent watchword.
Writing on the relative value of vaccination, Dr. Scott Tebb remarks, — page 93 of his great work : —
"Not only may well-vaccinated towns be affected with small-pox, but the most thorough vaccination of a population that it is possible to imagine may be followed by an extensive outbreak of the disease. This happened in the mining and agri- cultural district of Mold, in Flintshire. * * * * Leicester, with the population under ten years of age practically unvacci- nated, had a small-pox death rate of 114 per million; whereas Mold, with all the births vaccinated for eighteen years previous to the epidemic, had one of 3,614 per million."
Here is one among hundreds of demonstrations that can be given of the utter worthlessness of vaccination as a preven- tive of small-pox. If protection is good for anything it should be effective during the prevalence of an epidemic ; but we see that is just where the unvaccinated enjoy the greater immunity from an attack of the disease.
Besides filth and overcrowding, hard times and war are prominent factors in the spread of small-pox. In 1684 there were very severe frosts over Europe, followed with a general failure of crops. The poor suffered great privations and dis- coras:ement. This was followed the next season with a vast in-
32 VACCINATION A CURSE.
crease both of epidemic fever and small-pox. Then the great small-pox mortality among the weavers in the east end of Lon- don in 1 719 followed upon a season of great scarcity and loss of employment among these same weavers. Bad harvests in England were also encountered in 1794 and 1795, causing such widespread distress among the poor that Parliament had to take some measures for its temporary relief. The year following — 179(3 — the small-pox fatality swelled to an unprecedented figure, being the largest within the London Bills. Then the harvest failure in 1816 was followed with small-pox and typhus in epi- demic form.
War may be set down as another active cause of small-pox, and of zymotics generally. War is always attended with hard- ship, exposure, over-crowding, anxiety, and an abnormal mental tension. Our losses in the Civil War, on the Northern side, footed up to about 360,000, of whom 110,000 were killed, and 250,000 died of disease : which — in round numbers — 62,000 were cases of typhoid ; 62,000 died of bowel complaint ; 62,000 from throat and lung trouble, and 62,000 from small-pox.
Small-pox in eastern France, among the peasantry in the earlier part of 1S70, was only an average amount but late in the year, immediately following the terrible slaughter by invasion of the German army, it broke out with unusual violence. Dr. Robert Spencer Watson took notes on the field round Metz. He writes : —
"November 6, 1870. Then I went to Lessy and Chatel St. Germain, hearing everywhere the same state of distress. All the crops gone, all the winter's firewood gone, many houses de- stroyed, and numbers needing help in every village. * * * When the mare's hoofs sunk deep, she knocked up bits of flesh, and the stench was so sickening that I should have fainted but for my smelling salts.
* - * -.- * * * * * * *
"In one place there were fifteen long streets of railway vans, filled with typhus patients; in another as manv streets of
A BRIEF SKETCH FROM JENNER TO THE PRESENT. 33
canvas tents, also filled with sick. I visited these places, and found them in the filthiest state ; but the Germans had begun to put them into order. At first, you might see soldiers, in full small-pox, walking about the streets, but this was soon for- bidden.
"The main body were encamped outside the walls of Metz, on low ground near the Moselle, the wetness of the season hav- ing converted the camping-ground into a morass. In some places the impress of the men's bodies was left as a cast in the mud in which they had lain. Their clothes and their blanket were saturated with mud. Their food for weeks had only been a biscuit and a bit of horseflesh without salt. Dysentery was universal, and typhus and small-pox raged. Over a wide area around the camp the carcasses of dead horses were left to rot and contaminate the air."
Mr. William Jones was in Metz when Bazaine's army sur- rendered : — "The constant cry of the wretched sufferers for water was distinctly heard outside the square in which they were isolated. All these black typhus patients perished, and were Ouried in huge trenches outside the walls of the city. * * * Mr. Allen, who was vaccinated, and, he believes, re-vaccinated, took the small-pox, and his own sister, who came over to nurse him, caught the disease from him and died there, and was buried in the cemetery at Plantieres outside the walls of Metz." Dr. Scott Tebb observes : "There is, indeed, some reason to believe that this war was the starting-point of the great Euro- pean pandemic of small-pox in 1871-72."
The same high authority has furnished the following table, showing the decline in small-pox from 1838 to 1895 : —
England and Wales. — Average annual deathrate per mil- lion living, from small-pox, fever, typhus fever, and scarlet fever, in five-year periods from 1838-95.
Typus Scarlet Years. Small-pox. Fever. Fever Fever.
1838-42 576 1,053 — —
1847-50 292 1,246 — —
34 VACCINATION A CURSE.
Typus
Scarlet
Years.
Small-pox.
Fever.
Fever.
Fever.
I85I-55
248
983
—
—
1856-60
198
842
—
—
1861-65
219
922
—
982
1866-70
105
850
—
960
I87I-75
408
599
81
759
1876-80
82
380
34
680
1881-85
$3
273
23
43^
1886-90
16
202
7
241
1891-95
24
185
4
182
"Over the whole period it will be found that the small-pox death rate declined 96 per cent., while fever declined 82 per cent. But the most extraordinary feature of the table is the large small-pox death rate in 1871-75, twenty years after vac- cination had been made compulsory." Thus from 1838 to 1871 death from small-pox had only abated 29 per cent, while fever diminished 43 per cent. ; hence, since the commencement of registration, there was practically a very slight decline in small- pox until 1871-72 epidemic, while the death rate from fever very materially diminished. The cause of this abatement is very plainly stated in the forty-second annual report of the Regis- trar General (1879) : —
"Had the deaths from one or more of this group of causes fallen, while those from others in the same group had risen, or had the fall been trifling, or the totals dealt with insignificant in amount, it might have been suspected that the alteration was a mere alteration in name. But as the deaths under each head- ing have declined, as the fall in the death rate from them has been enormous — 62.4 per cent, in the course of ten years — and as the totals are by no means small, it may be accepted as an in- disputable fact that there has in truth been a notable decline in these pests, and it may be fairly assumed that the decline is due to improved sanitary organization."
Here is common sense : "improved sanitary organization," and no class in anv communitv understand this better than
A BRIEF SKETCH FROM JENNER TO THE PRESENT. 35
members of the medical profession. The only rational explana- tion, therefore, that can be assigned for the dogged persistance with which they continue to push their accursed vaccination practice to the front is, that it pays.
In Oriental countries — China, India, Egypt, — where sanita- tion is almost wholly neglected, we have illustrated the utter futility of vaccination to check the fatal strides of small-pox. In the "Report on Sanitary Measures in India in 1879-80," page 142, we read : —
"The vaccination returns throughout India show the same fact, that the number of vaccinations does not necessarily bear a ratio to the small-pox deaths. Small-pox in India is related to season, and also to epidemic prevalence ; it is not a disease, therefore, that can be controlled by vaccination, in the sense that vaccination is a specific against it. As an endemic and epi- demic disease, it must be dealt with by sanitary measures, and if these are neglected small-pox is certain to increase during epi- demic times."
Again, in the "Memorandum of the Army Sanitary Com- mission for the Punjab" (1879), we read: —
"Vaccination in the Punjab, as elsewhere in India, has no power apparently over the course of an epidemic. It may mod- ify it and diminish the number of fatal cases, but the whole In- dian experience points in one direction, and this is that the se- verity of a small-pox epidemic is more closely connected with sanitary defects, which fritensify the activity of other epidemic diseases, than is usually imagined, and that to the general san- itary improvement of towns and villages must we look for the mitigation of small-pox as of cholera and fever."
On this branch of the problem Dr. Scott Tebb sums up as follows : —
"At the present time, compulsory vaccination, by paralyz- ing efforts in other directions, blocks the way towards sanitary reform. When the laws are abrogated vaccination must, like all other medical prescriptions and surgical operations, rest upon its own merits, or, in other words, on its inherent persua- siveness, unaided by the arm of the law. The practice will then,
36 VACCINATION A CURSE.
in my opinion, in the not very distant future be surely aban- doned.
'"This will prepare the way for a new era of improved health and human happiness, the result of scientific sanitary ameliora- tion in all departments of our social, domestic, and municipal life."
We should not forget that all zymotic diseases run in peri- ods of greater and lesser intensity. This is true of yellow fever, of scarlatina, of typhus, and diphtheria, as well of small-pox ; and it is during periods of epidemic intensity that the complete worthlessness of vaccination is brought home to us. In the London Lancet, July 15, 1871, we read: —
"The deaths from small-pox have assumed the propor- tions of a plague. Over 10,000 lives have been sacrificed dur- ing the past year in England and Wales. In London, 5,641 deaths have occurred since Christmas. Of 9,392 patients in the London Small-pox Hospitals, no less than 6,854 had been vac- cinate d, i. e.j nearly 73 per cent. Taking the mortality at 17 1-2 per cent, of those attacked, and the deaths this year in the whole country at 10.000, it will follow that more than 122,000 vacci- nated persons have suffered from small-pox! This is an alarm- ing state of things. Can we greatly wonder that the opponents of vaccination should point to such statistics as an evidence of the failure of the system? It is necessary to speak plainly on this important matter."
ZYMOTICS A CONSTANT QUANTITY.
In the history of zymotic diseases we are confronted with the very important fact, that though small-pox seemed to abate after vaccination came into fashion, other forms of zymotic dis- eases cropped up and swelled the death rate to the same uni- form proportions. When one epidemic predominated — as typhus, scarlatina, or diphtheria, — small-pox would be found to be in abeyance ; then one after another would manifest epi- demic violence, so that the death rate went on with singular
A BRIEF SKETCH FROM JENNER TO THE PRESENT. 37
uniformity. Given the same conditions the death rate of a peo- ple will display the same uniform percentage from year to year, and nothing will vary this number except a change in these conditions. When a whole people improve their sanitary regu- lations the death rate diminishes and the average duration of life advances. Aggravate these conditions, either by war, fam- ine, or intemperance in its multiform phases, and the death rate infallibly rises to a larger sum total.
This compensatory law is well illustrated in Sweden, where deaths from small-pox in 1825 were 1,243, and from typhus, 3,962; but four years later small-pox only claimed 53, while deaths from typhus rose to 9,264. Then again, in 1846, the small-pox fatality was only 2, while deaths from all causes were 72,683. In 185 1 small-pox became epidemic again, notwith- standing very thorough vaccination, when the small-pox fatality rose to 2,448, but the total death rate was almost precisely that of 1846, being 72,506.
The statistics of other countries reveal the same law. In Prague, from 1796 to 1802, the total mortality was 1 in 32, when small-pox fatality was very high; but from 1832 to 1855, when small-pox fatality was extremely low, still the total death rate was 1 in 32 1-3.
Dr. Robert Watt, in 1813, considering the vast number of deaths from small-pox among children, says : —
"I began to reflect how different the case must be now; and to calculate the great saving of human life that must have arisen from the vaccine inoculation. At this time (1813) above 15,000 had been inoculated publicly at the Faculty Hall, and perhaps twice or thrice that number in private practice."
In eight years (1805-13) little more than 600 had died in Glasgow, of small-pox ; whereas in 1784 the deaths by that dis- ease alone amounted to 425, and in 1791 to 607; which, on both occasions, exceeded the fourth of the whole deaths in the city for the year. To ascertain the real amount of this saving of in-
3«
VACCINATION A CURSE.
fantile life, I turned up one of the later years, and, by accident, that of 1808, when, to my utter astonishment, I found that still more than a half perished before the tenth year of their age ; I could hardly believe the testimony of my senses, and there- fore began to turn up other years, but I found it amounted tc nearly the same thing. To make the facts clear, let us bring the results of the past three decades together, thus : —
GLASGOW MORTUARY STATISTICS. 1783-1812.
Whooping-
Decade.
From Small-pox.
Measles.
Cough.
1 783- '792
3.466
211
854
1 793- 1 802
2,894
398
914
1803-1812
1,013
1,655
1,151
Child:
ren Under Child
ren Under
Total Deaths
Decade.
Two.
Ten.
All Ages.
I 783- I 792
7,293
9,919
17,607
I 793- 1 802
6,277
9,050
16,685
1802-1812
7,120
10,913
20,175
To ascertain how a low small-pox mortality was compen- sated by other diseases, Dr. Watt divided the years 1783-1812 into five periods, of six years each, and in this way set forth the proportionate mortalities : —
GLASGOW MORTUARY STATISTICS. 1783-1812.
W hoopiug-
Years.
From
Small-pox.
Measles.
Cough.
1783-1788
19-55
•93
4-51
1 789- 1 794
18.22
1. 17
5-13
1 795- 1 800
18.70
2.10
5-36
1801-1806
8.90
3-92
6.12
1807-1812
3-90
10.76
5-57
A BRIEF SKETCH FROM JENNER TO THE PRESENT. 39
Children Under Children Under Total Deaths
Years.
Two.
Ten.
All Ages.
1783-1788
3940
5348
9.994
1 789- 1 794
42.38
58.07
11,103
1 795- 1 800
38.82
5448
9,991
1801-1806
33-50
5203
10,034
1807- 1 81 2
35-89
55-69
13.354
— "Diseases of Children," Glasgow, 1813.
Now put these facts by the side of the idiotic — the false assertions of Sir Spencer Wells, that : —
"It may not be generally known, but it is true, that Jen- ner has saved, is now saving, and will continue to save in all coming ages, more lives in one generation than were destroyed in all the wars of the first Napoleon."
The fluctuations in the death rate between plague and small-pox is strikingly similar: —
MORTALITY FROM PLAGUE IN LONDON, 1604-1651.
Year. Deaths. Year. Deaths.
1604 896 1628 3
1605 444 1629 o
1606 2,124 io3° 1)317
1607 2,352 1631 274
1608 2,262 1632 8
1609 4,410 1633 o
1610 1.803 J^34 1
161 1 617 1635 o
1612 64 1636 10,400
1613 16 1637 3,082
1614 22 1638 363
1615 37 1639 314
1616 9 1640 1450
1617 6 1641 1,375
1618 18 1642 1,274
4-0 VACCINATION A CURSE.
1619 9 1643 996
l620 21 1644 1,412
l62I II 1645 1,871
l622 l6 1646 2,635
1623 17 1647 3.507
1624 II 1648 6ll
1625 35,417 1649 67
1626 134 165O 15
1627 4 1651 23
In 1878 Sir Thomas Chambers said in the House of Com- mons : —
"You cannot show that vaccination has reduced deaths or saved a single life. There may be no small-pox, but the dis- appearance of small-pox is by no means equivalent to a reduc- tion of mortality."
Thus I might indefinitely multiply illustrations of the truth of this law of constancy which variations in the intensity of specific diseases does not affect. The practice of vaccination therefore is utterly opposed to the plain teachings of sanitary science. It is the most untenable dogma in the whole category of medical theories, which has never been demonstrated to be sanctioned by any ascertained law or principle in the healing art. No precious lives have been saved as the outcome of the vaccine delusion, while just in proportion as it has modified the symptoms of the contagion it professes to save us from, has other and more disgusting forms of zymotic disease multiplied upon the race. Aye, more. It has become an added factor for the wider diffusion of cancer, erysipelas, eczema, carbuncles, tumors, leprosy, and last but not least, to relegate the "bad disease" from its dark, infernal den, domesticate and make it common in the households of the land !
CHAPTER II.
VACCINE STOCK AND COMMERCIAL VACCINA- TION.
No vaccine stock used since the days of Jenner is en- titled to the designation "lymph." Lymph is a natural and healthy fluid that circulates in the lymphatic vessels. All so- called lymph — which is simply vaccine pus — is a collection of blood corpuscles in process of destructive fermentation. The various frauds of vaccine pus are charged with the same specific quality, their chief differences consisting in their relative de- grees of rottenness. They are each and all a species of septic poison, no matter how or where they were brewed. The fer- menting" cells in this vaccine substance abound with pathogenic globular bacteria, of which they are both the active element and chief factor in conveying filthy diseases of the blood and skin to the human body. Through this blood-poisoning ichor, into which the ruthless lance of the vaccinator is daily dipped, the germ of a legion of diseases assault the citadel of health, enters the peaceful precincts of home, and with the connivance and as- sistance of the politician and legislator, inflicts upon the little children of the land the barbarous and degrading rite whose curse will spread and multiply through generations yet unborn. I now remember, the prophet predicted a "time of trouble" for the last days. He must have had his eye on the vaccinator, and knew full well when he would arrive. Lo ! the last davs are
42 VACCINATION A CURSE.
here, and the trouble predicted is upon us !
That all so-called vaccine lymph contains blood cells has been well known to the medical profession since 1862. Dr. Heron Watson writes (Edinborough Medical Journal, March, 1862): "There is no vaccine matter, however carefully re- moved from the vesicle, which, on microscopic investigation, will not be found to contain blood corpuscles." Upon this point the statement of Dr. Husband before the Royal Com- mission said in its report : "The evidence given by Dr. Hus- band, of the Vaccine Institution of Edinborough, established the fact that all lymph, however pellucid, really does contain blood cells." (Sec. 430.) Dr. Scott Tebb writes, (A Century of Vaccination, page 307) : "There is nothing necessarily in the appearance of the vaccine vesicle to lead one to suspect syph- ilis;" while Dr. Ballard informs us (Prize Essay) that ''the per- fect character of the vesicle is no guarantee that it will not fur- nish both vaccine and syphilitic virus."
Let us see how much the guarantee to furnish "pure" vac- cine pus is worth. Mr. Earn, director of the National Establish- ment in England, when put under examination before the Royal Commission, furnished some details that would be well to re- flect upon :
"Q. 4.130. You are a medical man. are you? Xo.
Q. 4,133. Have you made any special study of microbes? No.
Q. 4,154. With such (microscopic) power as you are able to employ would you be able to recognize or distinguish any micro-organisms which might be present? Xo, I should not.
Q. 4,155. Have any micro-organisms been identified, or stated to have been identified, for such a disease as erysipelas and so on? I am afraid you are going rather out of my depth as a non-medical man.
Q. 4,159. Is there any disease within your experience whose cause you can identify with such microscopical power
VACCINE STOCK. 43
as you employ ? Not that I am aware of.
Q. 4,173. Having regard to what you have told us, do you think it would be possible, from the microscopical examin- ation you made, to guarantee that any lymph was pure? No; I should not undertake to say whether it would be a guarantee that the lymph was pure. I do not know that you could do it.
Q. 4,200. Are we to understand that, as a matter of fact, you have ever guaranteed lymph? No.
It seems, therefore, that there is no such thing known or obtainable as pure vaccine lymph, and it is very significant that as long ago as 1883 the Grocers' Company, by reason of the numerous disasters following vaccination, offered a prize of £1,000 for the discovery of any vaccine contagium cultivated apart from an animal body, but up to the present time the award has not been made. The matter has, however, been set- tled beyond all dispute by the Royal Commission itself. They say: "It is established that lymph contains organisms, and may contain those which under certain circumstances would be productive of erysipelas." (Sec. 410).
— "A Century of Vaccination," page 269.
It will hence be seen that the commercial sharks who ad- vertise to furnish vaccine lymph "absolutely free from all or- ganisms except the pure vaccine germ," are either as ignorant of the microscope as Mr. Farn, or else through motives for lucre they deliberately deceive the public. Probably both these allegations are true.
"If it be asked, with what shall we vaccinate? the answer would seem to be simple enough — why, with vaccinal virus, of course. But if we ask, what is vaccinal virus? the answer is not readily found ; nor is there, even now, after nearly a century of vaccination, any concord in the profession as to the proper material to be used.
"When Jenner first performed the rite, he used cow-pox virus. We have already seen what was the origin of this dis-
44 VACCINATION A CURSE.
order in the cow, viz., that it was a contagious disease trans- ferred, by careless manipulation, from the heels of the horse to the udder of the cow. Jenner believed that small-pox, swine- pox, cow-pox, and grease were merely varieties of the same disease, as he implied by the name variolae vaccinae. He vaci- llated his own son with swine-pox. He employed the grease- virus (horse-pox) in a large number of cases, and furnished it to other vaccinators. Acting on his suggestion, the king of Spain, in 1804, ordered all the children in the Foundling Hospi- lai at Madrid to be vaccinated with goat-pox. Jenner claimed that the virus of these and various other animals were all equally efficacious with cow-pox in warding off small-pox. He also used arm-to-arm vaccination, derived both from the cow and from the horse. He therefore practiced five distinct things under the one name of vaccination: (1) Cow-pox vaccination; '2) cow-pox-child vaccination ; (3) horse-pox (grease) vaccina- tion, which he denominated as the equination of the human subject; (4) horse-pox-child vaccination; and (5) swine-pox vaccination.
"Although he asserted that grease, cow-pox, and small- pox were all one disease, he made no attempt to prove it by in- oculating the cow with variola. But, as early as 1801, Gassner, of Gunsburg, inoculated with variolous virus eleven cows, pro- ducing on one of them vesicles having all the characteristics of vaccinal vesicles, and from which 'a stock of genuine vaccine lymph was obtained.' With this small-pox-cow vaccine four children were inoculated, and from them seventeen other child- ren were in turn vaccinated. In the following year (1802) a number of cows were successfully variolated at the Veterinary College at Berlin.
% % ^= % :): $: %: % % % >'fi
"Beside this variola-vaccine lymph, as it is called, another, and as it is asserted, a new variety of lymph or virus has been imported. This is the celebrated Beaugency stock, which is claimed to be a spontaneous case of cow-pox, untainted with variolation on one hand, or horse-grease on the other.
Thus there are a number of strains of vaccine material :
a. The original cow- pox of Jenner;
b. Equine-pox stock ;
c. Swine-pox stuck ;
VACCINE STOCK. 45
d. Goat-pox stock ;
e. Variola cow-pox of Ceely, and others ;
f. Spontaneous cow-pox of Beaugency.
"Each of these have passed through many transmissions, and to a certain extent have become crossed or intermixed, and with the exception of what is now called 'calf-lymph,' it is impossible f'>r anybody to tell what he is using. This so-called 'calf-lymph' is offered in two varieties. One of these is claimed to be inoculation from the Beaugency stock, which it is con- fessed, is of unknown origin, and which from the mildness of the vaccine-disorder which it sets up, is of dubious value.
"The other variety of 'calf-lymph' is derived from small- poxing a heifer, and from the vesicles thus produced calves are inoculated ; these in their turn furnishing the 'lymph' or virus for the human subject.
"T s furnishes two more varieties of vaccine material:
g. Calf-Beaugency stock ;
h. Calf-small-pox-cow-pox."
— "The Value of Vaccination," pages 37-39, Winterburu.
"When the Roval Commission on Vaccination was re- luctantly conceded by the late (Conservative) government in Anvil, 18F9, the medical profession was (and still is) in a state of hopeless confusion as to the merits of the various vaccines introduced and recommended by rival purveyors. One variety is used in Germany, another in France, a third in Belgium, and in England all have been tried more or less. It was suggested by the medical press that the Royal Commission should deal with this much vexed phase of the vaccination embroglio ; and after the evidence of Dr. Cory, Dr. Gayton, Mr. Farn, and other vaccine experts, it was anticipated the commission would have made a pronouncement on the subject. This professional expectation has not been realized. To illustrate the extent of this medical confusion, and for the information of those who contemplate subjecting their children to the vaccine operation, the writer subjoins a list of some of these vaccines:
(1) The original Jennerian Virus, or Horse-grease Cow- pox.
(2) Woodville's spontaneous Cow-pox Virus, contami- nated with small-pox.
(3) Swine-pox with which Jenner inoculated his eldest
46 VACCINATION A CURSE.
son. 'Swine-pox' has no relation to a pig's disease ; but is only an old name for the mildest form of small-pox, called also the white small-pox, or pearl-pox. (Crookshank, 'History and Pathology of Vaccination,' Vol. I, page 287.)
(4) Horse-pox or horse-grease passed through the cow.
(5) Spontaneous Cow-pox — the Gloucestershire brand.
(6) Ceely and Babcock's lymph — small-pox passed through the cow.
(7) The Beaugency Virus.
(8) The Passy Virus.
(9) Dr. Warlomont's Calf-lymph, in points, tubes or pots of pomade as supplied to the Royal Family in England.
(10) The Lanoline vaccine or vesicle pulp invented by Surgeon-Major W. G. King, and used extensively in India and Burmah.
(11) Donkey-lymph, the discovery of Surgeon O'Hara, and strongly recommended to municipalities in India.
(12) Buffalo-lymph, recommended in India as 'yielding more vesicle-pulp than calves,' but chiefly conspicuous for its abominable odor.
(13) To these must be added the lymph passed through numberless more or less diseased human bodies, which has been shown by high authorities to be capable of spreading lep- rosy, syphilis, and other loathsome and incurable diseases."
— Anti-Vaccination League Circular.
Dr. Warlomont, of the Government Vaccine Depot, Bel- gium, advises medical practitioners, when families apply for vac- cination, to require such families to furnish their own vaccine material, thus making the family take the risk while the doctor pockets the fee.
THE TRUE CHARACTER OF ALL ANIMAL
"LYMPHS."
Since one form of vaccination after another has been tried and then abandoned because of the evil effects which followed, still the doctors and vaccine-farm firms have found the practice
VACCINE STOCK. 47
far too profitable to think of abandoning it ; and so from time to time they announce the discovery of a new brand of vaccine material, which they guarantee a gullible public to be double proof against the remotest possibility of danger, and an absolute safeguard against small-pox. "Pure Calf-lymph" is at present the harmless elixir which vaccination promoters offer in the market. Just how this "lymph" is manufactured is one of those mysteries which the vaccine firms never impart to their patrons ; and whether the secret is out or not, I know the nature and habits of the species, and propose to throw a search-light upon it long enough to allow the general reader to note a few items regarding its behavior.
We have already seen that all vaccine material is animal pus, which is animal tissue in process of decomposition or ret- rograde metamorphosis — but a small remove from absolute rottenness. In other words, it is the serum of a particular dis- ease thrown out upon the skin, and this putrifying serum in- variably contains a specific virus, a putrefactive or septic poison, no matter in what way the putrefaction of animal tissue has been induced. The vaccine pus may be charged with one or a dozen forms of septic poison, according to the nature of the putrifying tissues which have contributed to its production. Nor is the danger lessened, but rather augmented, by subse- quent transmissions, as every additional channel through which it passes will contribute its own taint of involved dis- ease.
Dr. T. V. Gifford, of Kokomo, Ind., in an address before the Anti Vaccination Congress in Paris (1889), professes to have learned at least one method of producing vaccine calf- lymph. He says : —
"A Boston medical student, whom I had long known as a reliable gentleman, voluntarily informed me how they pro- duced bovine virus at the Boston vaccine farm, where students are permitted to see the whole operation. He said they shave
48 VACCINATION A CURSE.
the hair from the udder of the heifer with a razor, then scratch or bruise the udder with a steel-tiued instrument and leave it to fester simply from the bruising. Now put this with the follow- ing which I have already quoted form Dr. Spinzig — 'Vaccina- tion is tantamount to inoculation and is septic poisoning' — and this from the little Philadelphia book afore mentioned — 'that vaccine virus has no special properties inherent to it' — and this from another scientific writer — 'All pus of animal organisms has the same specific quality and differs only in strength and de- grees of rottenness or development' — and you have a solution of the whole question, which is simply this : It makes no dif- ference how the pus is produced, whether by bruise, wound or introduction of other pus or other foreign poison. The degree of virulence of the pus is governed by the character of the tis- sue out of which it is formed and the length of time it remains in the sore."
Again, "Animal lymph is admitted to be too active, es- pecially in tropical countries, to be used direct; and in gen- eral, therefore, it is available only after one or two removes, when it carries with it diseases both animal and human, as has been shown in evidence before the Royal Commission on Vac- cination."
— "Leprosy and Vaccination," page 181, Wm. Tebb.
On this important phase of the vaccination question I will cite a number of authorities who are at the very summit of the medical profession, most of whom will be found quoted in Dr. Scott Tebb's excellent work, "A Century of Vaccination."
The London Lancet (June 22, 1878), in a criticism of Dr. Henry A. Martin, observes : —
"The notion that animal lymph would be free from chances of syphilitic contamination is so fallacious that we are surprised to see Dr. Martin reproduce it, and so contribute to the per- petuation of the fanciful ideas which too commonly obtain on the origin of vaccino-syphilis.
"Dr. Henry M. Lyman observes : 'It is certain that the disturbances, produced by the use of a virus which has been newly derived from the cow, are generally much more marked than the effects which follow the use of a more perfectly hu-
VACCINE STOCK. 49
manized lymph.' "
— "American Medical Times" for March 8, 1862.
"But there is a special vesicular vaccine eruption attending the acme and decline of the vaccine disease. The Germans have called it 'Nachpocken.' I have often, nay almost always, seen it as a secondary eruption on the teats and udders of the cows immediately before and after the decline of the disease in them. The same I have repeatedly seen in children, especially in the early removes from the cow ; ind still continue at times to wit - ness it, to the great temporary disfigurement and annoyance of the patient, and the chagrin and vexation of the parent. It is essentially a genuine vaccine secondary eruption. I have wit- nessed it in vaccinating the dog. I have colored illustrations of this secondary eruption in man and animals, and have seen some severe and a few very dangerous cases in children where the skin and visible mucous membranes were copiously occu- pied with it." — Dr. Scott Tebb, page 367.
"Vaccination with bovine lvmph has brought to light a series of phenomenal symptoms, except to those medical men who have kept fresh in their minds the descriptions of Jenner and the early writers. Jenner described the disease caused by early removes from the cow, and he consequently gave a picture of only the intensest forms of it, in his 'Inquiry' and 'Further Observations.' A glance at the colored engravings in Jenner's great work, in Woodville's, Pearson's, Bryce's, Willan's, and all others, shows that the vesicle was larger and the areola more intensely red than in the cases familiar to us up to the time of the introduction of the Beaugency lymph. The reader of the early vaccinographers can hardly believe there was not some exaggeration in their descriptions of the serious constitutional symptoms, and the bad ulcers which sometimes succeeded vac- cination ; ulcers so bad, indeed, that they had to be treated with solution of white vitrol."
— Dr. Thomas F. Wood, New Jersey.
"In the report of the Oxford Local Board to the New Jer- sey Board of Health, Dr. L. B. Hoagland, in referring to an ep- idemic of small-pox, says : 'About fifteen hundred persons were vaccinated during its prevalence, one-third of them with human- ized virus, and the remainder with non-humanized bovine virus, the constitutional effect being much the more marked when the
50 VACCINATION A CURSE.
latter was used. One child, of five years, lost its life by taking cold in her arm ; gangrene set in, and she died from septicaemia. Some of the sores were three or four months in healing."
"In my use of bovine lymph it was observed that the vac- cine vesicle resulting was much larger, the areola and inflam- matory induration were more extensive, the crust large, flat, and thin, generally ruptured, and came away before the sore was cicatrised. In two instances the inflammatory action was so high that the vesicle sloughed out en masse, leaving a deep ulcer."— Dr. E. J. Marsh, Board of Health, Patterson, N. J., 1882.
Dr. George B. Walker, of Evansville, Ind., writes: "The bovine lymph was more violent and caused troublesome ulcera- tion and sometimes eruption over the body."
In the Journal of Cutaneous and Venereal Diseases Dr. Morrow bears out the almost universal opinion of medical men in the United States when he says : "The experiences of the profession in this country with bovine lymph shows that it is slower in its development, more intensely irritant in its local and constitutional effects, and more prolonged in its active con- tinuance."
Dr. Alexander Xapier, assistant to the professor of Materia Medica, Glasgow University, and physician to the skin depart- ment. Anderson's College Dispensary, calls attention to a cer- tain remarkable group of skin eruptions, which he finds re- ported in the American journals, and with scarcely an exception they related to cases where animal lymph was used. He first refers to instances reported by Dr. Rice in the Chicago Medi- cal Journal and Examiner for February, 1882, in which that gentleman states that "about one in ten of all vaccinated have bad arms, with a high grade of fever, and eruption resembling somewhat that of Roseda or German measles."
— Dr. Scott Tebb, page 373.
Dr. Pierce, quoted by Scott Tebb. writes : "Judging from the number of times I have been questioned by anxious parents on the meaning of these eruptions, I believe with Dr. Holt that the fact of their liability to follow vaccination should be widely known."
"In nearly every instance I have mentioned in which spon- taneous generalized eruptions followed vaccination, the lymph
VACCINE STOCK. 5 1
used was animal lymph, not humanized lymph. What does this indicate? That, as Dr. Cameron, M. P., once argued before this society, tha nearer the virus to its original source in the days of Jenner, the stronger it is, and the more efficient the protec- tion it affords? Without venturing to give any opinion as to the greater efficacy of calf lymph vaccination as a prophylactic against small-pox — a matter which can only be settled on the basis of a wide statistical inquiry — it seems very clear that in animal lymph we have a more powerful material, one which more deeply and obviously affects the system than our ordinary humanized lymph, if the degree of constitutional disturbance is to be taken as an index of the effectual working of the virus." — Dr. Napier, Glasgow Medical Journal, June, 1883. More recently we find in an article on "Small-pox in San Francisco," by Dr. S. S. Herrick, the following remarks : "Be- sides the uncertainty of the bovine virus, there are other fea- tures of common occurrence, which are not pleasant and which are not found in the human product. The sores are apt to be quite serious in character ; a considerable eruption on the body is liable to take place ; and the points of vaccination frequently develop a raspberry-like excrescence (sometimes a true ecchy- mosis) which may remain for weeks, and is often mistaken by the inexperienced for the normal result of vaccination."
GLYCERINATED LYMPH.
When the "pure calf-lymph" was found to be uniformly harsh in its effects, and to be attended with extensive eruptions and ulceration, a new device was invented by the manufacturers of the vaccine stock for commercial purposes — a device to still further mask its insidious and destructive work. This was to add glycerine to the so-called lymph, which, it is claimed, de- stroys all micro-organisms except the vaccine germ that is wanted. In the first place, this is an admission that the lymph without the glycerine, which had already been in use for years, really contained micro-organisms in addition to the vaccine germs, which therefore embraced a real element of danger ; and in the second place, the virtues claimed for glycerine are pure assumption, without a shadow of evidence to sustain it.
52 VACCINATION A CURSE.
"The perennial cry of public vaccinators (when they are confronted with the results) is that the lymph is 'unsatisfactory.' Animal lymph is often attended with excessive inflammation, and the practitioner is obliged to dilute it with glycerine, lano- line, and other substances, and its use is much more expensive. Moreover, a good deal of the so-called animal lymph in vogue is only arm-to-arm vaccine, inoculated into calves, buffaloes, sheep, and donkeys, and partakes of the diseases both of man and of animals. Of the many cases of ulcerative and of fatal vaccination which have come under my notice during the past twenty years not a few have been due to the use of carefully selected animal vaccine." — "Leprosv and Vaccination," page 381. Wm. Tebb.
"Dr. Lurman, of Bremen, gives an account of an epidemic of catarrhal jaundice in 1883-84, in a large ship-building and ma- chine-making establishment in that town, which is of interest from the fact that the patients had been re-vaccinated with glycerinated lymph. One hundred and ninety-one persons were attacked. The disease began with symptoms of gastric and in- testinal catarrh, which persisted a week or more, until jaundice appeared. The symptoms comprised epigastric oppression, anorexia, vomiting, faintness. and there was usually constipa- tion. Yellow vision occurred in a few instances. In one case the patient suffered from general dropsy with cerebral symp- toms, but none of the cases were fatal. Eighty-seven persons in the establishment, who were re-vaccinated by other surgeons and other lymph, remained unaffected. Dr. Edwards, who re- lates these cases in the London Medical Record of April 15, 1885. (Vol. XIII, page 142), remarks that the epidemic 'was causally connected with the re-vaccination, in some way or other."
"A feature of glycerinated lymph appears to be that, when it takes, great intensity of action is observed, both local and general. Thus Dr. James Cantlie refers to 'much constitutional disturbance' produced by Japanese lymph. I may also allude to an article by Dr. Robert J. Carter. He details the results of 319 re-vaccinations with glycerinated calf-lymph. He observes that in 106 of the patients the axillary glands were 'large, hard, and tender, and in some instances exquisitely painful ;' in three of the cases the glands above the collar-bone were also affected.
VACCINE STOCK. 53
In nine cases lymphangitis was present, the lymphatic vessels being felt as hard, swollen, tender cords along the course of the axillary vessels. In ninety-eight of the patients there was oedema and induration of the arm, and these manifestations were of a 'curiously persistent character.' Dr. Carter remarked that they were apparently dependent on the intensity of the local inflammation at the site of the vaccination."
"Abundant evidence of the danger of glycerinated lymph is adduced in Appendix IX to the Final Report of the Royal Commission. The cases are, of course, mostly erysipelas or of a septic nature ; and, without including those of a less severe character, they number 84, and of these no less than 24 were fatal." — "A Century of Vaccination," Dr. Scott Tebb, page 382.
"I emphasize the point, that no lymph, whether human or animal, or adulterated with other substances, can be guaran- teed as free from danger." — Ibid., page 386.
"Glycerine is a nutritive medium for the growth of putre- factive and other germs and being fluid, the germs soon pervade it throughout; and, as a fact, this preparation (glycerinated lymph) in India soon becomes putrid and septically dangerous."
Indian Lancet, March 4, 1897.
Dr. T. S. Hopkins, of Thomasville, Ga., wrote a communi- cation concerning the results that followed the use of "patent solid lymph :" —
"Our town authorities have employed a physician to vacci- nate all persons who present themselves for the purpose. The virus was procured from the New England Vaccine Company, Chelsea, Mass., as 'bovine matter.' The result has been fearful. Nearly every one vaccinated has suffered severely from ery- thema or erysipelas, the arm swollen from shoulder to wrist, and the point of puncture presenting the appearance of a sloughing ulcer, discharging freely sanious pus. Many of the sufferers have been confined to bed, with high fever, from five to ten days, requiring the constant application of poultices to the arm, and a free use of morphia for the relief of pain. I deem it my duty to inform you of the result here from the matter used and from whence it came. It came in cones, each one said to con-
54 VACCINATION A CURSE.
tain enough to vaccinate one hundred persons, at a cost of one dollar per cone. Those who have tried it tell me they would much prefer to have small-pox." — From the National Board of Health Bulletin, Washington, D. C, March 4, 1882.
"We have no known test by which we could possibly dis- tinguish between a lymph which was harmless and one which was harmful to the extent of communicating syphilis." — Dr. Crookshank, Professor of Pathology and Bacteriology.
Thus I might multiply testimonies indefinitely regarding the wide-spread injury which has followed the use of all forms of animalized and humanized grades of vaccine material. Glyce- rinated lymph and all modern brands of vaccine stock are only new devices to make an old discredited virus acceptable ; and the chief reason why they continue to be inflicted on the long suffering public, is because that public have no intelligent un- derstanding of the insidious effects or the grave dangers that re- sult from this ruinous practice.
Neither the parent or the doctor has any means of judging the quality of the vaccine virus used, since it is an article of commerce ; and its production is not only associated with mer- cenary motives, but with empirical science as well. Commerce has usurped the field here as everywhere else, and the doctor — who is merely a "middle man" between the vaccine dealer and the vaccinated — knows no more about the composition of his stock, either in its occult properties or vital chemistry, than he does about his baking powders or canned beef ; whether the former are free from alum adulteration, or whether the latter has passed through the hands of the embalmer. We know at least that from first to last the whole consignment of horse- grease-cow-pox-syphilized-vaccine pus is now, has been, and is destined to continue the most damnable stuff that was ever ad- mitted into the category of commercialized medical practice. We may soon expect that the various vaccine farms will be massed into one gigantic trust, with a lobby at Washington and
VACCINE STOCK. 55
money to secure federal enforcement of a more stringent com- pulsory vaccination act for the entire country !
"And the beast causeth all * * to receive a mark on their arm * * and no man might buy or sell, save him that had the mark * * and there fell a noisome and grievous sore upon such as had the mark of the beast." — Rev. xvi-2.
Every child successfully vaccinated will carry on its body the scar — the brute-caused scar, the grievous sore, the scar of the "beast" till death.
CHAPTER III.
VACCINATION FAILS TO PROTECT.
The flattering promises made by Jenner and other advo cates of his school, that cow-pox is an absolute and infallible protection against small-pox, we have repeatedly seen is contra- dicted by the concurrent testimony of the highest medical au- thorities in all civilized countries, as also by the facts with which we are daily confronted, but more especially in seasons of small- pox epidemic. During the last twenty years all the leading countries of the world have expended every effort to render vaccination general and complete. Compulsory laws have been enacted, an army of vaccinators put into the field, tens of thous- ands of prosecutions have been brought, together with fines and imprisonments, against those who refused to comply with the provisions of arbitrary legislation, and millions of dollars have been expended to make vaccination universal. And I ask, what beneficent result has been accomplished by this unparalleled vigilance and expenditure? None. The average death rate from zymotics has not diminished, except where improved san- itary regulations have been adopted, and even there small-pox has not diminished in a greater ratio than scarlatina or diph- theria, as it should if the claims for vaccination had any valid basis or justification in recorded facts. Just in proportion as vaccination has modified the symptoms of small-pox it has ag- gravated other forms of infection, as will be amply shown in
VACCINATION FAILS TO PROTECT. 57
the course of this discussion. And had not improved sanitation gone forward as a counteractive cause, the destructive effects of vaccination would have been far more manifest than what has already been recorded, bad as that record has been. Sani- tation has acted as a powerful check to the otherwise rapid mul- tiplication and spread of zymotic diseases.
Jenner himself found that those whom he vaccinated were not only subject to small-pox, but that they were sometimes attacked twice with the disease. Then he advised re-vaccina- tion, and finally re-vaccinated his patients once a year. He made a marked distinction between efficient and non-efficient vaccination. Its potency was not regarded as proved until the constitution was unmistakably affected with the vaccine dis- ease. Finally "due and efficient" vaccination meant great in amount and distinct in quality, i. e., often repeated, and vitally disturbing. As a matter of fact, if people had the small-pox under similar conditions that they usually have the swine, horse- grease, or cow-pox, it would be scarcely less disturbing, but like all zymotic diseases, the soil for small-pox is prepared by filthy living, intemperance, over-crowding, poverty, war, etc., until the populace is charged with infection to the point of explosion; then it breaks out with epidemic intensity as small-pox, typhus, or plague, according to the preponderating quality of the in- fection accumulated. Then a miracle is expected from the per- formance of a degrading rite, but the miracle is never per- formed, since during an epidemic small-pox ruthlessly treads down its victims without taking any note of the "vaccine-mark" on the arm, so much relied on as a talisman or magic charm against the disease ! Florence Nightingale combined experi- ence and common sense in this domain far better than nine- tenths of the doctors. She says : —
"I was brought up both by scientific men and ignorant wo- men to believe the small-pox, for instance, was a thing, of which there was once a first specimen in the world, which went on
58
VACCINATION" A CURSE.
propagating itself, just as much as there was a first dog. or pair of dogs ; and that the small-pox would not begin itself any more than a new dog would begin without there having been a parent dog. Since then I have seen with my eyes small-pox growing up in first specimens, in close rooms or over-crowded wards, where it could not by any possibility have been caught, but must have been begun. Nay more : I have seen diseases begin, grow up. and pass into one another; with over-crowding, continued fever : with a little more over-crowding, typhoid ; with a little more, typhus, and all in the same ward or hut."
COMPARISON OF SMALL-POX DEATHS.
NEW YORK.
NO
VACCINATION.
LONDON.
H THE FASHION.
In 1820. that is. before Jcnncr's death, it was said: "Cases of small-pox after vaccination have increased to such an ex- tent, that no conscientious practitioner can recommend vacci- nation as affording a certain security against the contagion of small-pox." — "Gazette of Health," London. 1820.
In 1828 there was a severe epidemic in Marseilles where 2,000 were attacked with small-pox. who had been vaccinated. In the epidemic of 1831, in Wirtemburg, 955 persons were at- tacked with small-pox — all vaccinated.
"The matter has been looked into by Dr. Creighton and by Prof. Crookshank as far as its pathological aspect is con- cerned; and the conclusions towards which we are pointed in
VACCINATION FAILS TO PROTECT. 5g
this, that while vaccination is not, and from the nature of the case cannot be, a specific prophylactic against small-pox, yet a severe attack of cow-pox, or, in other words, vaccination fol- lowed by considerable constitutional disturbance, is likely to prove, while the febrile symptoms still last, antagonistic to the small-pox infection, and, so far, affords a temporary protection against it. Probably the same is true of any other disease that produces constitutional disturbance with febrile symptoms. We must, moreover, bear in mind that many persons, apart from vaccination, had been known to show constitutional insuscep- tibility to the variolous inoculation, and that inoculation itself was often enough a mere formality, producing no results ; and this was extremely likely to be the case when the operators were anxious that no results should be produced. Add to this the enthusiasm for the cause, which, unless Jenner and his fel- low-workers had been more than human, would lead them, with- out conscious dishonesty, to make no record of experiments that failed, and we have perhaps a fair explanation of the whole business ; but it is not altogether a satisfactory one ; and it is difficult not to regret that similar experiments cannot be re- peated now under conditions involving publicity, as that would really settle the whole controversy." — "Vaccination Question," Arthur Wallaston Hutton.
"The small-pox is making still greater havoc in the ranks of the Prussian army, which is said to have 30,000 small-pox patients in its hospitals." — "London Morning Advertiser," Nov. 24, 1870.
"The United States frigate Independence, with a ship's company of 560 persons, there were 116 cases of small-pox, seven fatal. The crew of this ship almost universally presented what are regarded as genuine vaccine marks. The protection, however, proved to be quite imperfect." — U. S. Navy Depart- ment Reports, 1850.
"In a cruise of the North Carolina up the Mediterranean, she shipped at Norfolk a crew of 900 men, most of whom had been vaccinated, or had the small-pox, but were nevertheless twice vaccinated prior to the ship sailing, a third time at Gibral- tar, and a fourth time at Port Mahon. Dr. Henderson, who reports these facts, states that notwithstanding this ultra vacci- nation under such various circumstances of virus, climate, etc.,
60 VACCINATION A CURSE.
157 of the crew had varioloid." — Ibid.
In New York (1870-71) the health department reported: "This extraordinary prevalence of small-pox over various parts of the globe, especially in countries where vaccination has long been efficiently practiced ; its occurrence in its most fatal form in persons who gave evidences of having been well vacci- nated, and the remarkable susceptibility of people of all ages to re-vaccinations, are new facts in the history of this pestilence, which must lead to a re-investigation of the whole subject of vaccination and of its claims as a protecting agent." — Dr. Win- terburn, page 73.
In 1882 small-pox was epidemic in Baltimore. The vic- tims were principally foreigners, crowded together in the most filthy quarter of the town. In a crowded tenement from fifteen to twenty cases were often reported. In a single month (Janu- ary) over 162,000 persons were vaccinated by the city physi- cians. There were 4,930 cases, of which 3,506 were children. The deaths amounted to 1.184, of which 959 were children — about 78 per cent. This, together with hundreds of other in- stances that might be cited from crowded centers of popula- tion, proves vaccination a complete and glaring failure in times of small-pox epidemic — the only time when such protection is needed.
When the great London epidemic raged (1871-72), 96 per cent, of births were registered as vaccinated, yet there were 11,- 174 cases of small-pox in the London hospitals. At the same period 17,109 cases were reported in Milan, of which but 278 were classed as unvaccinated. In the French army during the Franco-Prussian war, 23,469 cases were recorded, every one of which had been vaccinated, and a large proportion re-vacci- nated. Dr. Bayard, of Paris, says: "Every French soldier on entering a regiment is re-vaccinated ; there are no exceptions."
Sir Henry Holland reluctantly admits that "The circum- stances, of late years, have greatly changed the aspect of all that relates to this question. It is no longer expedient, in any
VACCINATION FAILS TO PROTECT. 6l
sense, to argue for the present practice of vaccination as a cer- tain or permanent preventive of small-pox. The truth must be told as it is, that the earlier anticipations on this point have not been realized."
"From childhood I have been trained to look upon the cow- pox as an absolute and unqualified protective. I have, from my earliest remembrance, believed in it more strongly than in any clerical tenet or ecclesiastical dogma. The numerous and acknowledged failures did not shake my faith. I attributed them either to the carelessness of the operator or the badness of the lymph. In the course of time, the question of vaccine compulsion came before the Reichstag, when a medical friend supplied me with a mass of statistics favorable to vaccination, in His opinion conclusive and unanswerable. This awoke the statistician within me. On inspection, I found the figures were delusive ; and a closer examination left no shadow of doubt in my mind that the so-called statistical array of proof was a com- plete failure." — Dr. G. F. Kolb, Royal Sta. Com., Bavaria.
The Registrar General (England), in his official report for 1880, points out some very important facts, namely, that the reduction in the sum total of zymotic diseases for the previous decade, should be put down to the credit of improved sanita- tion. The death rate from fever fell nearly 50 per cent. ; that of scarlatina and diphtheria, 33 per cent., while small-pox alone increased 50 per cent., and this when vaccination was general and thorough. This proves that vaccination has no appreciable effect to check the progress of small-pox when it becomes epi- demic. We also have here an illustration of the law, already pointed out, that when one zymotic disease is epidemic the others are in abeyance to the extent that the total death rate is not sensibly affected.
The "London Lancet" (1871) says, editorially: "Those who have been building up in their imagination a great and ben- eficent system of state medicine, under which the great causes of diseases were to be controlled, must abate their hopefulness. It must be admitted that the existing system of public vaccina-
62 VACCINATION A CURSE.
tion lias been sadly discredited and almost mocked by the exper- ience of the present epidemic."
In a speech in the London Vaccination Conference (1881). Dr. Bullard — with a salary of $3,500.00 as public vaccinator — said: "If it were not for the interference of such small-pox ep- idemics as that of 1871, the records of vaccination would be per- fectly satisfactory." Dr. Robinson retorted: "Dr. B. reminds me of a bankrupt who avowed he would be perfectly solvent, if it were not for his confounded losses." Aye, it is during a money-crisis that the solvency of a bank is tested ; and it is likewise during a small-pox epidemic the value — or total lack of it — of vaccination is tested. If at this critical period it fails to protect, it is thereby not only proved to be utterly useless, but an unmitigated curse ; for it not only fails to yield any ben- efit, but it charges the bodies of its unnumbered victims with a virus, the effects of which the most thorough sanitation will only partially counteract.
Here are some figures :
SMALL-POX DEATHS IN LONDON.
1851-60 7,150
1861-70 8,347
1871-80 15,551
The deaths in England from the last three great epidemics of small-pox were :
Deaths.
1857-9 14,244
1863-5 20.059
1870-2 44,840
This is vaccinated London; this is vaccinated England, and observe that the last curse was far more grievous than the first — twenty years earlier.
Florence Nightingale writes that "Every one who knows anything of public health questions, will agree as to the practi- cal unity of epidemics and their determining causes, and that ex-
VACCINATION FAILS TO PROTECT. 63
emptions from all alike must be sought, not by any one thing, such as vaccination, but by inquiring into and removing the causes of epidemic susceptibility generally."
HARD BLOWS BY PROFESSOR WALLACE.
One of the ablest writers and thoroughly scientific men in England — Prof. Alfred R. Wallace — has enrolled himself on the side of reform, and has recently written and published (1898) one of the best books on the vaccination controversy which has appeared within the history of the agitation — "Vaccination a Delusion." This has been published both as a separate volume, and also embodied in his latest work — "The Wonderful Cen- tury," where it is receiving a wide circulation. Prof. Wallace has made a thorough study and analysis of the statistical prob- lem as it relates to vaccination and to small-pox, and arranged the results in diagramatic form — twelve diagramatic maps — the only form in which statistics show the exact truth at a glance. I am more than pleased to have access to such an ample and thoroughly reliable source of information, and shall embody some of Prof. Wallace's results in these pages :
He critically examined the early tests employed by the ad- vocates of vaccination to prove the protective influence of the practice, and points out the fallacy and complete inefficiency of these tests. Moreover, he urges that the real test would have been to inoculate with small-pox virus two groups of persons of similar age, constitution and health, one group having been vaccinated, the other not, and none of them having had small- pox. Then have the results carefully noted and reported by in- dependent experts. But such practical tests have never been instituted by the apologists and defenders of the practice.
The Board of the National Vaccine Establishment, ap- pointed in 1808, consisted of the president and four censors of
64 VACCINATION A CURSE.
the Royal College of Physicians, and the master and two senior wardens of the College of Surgeons. Speaking of this board, Prof. Wallace observes : —
"The successive annual reports of the National Vaccine Es- tablishment give figures of the deaths by small-pox in London in the eighteenth century, which go on increasing like Fal- staff's men in buckram ; while in our own time the late Dr. W. B. Carpenter, Mr. Ernest Hart, the National Health Society, and the Local Government Board make statements or give fig- ures which are absurdly and demonstrably incorrect. * * * The unreasoning belief in the importance of vaccination leads many of those who have to deal with it officially to conceal- ments and mis-statements which are justified by the desire to 'save vaccination from reproach.' "
Next Prof. Wallace cites two cases which shows the un- scrupulous special pleading of members of the National Vaccine Establishment — the recklessness in making assertions which scorns the slightest attempt at verification : —
"In the first edition of Mr. Ernest Hart's "Truth About Vaccination" (page 4), it is stated, on the authority of a mem- ber of Parliament recently returned from Brazil, that during an epidemic of small-pox at the town of Ceara in 1878 and 1879, out of a population not exceeding 70.000 persons there were 40,000 deaths from small-pox. This was repeated by Dr. Car- penter during a debate in London, in February, 1882, and only when its accuracy was called in question was it ascertained that at the time referred to the population of Ceara was only about 20,000, yet the M. P. had stated — with detailed circumstance — that 'in one cemetery, from August, 1878, to June, 1879, 27,- 064 persons who had died of small-pox had been buried.' Ga- zetteers are not very recondite works, and it would have been not difficult to test some portion of this monstrous statement before printing it. Tenner's biographer tells us that he had a horror of arithmetical calculations, due to a natural incapacity, which quality appears to be a special characteristic of those who advocate vaccination, as the examples I have given sufficiently prove.
"Another glaring case of official misrepresentation oc- curred in the Royal Commission itself, but was fortunately ex-
VACCINATION FAILS TO PROTECT. 65
posed later on. A medical officer of the Local Government Board gave evidence (First Report, Q. 994), that the board in 1886 'took some pains to get the figures as to the steamship Preussen,' on which small-pox broke out on its arrival in Aus- tralia. He made the following statements: (1) There were 312 persons on board this vessel. (2) 4 re-vaccinated, 47 vacci- nated, 3 who had small-pox, and 15 unvaccinated were attacked — 69 in all. (3) The case was adduced to show that 'sanitary circumstances have little or no control over small-pox compared with the condition of vaccination or no vaccination.'
"This official statement was quoted in the House of Com- mons as strikingly showing the value of vaccination. But, like so many other official statements, it was all false ! The re- ports of the Melbourne and Sydney inspectors have been ob- tained, and it is found: (1) That there were on board this ship 723 passengers and 120 crew — 823 in all, instead of 312; so that the 'pains' taken by the Local Government Board to get 'the figures' were very ineffectual. (2) There were 29 cases among the 235 passengers who disembarked at Melbourne, of whom only 1 was unvaccinated. The crew had all been vaccinated be- fore starting, yet 14 of them were attacked with small-pox, and one died."
— Page 81 of "Vaccination a Delusion."
Again, officials of the Vaccine Establishment have no mo- tives why a record of small-pox mortality should not be cor- rect ; but they have a motive to charge the record up against the unvaccinated all that the state of the public health will bear. Of fatal cases none are returned as vaccinated unless distinct and visible vaccine marks are found, which often lead to error. Besides, official vaccinators have an admitted practice of giving vaccination the benefit of any doubt that may arise as to whether the victim of the disease was ever vaccinated. Hence, while statistics are sure to embrace the full number of the un- vaccinated, they rarely reveal the number of the vaccinated.
Sweden is often quoted by advocates of vaccination as bear- ing out their contention that vaccination really protects. They point out that vaccination was introduced in Sweden in 1801.
66 VACCINATION A CURSE.
and that from that time to 1810 there was a great and sudden decline of small-pox mortality. But Prof. Wallace, taking the report of the Swedish Board of Health, and the statements of such authorities as Sir William Gull, Dr. Seaton and Mr. Marsen before the Commission of Inquiry in 1871, constructed a complete diagramatic table of Swedish mortality statistics. I will here attempt nothing more than a brief summary of a por- tion of the facts.
In the first place, only 8 per cent, of the population were vaccinated in Sweden down to 181 2. The first successful vacci- nation in Stockholm was at the close of 1810. And here it is important to note that the decline in small-pox mortality was between 1801 and 1812, while only 8 per cent, of the population was yet vaccinated, and even this small percentage was mostly confined to the rural districts. From 1812, for sixty years there was a continuous increase in the small-pox death rate. The Stockholm epidemic of 1807, before a single inhabitant in that city was vaccinated, and the epidemic in 1825, were far less se- vere than the six later epidemics when vaccination had become general. By referring to Prof. Wallace's diagram, we see that vaccination had nothing to do with the reduction of small-pox mortality, which was all brought about before the first success- ful vaccination in the capital, Dec. 17, 1810. As vaccination in-> creased among the population, small-pox increased also. In 1874 there was a small-pox mortality in Stockholm of 7,916 per million, reaching 10,290 per million during the two years in which the epidemic prevailed This was a higher mortality than the worst epidemic in London during the eighteenth cen- tury.
Prof. Wallace sums up the case as it rejates to Sweden : —
"There has evidently been a great and continuous im- provement in healthy conditions of life in Sweden, as in our own country and probably in all other European nations ; and this improvement, or some special portion of it, must have acted
VACCINATION FAILS TO PROTECT. 67
powerfully on small-pox to cause the enormous diminution of the disease down to 1812, with which, as we have seen, vaccina- tion could have had nothing to do. The only thing that vacci- nation seems to have done is, to have acted as a check to this diminution, since it is otherwise impossible to explain the com- plete cessation of improvement as the operation became more general ; and this is more especially the case in view of the fact that the general death rate has continued to decrease at almost the same rate down to the present day!
"This case of Sweden alone affords complete proof of the uselessness of vaccination ; yet the commissioners in the Final Report (par. 59) refer to the great diminution of small-pox mor- tality in the first twenty years of the century as being due to it. They make no comparison with the total death rate ; they say nothing of the increase of small-pox from 1824 to 1874; they omit all reference to the terrible Stockholm epidemics increas- ing continuously for fifty years of legally enforced vaccination and culminating in that of 1874, which was far worse than the worst known in London during the whole of the eighteenth century. Official blindness to the most obvious facts and con- clusions can hardly have a more striking illustration than the appeal to the case of Sweden as being favorable to the claims of vaccination."
In May, 1871, the Pall Mall Gazette expresses the medical opinion that : —
"Prussia is the country where re-vaccination is most gen- erally practiced, the law making the precaution obligatory on every person, and the authorities conscientiously watching over its performance. As a natural result, cases of small-pox are rare." Never was there a more glaring untruth than this last statement. It is true that re-vaccination was enforced in public schools and other institutions, and most rigidly in the army, so that a very large proportion of the adult male popula tion must have been re-vaccinated ; but, instead of cases of small-pox being rare, there had been for the twenty-four years preceding 1871 a much greater small-pox mortality in Prussia than in England, the annual average being 248 per million for the former and only 210 for the latter. A comparison of the
68
VACCINATION A CURSE.
two cases shows the difference at a glance. English small- pox only reached 400 per million (in 1852) while in Prussia it four times exceeded that amount. And immediately after the words above quoted were written, the great epidemic of 1871-72 caused a mortality in re-vaccinated Prussia more than double that of England." — Ibid, page 48.
If we compare Berlin with London in 1871, we find the small-pox mortality for Berlin 6,150 per million — more than twice that of London ; and this, remember, is where vaccination and re-vaccination were most thoroughly performed.
Again, vaccination was made compulsory in Bavaria in 1807, and was so maintained down to the epidemic of 1871, when 30,742 cases of small-pox were reported, of which 95 per cent, had been vaccinated.
Prof. Wallace truly remarks : "In Bavaria as in all other countries we have examined, the behavior of small-pox shows no relation to vaccination, but the very closest relation to the other zymotics and to density of population. * * Ninety- five per cent, of small-pox patients having been vaccinated is alone sufficient to condemn vaccination as useless."
"One point more deserves notice before leaving this part of the inquiry, which is the specially high small-pox mortality of great commercial sea-ports. The following table, compiled from Dr. Pierce's "Vital Statistics" for the continental towns and from the Reports of the Royal Commission for those of our own country, is very remarkable and instructive : —
NAME OF TOWN.
Hamburgh
Rotterdam
Cork
Sunderland
Stockholm
Trieste
Newcastle-on-Tyne
Portsmouth
Dublin
Liverpool
Plymouth .
SMALL-POX DEATH-RATE PER MILLION.
15.440 14,280 9,600 8,650 7.916 6,980 5.410 4,420 4.330 3.890 3,0O0
"The small-pox death rate in the case of the lowest of these towns is very much higher than in London during the same ep-
VACCINATION FAILS TO PROTECT. 69
idemic, and it is quite clear that vaccination can have had noth- ing to do with this difference. For if it be alleged that vaccina- tion was neglected in Hamburgh and Rotterdam, of which we find no particulars, this cannot be said of Cork, Sunderland, and Newcastle. Again, if the very limited and imperfect vacci- nation of the first quarter of the century is to have the credit of the striking reduction of small-pox mortality that then oc- curred, as the Royal Commissioners claim, a small deficiency in the very much more extensive and better vaccination that gen- erally prevailed in 1871, cannot be the explanation of a small- pox mortality greater than in the worst years of London when there was no vaccination. Partial vaccination cannot be claimed as producing marvellous effects at one time and less than noth- ing at all at another time, yet this is what the advocates of vac- cination constantly do. But on the sanitation theory the ex- planation is simple. Mercantile seaports have grown up along the banks of harbors or tidal rivers whose waters and shores have been polluted by sewage for centuries. They are always densely crowded owing to the value of situations as near as possible to the shipping. Hence there is always a large popula- tion living under the worst sanitary conditions, with bad drain- age, bad ventilation, abundance of filth and decaying organic matter, and all the conditions favorable to the spread of zymotic diseases and their exceptional fatality. Such populations have maintained to our day the unsanitary conditions of the last cen- tury, and thus present us with a similarly great small-pox mor- tality, without any regard to the amount of vaccination that may be practiced. In this case they illustrate the same princi- ple which so well explains the very different amounts of small- pox mortality in Ireland, Scotland, England, and London, with hardly any difference in the quantity of vaccination.
The Royal Commissioners, with all these facts before them or at their command, have made none of these compari- sons. They give the figures of small-pox mortality, and either explain them by alleged increase or decrease of vaccination, or argue that, as some other disease — such as measles — did not decrease at the same time or to the same amount, therefore sanitation cannot have influenced small-pox. They never once compare small-pox mortality with general mortality, or with the rest of the group of zymotics, and thus fail to see their wonder-
70 VACCINATION A CURSE.
fully close agreement — their simultaneous rise and fall, which so clearly shows their subjection to the same influences and proves that no special additional influence can have operated in the case of small-pox." — Ibid, pages 51-52.
Prof. Wallace then proceeds to give two remarkable test illustrations of the utter worthlessness of vaccination : —
"The first is that of the town of Leicester, which for the last twenty years has rejected vaccination till it has now almost van- ished altogether and small-pox is almost unknown. The second is that of our army and navy, in which, for a quarter of a century, every recruit has been re-vac- cinated, unless he has been recently vaccinated or has had small- pox. In the first we have an almost wholly unprotected popu- lation of nearly 200,000. which, on the theory of the vaccinators, should have suffered exceptionally from small-pox ; in the other we have a picked body of 220,000 men, who, on the evidence of the medical authorities, are as well protected as they know how to make them, and among whom, therefore, small-pox should be almost or quite absent, and small-pox deaths quite unknown. Let us see, then, what has happened in these two cases. In both it has been clearly proven that small-pox in- creased with the increase of vaccination, and decreased by sani- tation, cleanliness, and hygienic living.
"Then commenced the movement (in Leicester) against vaccination, owing to its proved uselessness in the great epi- demic, when Leicester had a very much higher small-pox mor- tality than London, which has resulted in a continuous decline, especially rapid for the last fifteen years, till it is now reduced to almost nothing. ********
"The first thing to be noted is the remarkable simultaneous rise of all four death rates to a maximum in 1868-72, at the same time that the vaccination rate attained its maximum. The decline in the death rates from 1852 to i860 was due to sanitary improvements which had then commenced ; but the rigid en- forcement of vaccination checked the decline owing to its pro- ducing a great increase of mortality in children, an increase which ceased as soon as vaccination diminished. This clearly shows that the deaths which have only recently been acknowl- edged as due to vaccination, directly or indirectly, are really so numerous as largely to affect the total death rate; but they
VACCINATION FAILS TO PROTECT. 71
were formerly wholly concealed, and still are partially concealed, by being registered under such headings as erysipelas, syphilis, diarrhoea, bronchitis, convulsions, or other proximate cause of death."
The small-pox history of Leicester presents one of the best object lessons of the past thirty years, for since the small-pox epidemic of 1871, the city not only rose in revolt and rid itself of the incubus of vaccination, but also instituted as thorough a system of sanitation as its crowded population of 180,000 would admit of. It therefore stands out clear and distinct above all the other cities in England, both as a rebuke to the vaccine prac- tice, and as a testimony that salvation from zymotic infection lies in the direction of hygienic habits and surroundings. In 1S94 Leicester had only seven vacinations to 10,000 of the pop- ulation, while Birmingham had thirty times that proportion; and between 1891-94 Leicester had less than one-third the cases of small-pox and less than one-fouth the deaths in proportion to population, than well vaccinated Birmingham ; whence it is readily seen that for both numbers and severity the facts are decidedly against vaccination.
"Now let us see how the commissioners, in their Final Re- port deal with the above facts, which are surely most vital to the "ery essence of the inquiry, and the statistics relating to which have been laid before them with a wealth of detail not equalled in any other case. Practically they ignore it altogether. Of course I am referring to the majority report, to which alone the government and the unenlightened public arc likely to pay any attention. Even the figures above quoted as to Leicester and Warrington are to be found only in the report of the minority, who also give the case of another town, Dewsbury, which has partially rejected vaccination, but not nearly to so large an ex- tent as Leicester, and in the same epidemic it stood almost ex- actly between un-vaccinated Leicester and well-vaccinated War- rington, thus : —
Leicester had 1.1 mortality per 10.000 living, Dewsbury had 6.7 motality per 10,000 living, Warrington had 11.8 mortality per 10,000 living.
72 VACCINATION A CURSE.
"Here again we see that it is the unvaccinatecl towns that suffer least, not the most vaccinated.
"What they urge is (the minority report), that sanitation and isolation arc the effective and only preventives ; and it was because Leicester attended thoroughly to these matters, and Gloucester wholly neglected them, that the one suffered so little and the other so much in the recent epidemic. On this subject every inquirer should read the summary of the facts given in the minority report, paragraph 261.
"To return to the majority report. Its references to Lei- cester are scattered over 80 pages, referring separately to the hospital staff, and the relations of vaccinated and unvaccinated to small-pox ; while in only a few paragraphs do they deal with the main question and the results of the system of isolation adopted. These results they endeavor to minimize by declaring that the disease was remarkably 'slight in its fatality,' yet they end by admitting that the 'experience of Leicester affords co- gent evidence that the vigilant and prompt application of isola- tion * * * * is a most powerful agent in limiting the spread of small-pox.' A little further on they say, when discuss- ing this very point — how far sanitation may be relied on in place of vaccination — 'The experiment has never been tried.' Surely a town of 180,000 inhabitants which has neglected vaccination for twenty years, is an experiment. But a little further on we see the reason of this refusal to consider Leicester a test experi- ment. Paragraph 502 begins thus : 'The question we are now discussing must, of course, be argued on the hypothesis that vaccination affords protection against small-pox.' What an amazing basis of argument for a commission supposed to be inquiring into this very point! They then continue: 'Who can possibly say that if the disease once entered a town the popula- tion of which was entirely or almost entirely unprotected, it would not spread writh a rapidity of which we have in recent times had no experience?' But Leicester is such a town. Its infants — the class which always suffers in the largest numbers — are almost wholly unvaccinated. and the great majority of its adults have, according to the bulk of the medical supporters of vaccination, long outgrown the benefits, if any, of infant-vacci- nation. The disease has been introduced into the town twenty
VACCINATION FAILS TO PROTECT. 73
times before 1884, and twelve times during the last epidemic (Final Report, par. 482 and 483). The doctors have been assert- ing for years that once small-pox comes to Leicester it will run through the town like wild-fire. But instead of that it has been quelled with far less loss than in any of the best vaccinated towns in England. But the commissioners ignore this actual experiment, and soar into the regions of conjecture with, 'Who can possibly say?' — concluding the paragraph with — 'A priori reasoning on such a question is of little or no value.' Very true. But a posteriori reasoning, from the cases of Leicester, Bir- mingham, Warrington, Dewsbury, and Gloucester, is of value ; but it is of value as showing the utter uselessness of vaccina- tion, and it is therefore, perhaps, wise for the professional up- holders of vaccination to ignore it. But surely it is not wise for a presumably impartial commission to ignore it as it is ignored in this report." — "The Wonderful Century," pages 276-7.
"Although the commission makes no mention of Mr. Bigg's tables and diagrams showing the rise of infant-mortality with increased vaccination, and its fall as vaccination diminished, they occupied a whole day cross-examining him upon them, en- deavoring by the minutest criticism to diminish their import- ance."
The second test illustration referred to a few pages back — that of the army and navy — is made complete and crucial by a comparison with Ireland, which is practically unvaccinated, while the army and navy are the most thoroughly vaccinated and re-vaccinated of any class in the whole population. In Dr. MacCabe's evidence before the Royal Commission, it appears but avery small proportion of the population in Ireland have been vaccinated, and in a thorough comparison which Prof. Wallace makes between Ireland, Scotland, England, and with the army and navy, he reaches the result that unvaccinated Ire- land shows a smaller small-pox mortality than Scotland, enorm- ously less than England, and overwhelmingly less than Lon- don. With seemingly little or no regard to vaccination, this graduated series of increase in small-pox mortality is in exact correspondence with increased density of population; while in
74 VACCINATION A CURSE.
these crowded centers we find that small-pox behaves in the same general manner as all the other zymotic diseases. One pays no more regard than the other to vaccination, but all have respect for cleanliness and hygienic living.
After discussing these features of the question, and after paying his respects to the Royal Commission, Prof. Wallace continues : —
"Now if there were no other evidence which gave similar results, this great test case of large populations compared over a long series of years, is alone almost conclusive ; and we ask with amazement, — Why did not the commissioners make some such camparison as this, and not allow the public to be de- ceived by the grossly misleading statements of the medical wit- nesses and official apologists for a huge imposture? For here we have on one side a population which the official witnesses de- clare to be as well vaccinated and re-vaccinated as it is possible to make it, and which has all the protection that can be given by vaccination. It is a population which, we are officially as- sured, can live in the midst of the contagion of severe small-pox ami not suffer from the disease 'in any appreciable degree.' And on comparing this population of over 200,000 men, thus thoroughly protected and medically cared for, with the poorest and least cared for portion of our country — a portion which the official witness regarding it declared to be badly vaccinated, while no amount of re-vaccination was even referred to — we find the less vaccinated and less cared for community to have actually a much lower small-pox mortality than the navy, and the same as that of the two forces combined. * * * *
"It is thus completely demonstrated that all the statements by which the public has been gulled for so many years, as to the almost complete immunity of the re-vaccinated army and navy, are absolutely false. It is just what Americans call "bluff.' There is no immunity. They have no protection. When exposed to infection they do suffer just as much as other populations, or even more. In the whole of the nineteen years, 1878-1896 inclu- sive, unvaccinated Leicester had so few small-pox deaths that the Registrar General represents the average by the decimal O.oi per thousand population, equal to 10 per million, while for the twelve years, 1878-1889, there was less than one death per
VACCINATION FAILS TO PROTECT. 75
annum.' Here we have real immunity, real protection ; and it is obtained by attending to sanitation and isolation, coupled with the almost total neglect of the curse of vaccination. * * *
"Now if ever there exists such a thing as a crucial test, this of the army and navy, as compared with Ireland, and especially with Leicester, affords such a test. The populations concerned are hundreds of thousands ; the time extends to a generation ; the statistical facts are clear and indisputable ; while the case of the army has been falsely alleged again and again to afford in- disputable proof of the value of vaccination when performed on adults. It is important, therefore, to see how the commisssion- ers deal with these conclusive test cases. They were appointed to discover the truth and to enlighten the public and the legis- lature, not merely to bring together huge masses of undigested facts.
"What they do is, to make no comparison whatever with any other fairly comparable populations, to show no perception of the crucial test they have to deal with, but to give the army and navy statistics separately, and as regards the army piece- meal, and to make a few incredibly weak and unenlightening re- marks. Thus, in par. 333, they say that, during the later years, as the whole force became more completely re-vaccinated, small- pox mortality declined. But they knew well that during the same period it declined over all England, Scotland, and Ireland, with no special re-vaccination, and most of all in unvaccinated Leicester ! Then with regard to the heavy small-pox mortality of the wholly re-vaccinated and protected troops in Egypt, they say, 'We are not aware what is the explanation of this.' And this is absolutely all they say about it ! But they give a long paragraph to the post office officials, and make a great deal of their alleged immunity. But in this case the numbers are smaller, the periods are less, and no statistics whatever ar*e fur- nished except for the last four years ! All the rest is an extract from a parliamentary speech by Sir Charles Dilke in 1883, stat- ing some facts, furnished of course by the medical officers of the post office, and therefore not to be accepted as evidence. This slurring over the damning evidence of the absolute inutility of the most thorough vaccination possible, afforded by the army and navy, is sufficient of itself to condemn the whole Final Re- port of the majority of the commisssioners. It proves that they
76 VACCINATION A CURSE.
were either unable or unwilling to analyze carefully the vast mass of evidence brought before them, to separate mere beliefs and opinions from facts, and to discriminate between the sta- tistics which represented those great 'masses of national experi- ence' to which Sir John Simon himself has appealed for a final verdict, and those of a more partial kind, which may be vitiated by the prepossesssions of those who registered the facts. That they have not done this, but without any careful examination or comparison have declared that re-vaccinated communities have 'exceptional advantages' which, as a matter of fact, the report itself show they have not, utterly discredits all their con- clusions, and renders this Final Report not only valueless but misleading." — "The Wonderful Century," pages 285-6.
In addition to the above quotations, Prof. Wallace devotes an entire chapter to a criticism of the Royal Commission on Vaccination, in which their special pleading, their covert con- cealments, and their flagrant betrayal of the trust of the people through Parliament committed into their hands are unsparingly held up to view. But in this, as in nearly all similar bodies, there were a few men of conscience and integrity, who put the facts which were brought before them in their proper relation and embodied them in a minority report. The commission as a whole, however, conducted their investigations throughout as though they regarded the Vaccine Establishment as their clients, whom it was their duty to defend — even as a lawyer de- fends a client by suppressing or disparaging the testimony that bears on the other side.
A further word of comment relating to this Royal Commis- sion may properly be inserted here. One redeeming feature of the medical profession is found in the fact that a fair percentage of its ablest members are loyal to the truth and have a large measure of regard for the public welfare. A certain residue are greedy and unscrupulous, and these are always plotting for place and privilege and power ; and as these — through the co- operation of politicians — are opened and made accessible, they
VACCINATION FAILS TO PROTECT. 77
are usually the foremost in securing official positions and places of responsibility. Now in the early history of vaccination this class secured state interference with a Compulsory Vaccination Law ; but as the more conscientious and experienced physi- cians became fully convinced that vaccination was working great mischief in the community, they opposed the practice and agitated for reform. Through this public agitation the people became sufficiently enlightened on the subject to protest, and thousands refused to submit, or suffer their children to be vac- cinated. Prosecutions, fines, and imprisonment followed.
The public clamor became widespread, and Parliament was repeatedly petitioned to repeal the law, which it refused to do. It was then asked to appoint a commission to investigate and report on their grievances. This also was repeatedly re- fused. Finally, after repeated refusals by the government, a Royal Commission of Inquiry on Vaccination was at length granted — in April, 1889. This was granted in consequence of popular pressure. It was professedly to be constituted a fair and impartial tribunal ; but its real object was to "expose the distortions and misconceptions of the enemies of vaccination." It was really to become a "white-washing" commission to si- lence the public clamor and to intrench place-hunting officials and an army of vaccinators more strongly under the protection of the state. Not one of the fourteen members appointed was opposed to vaccination, though some of them did not favor compulsory legislation. Indeed, this commission of experts was a pretty good paralllel to that appointed in our own United States in 1898 — also in obedience to popular clamor — ostensi- bly to investigate official abuses, but really to "white-wash" the "embalmed beef frauds" perpetrated on our soldiers in the field by corrupt agents who had pushed their way to the front and se- cured federal appointments. The commission found that our soldiers had "no occasion to complain (?)." The agents did the best they could under the circumstances. The system of
/8 VACCINATION A CURSE.
army contracts is a good one ; it pays, and therefore the people should submit without complaint. The "taffy" offered them by this body of trained experts ought to taste good and quiet their murmurings. Well, this Royal Commission spread its labors over a period of seven years, on big government salaries, before it made its final report. It is this report which Prof. Wallace so unmercifully scores.
What I have said in the preceding paragraph may likewise be applied in large part to the National Vaccine Establishment in England, which was founded in 1806 and endowed by govern- ment with £3,000 per year. During the eight years succeeding the Jenner discovery, cases of failure continued to multiply which occasioned a deal of trouble to Jenner and Ins party to explain away. So the doctors sought the co-operation of gov- ernment to extend and perpetuate their schemes. Dr. Scott Tebb, after detailing these early failures, continues : —
"The reports of failure at lengih became so numerous, that it was found necessary to take action. In a letter to Mr. Dun- ning in reference to Dr. Benjamin Moseley's publication of fail- ures, Jenner expresses the opinion that nothing would crush the hissing heads of such serpents at once but a general mani- festo with the signatures of men of eminence in the profession, unless Parliament had a mind to take the matter up again.*'
So Jenner had a conference with Lord Henry Petty ''chan- cellor of the exchequer) who gave assurances that he would bring the matter forward in the ensuing session, which, when convened (1806) was readily persuaded to vote the Crown an address, praying "that His Majesty will be graciously pleased to direct his College of Physicians to inquire into the state of vac- cine inoculation in the United Kingdom, and to report their opinion and observations upon that practice, the evidence which has been adduced in its support, and the causes which have hitherto retarded its general adoption; and that His Majesty
VACCINATION FAILS TO PROTECT. 79
will be graciously pleased to direct that the said report, when made, may be laid before this House.
"The College reported favorably, and the National Vac- cine Establishment was founded with a vaccine board of eight, each having a salary of £100 a year. Although the profession and Parliament had been practically committed to vaccination at the time of Jenner's petition (1802), this was the first instance of the establishment and endowment of the practice, and the natural tendency was to stifle opposition ; indeed, it may be said that one of the principal functions of the National Vaccine Es- tablishment was to explain away the failures of cow-pox to pro- tect from small-pox. * * * * * * In some towns fail- ures were such as to lead to a discontinuance of the practice. ******* The practice afterwards became more general, until the small-pox raged epidemically. It was' then ob- served that many of the children who had been previously vac- cinated, and were supposed to be secure, caught the complaint; some of them died, and others recovered with difficulty."
— "A Century of Vaccination," pages 122-23.
In the "Medical Observer" for November, 1809, the details of fourteen fatal cases are given : —
"1. A child was vaccinated by Mr. Robinson, surgeon and apothecary, at Rotherham, towards the end of the year 1799. A month later it was inoculated with small-pox matter without ef- fect, and a few months subsequently took confluent small-pox, and died.
"2. A woman-servant to Mr. Gamble, of Bungay, in Suf- folk, had cow-pox in the casual way from milking. Seven years afterwards she became nurse to the Yarmouth Hospital, where she caught small-pox, and died.
"3 and 4. Elizabeth and John Nicholson, three years of age, were vaccinated at Battersea in the summer of 1804. Both contracted small-pox in May, 1805, and died. They were at- tended by Dr. Moseley and Mr. Roberts.
"5. Mr. J. Adams, of Nine Elms, contracted casual cow- pox, and afterwards died of confluent small-pox.
"6. The child of Mr. Carrier, Crown Street, Soh.o, was vac- cinated at the institution in Golden Square, and had small-pox three months afterwards, and died.
80 VACCINATION A CURSE.
"7. Mary Finney's child, aged one year, died of small-pox in July, 1805, live months after vaccination.
"8. The child of Mr. Blake's coachman, living at No. 5 Baker Street, died of small-pox after vaccination.
"9. Mr. Colson's grandson, at the 'White Swan,' White- • • ss Street, aged two years, was vaccinated by a surgeon at Bishopsgate Street, in September, 1803. He died of confluent small-pox in July, 1805.
"10. Mr. Brailey's child, aged two years and eight months, was vaccinated at the Small-pox Hospital, and forty weeks after- wards'died of confluent small-pox.
"11. Mr. Hoddinot's child, No. 17 Charlotte Street, Rath- bone Place, was vaccinated in 1804 and the cicatrix remained. In 1805 it caught small-pox and died.
"12. C. Mazoyer's child, No. 31 Grafton Street, Soho, was vaccinated at the Small-pox Hospital. Died of small-pox Octo- ber, 1805.
"13. The child of Mr. R died of small-pox in Octo- ber, 1805. The patient had been vaccinated, and the parents were assured of its security. The vaccinator's name was con- cealed.
"14. The child of Mr. Hindsley at Mr. Adams' office, Ped- ler's Acre, Lambeth, died of small-pox a year after vaccination."
Such entire failures of vaccination, as a remedy or protec- tion, multiplying on every hand, had no effect either on Parlia- ment or the College of Physicians. The failures were concealed, glossed over or explained away. Once committed to the vac- cine superstition there was no backing down to be thought of or tolerated. No confession of error must be allowed to cast reproach upon so learned a body as the College of Physicians. And then, it was a good thing — an establishment endowed by the crown ; a goodly number of government offices with fair salaries ; an army of vaccinators in government and municipal employ ; these are not to be lightly surrendered. Christ — if he were here — might plead for the little ones, for the rising gener- ation. But why should the rising generation stand in the way of business? "Business is business." "We must live." These
VACCINATION FAILS TO PROTECT. 8l
are corporation and class ethics, without soul, without con- science, cruel as fate, knowing no other object or goal than what self interest dictates. This is the code by which oppressive laws become recorded on our statute books, and are kept there ; the code by which otherwise good men will enter into compacts which, in their composite character, become merciless tyran- nies— a veritable car of Juggernaut — bearing down its victims without pity and without remorse !
Again, the "Medical Observer" for August, 1810, states that the poor of the parish of Witford, in Hertfordshire, were vaccinated by Mr. Farrow, apothecary at Hadham, with matter procured from London Cow-pox Institute. During the small- pox epidemic that followed, of 69 vaccinated, 29 took small-pox, nine of whom died. The editor gives a list of the fatal cases : —
Name. Age.
William Barton 5 years
Mary Catmore 13 years
Ann Catmore 13 years
Emma Prior 6 months
Martha Wrenn 6 years
William Catmore 3 years
Charles Wybrow 6 months
John Fitstead I year
James Thoroughgood 2 years
— Tebb, page 129.
The "Medical and Physiological Journal," Vol. XXXII, page 478, said the cases of failure atCreighton were so numerous and decisive that they could not fail to excite alarm. Twenty-five cases were given where the vaccinations were considered per- fect. In these cases the fever was violent ; the heat was excessive, the pulse very quick, universal languor, pain in the head and loins, frequent vomiting ; occasional delirium, and sometimes convulsions.
82
VACCINATION A CURSE.
In the same journal, Vol. Is.XXVII, pages 2 to 12, the fol- lowing cases were reported : —
Robert Jones' two children
Elizabeth
James Jos. James. .
Wm. James. . . . Wm. Parker Elizabeth Fell Maria Stable. . Betty Turner. .
Alice Turner.
Robert Braith- waite's daugh .
Mr. Rawlin- son's son . . .
Ellen Physac- lea
Wm. and Ben- jamin Kirby
Joseph Kirby.. Sarah Bond...
Jane Ellis.
Isabella JDixon Marg'r't Dixon Betty Garnet..
Infants
Infant Infant
Infant
Infant
Infant Infant
Infant 5-3
Infant Infant
Infant
Infant Infant Infant
By whom.
Mr. Redhead
Mr. Harrison Mr. Redhead
Mr. Close, Dal ton
Mr Briggs Mr. Carter Mr. Kedhead
Mr. Kedhead Mr. Carter
Mr. Bri.L'K- Mr. R'.dhcad Mr. T. Carter
Mr. Redhead At Liverpool
Mr Lodge, In- gleton
Mr. Ilarrisoi Mr Redhead Mr. Carter
s7, 5
Nature of the Small-pox.
Small horny pox, which continned out only five or six days ; were not seen by a medical man. One child had considerable fever during four days previous to the eruption
Very feverish. Pustules distinct. A well-marked case of small-pox.
Very feverish, and thought danger- ously ill for a few days. Eruption not so full as with Elizabeth.
Had them (eruptions) milder than the two former. Continued out a few days.
Delirious two days before the eruption appeared. Pustules numeious, aud continued out seven or eight Jays.
Considerable fever previous to the erution, which was of the distinct kind.
Feverish before the eruption, which was of a small horny kind, and soon disappeared.
Feverish three days, with delirium. Face full of pustules, and many on her body; small horny kind, which disappeared in five or six days.
Feverish. Not somuch indisposed as Betty ; had ftawer pustules, but lai ger.
Very feverish. Had a full crop of small horny pox. Face swelled. Blind three days.
Much fever. Very full of pustules, and much marked.
Very feverish. Had large distinct pox. Has marks on the face.
The eruption on William was larger, and continued longer than the rest. These two children were infected four weeks after vaccination. Pus- tules of the horny kind.
Got easily through the complaint.
Much fever, with delirium. Had many pustules of the horny kind, which soon disappeared.
Had a remarkably full crop; in fact, was one complete cake of incrusta- tion. Recovered pretty well, but is much marked. Was about a month confined.
Had a full crop. Is marked, but re- covered well.
Not very full. Pustules perfectly dis- tinct. Recovered well.
Distinct pustules. Was at the height in eight days, and recovered well.
Dr. Macleod — as quoted by Dr. Scott Tebb, — says : —
"I have seen too many instances of small-pox in children
VACCINATION FAILS TO PROTECT. 83
vaccinated in London, where that process was carried on in the way which the National Vaccine Establishment has recom- mended as the most efficacious, to retain much faith in its pre- ventive powers, in whatever manner conducted.' Again he re- marks (pages 8-9) : — 'The history of vaccination altogether forms a severe satire upon the mutability of medical doctrines. In the first ardor of discovery, not contented with its blessings to mankind, its benefits were also extended to the brute crea- tion. It was to annihilate small-pox, prove an antidote to the plague, to cure the rot in sheep, and preserve dogs from the mange. These good-natured speculations, however, were soon abandoned ; and more recently all had agreed in acknowledging its anti-variolous powers, which, we were told, were as well-esta- lished as anything human could be.'
"But the present epidemic shows too clearly the mortifying fallibility of medical opinions, though founded on the experi- ence of twenty years, and guaranteed by the concurring testi- mony of all the first physicians and surgeons in the world."
Sir Henry Holland — a high authority — indulges in expres- sions of disappointment in view of the general failure of vaccina- tion as a protective against small-pox, and particularly its failure during seasons of epidemic, the only time such protection is really needed. In his "Medical Notes and Reflections," he writes : —
"Not only in Great Britain, but throughout every part of the globe from which we have records, we find that small-pox has been gradually increasing again in frequency as an epi- demic ; affecting a larger proportion of the vaccinated ; and inflicting greater mortality in its results." Again he says (page 414) : — "It is no longer expedient, in any sense, to argue for the present practice of vaccination as a certain or permanent preven- tive of small-pox. The truth must be told, as it is, that the earlier anticipations on this point have not been realized."
Dr. Gregory well observes: — "It is often noticed that per- sons— vaccinated or not — who resist small-pox in common years, though fully exposed to the contagion, are attacked by it in years of epidemic prevalence." This is well worth remem-
84 VACCINATION A CURSE.
bering. It has been illustrated scores of times in all civilized countries. It is indeed during seasons of small-pox epidemic that we most fully realize the utter worthlessness of vaccina- tion— if we but use our eyes rationally. Yet with all these facts before them, boards of health in a great number of cities and towns in our own country, dogged on by a motley crew of second-rate doctors, drag forth a mouldy Compulsory Vaccina- tion Act from its pigeon hole, and then order all school children vaccinated, on pain of expulsion from the public school, if their parents refuse. Why should not those who really think vacci- nation a protection be content when they get their own children vaccinated? If that is really their protection certainly they would receive no harm by contact with the unvaccinated.
But people are prone to compel their neighbors to adopt their own modes of thinking and practice. And then, this vac- cination practice has become a business and source of revenue to a privileged class, which neither professional or politician will ever consent that it shall grow less. I say "professionals" with a qualification, since I have reference only to the mercen- ary class within the ranks of the medical profession. If this class do not constitute a majority, they have "cheek" sufficient to accomplish a vast amount of mischief. A mercenary doctor, lawyer, or priest is a curse in any community ; but when they form cabals and compacts to perpetuate a monstrous practice they augment the curse into a public scourge !
The following items are from Dr. A. M. Ross' pamphlet, "Vaccination a Medical Delusion." Dr. Ross is a physician of high standing in Toronto, and is a prominent leader in the vac- cination controversy in this country : —
"Whoever closely watched the course of the epidemic in Montreal must conclude that vaccination is utterly useless as a protection from small-pox. Much of what transpired in our %mall-pox hospitals was suppressed, especially whatever was likely to operate against the progress of vaccination, which
VACCINATION FAILS TO PROTECT. 85
proves a golden harvest to the vaccinators. But notwithstand- ing the conspiracy of silence a few official reports pregnant with proof against vaccination, and proving beyond question that a large proportion of the patients admitted into our small-pox hospitals had been vaccinated, and that many of them died, some with two and others with three, vaccine marks upon their bodies.
"I refer to the official report from the Civic Hospital, dated August 17, 1885: 'Up to this date, 133 patients suffering from small-pox have been admitted to the Civic Hospital ; of these 73 were vaccinated, 56 had one mark, 13 two marks and 4 three marks.'
'I refer to the official report from St. Roch's Hospital, dated October 22, 1885 : 'Number of vaccinated patients admit- ted since April . . . 197.'
"I refer to the official report from St. Camille's Hospital, dated November 1 to 7, 1885: 'There are now in this hospital, 188 small-pox patients ; of these 94 are vaccinated. Among the dead are 12 who were vaccinated.'
"I refer to the first official report from St. Saviour's Hos- pital, November 1 to 7. 1885 : 'Thirteen small-pox patients ad- mitted ; of these 9 were vaccinated and 4 (only) unvaccinated.'
"I refer to the official report from Crystal Palace Hospital, November 28 up to and including December 5, 1885: 'Number of patients admitted, 36; of these 19 were vaccinated.'
"I refer to the second official report from St. Sa- viour's Hospital, covering a period of 15 days, that is, from Oc- tober 15 to 31, it was stated there had been in all 67 patients ad- mitted, of whom 60 had been successfully vaccinated, 36 having two vaccination marks, 2 having three, and 3 having four.'
"I refer to the third official report from St. Saviour's Hos- pital, November 28 up to and including December 6, 1885:
86 VACCINATION A CURSE.
* Number of patients admitted, 6: of these 4 bear evidence of vaccination, and 2 were not vaccinated.'
LATEST OFFICIAL TESTIMONY FROM ENGLAND.
"Read the following- summary of the last report of the Registrar General of England, which proves conclusively that vaccination does not diminish or protect from small-pox : —
In the first 15 years after the passing of the Compul- sory Vaccination Act, 1854 to 1868, there died of small-pox in England and Wales 54./0O
In the second 15 years. 1869 to 1S83. under a more stringent law, ensuring the vaccination of ninety- five per cent, of all children born, the deaths rose to 66.447
Total for 30 years 121. 147
Of these, there died under 5 years of age 5I472
From 5 to 10 years of age 16,000
Total under 10 years 67.472
Sir Thomas Chambers. Q. C. M. P.. recorder of the city of London, says: "I find that of the 155 persons admitted to the small-pox hospital, in the parish of St. James, Piccadilly. 145 were vaccinated. At Hampsted Hospital, up to May 13, 1884, out of 2,965 admissions, 2.347 were vaccinated. In Marylebone, 92 per cent, of those attacked by small-pox were vaccinated."
''Of the 950 cases of small-pox, 1,870, or 91.5 per cent, of the whole cases, have been vaccinated." — Marson's "Report of Highgate Hospital for 1871."
"There were 43 cases treated in the Bromley Hospital be- tween April 25 and June 29, 1881. Of confluent small-pox there were 16 cases; of discrete. 13; of modified, 13. All the cases had been vaccinated — three re-vaccinated." — F. Nicholson. L. R. C. P., "Lancet." Aug. 2j, 1881.
But I must bring this chapter to a close, having already exceeded the limits I had assigned to pro/e that vaccination has failed to fulfill the flattering promises of its advocates and pro-
VACCINATION FAILS TO PROTECT. 87
moters. A volume could easily be filled with a record of these failures ; but it is only a small part of my purpose to point out what vaccination has failed to do ; I shall likewise hold up to view a portion of the detestable record of what it has clone and is now doing in the world, as also some items of legislation which has made large portions of the general population invol- untary and compulsatory victims of this unholy covenant with disease, death, and hell.
The widespread mischief which inoculation — the forerunner of vaccination — accomplished in the eighteenth century, is less a matter of surprise when we compare that period of general in- tellectual enlightenment with the nineteenth century; but that vaccination should be so generally submitted to, or even tole- rated as it has been the last fifty years, is one of those marvels which prove the desperate persistence of a practice when once it has become intrenched in the self interest of a privileged class, and when a powerful profession discover an adequate motive to invoke legislation to establish its permanence. It is incredible to believe — after the disclosure of such a multitude of facts, and after the amount of discussion already expended on the subject — that the majority of physicians who still continue to vaccinate have the slightest faith in the operation. Must we then conclude that the fee takes precedence in their minds over any public ben- efit they confer? Aye, must they not be conscious not only that they do not confer a benefit, but that they are corrupting the blood and undermining the health of a large percentage of the community, sowing seeds and planting upas trees which must eventuate in a terrible harvest of disease and death in the near future ? If they do not realize the wrong they are perpetuating on the rising generation God pity their professional acumen ; and may He with the good angels of heaven especially pity the little children who are turned over to the lance and putrid pus of this modern molock ! Dion Casius, the Roman historian, writ- ing of the plague which scourged Rome in the second century,
88 VACCINATION A CURSE.
relates : "many died in another way, not only at Rome but over nearly the whole empire, through the practice of miscreants, who, by means of small, poisoned needles, communicated, on being paid for it, the horrible infection so extensively that no computation could be made of the number that perished."
Unhappily, the "miscreants" are not all dead. They still walk the streets with their "poisoned needles" armed with a "permit" from the legislature to puncture and poison at so much per head, in the name of that public protection and benefit which they ruthlessly insult and over-ride. Look out for this public enemy reader, and bar your door against his approach !
Fifty years ago it was a serious thing to fall sick with fever and have a doctor — I mean the doctor was the serious part of the business — for in those old-time days the doctor said : "Cold water is death," and so fathers and mothers were solemnly for- bidden to give a drop of cold water to the child, tossing with a raging fever, and vainly pleading like Dives for "just a drop" to quench the fire that was fast consuming the life. But the parent must refuse this agonizing appeal for the doctor had forbidden the cooling draught. Instead of water — the remedy which na- ture prescribed — it was mercury and blood-letting in those days which made the weary hours of sickness a crucifixion, and which left hundreds of thousands of human wrecks by the wayside. But we can forgive the average doctor of those days, since his sin was the sin of ignorance. Xot so the vaccinator of today ; he is sinning against the light, and his motives can plead no such excuse as we readily grant to members of the medical profes- sion of fifty years ago.
CHAPTER IV
VACCINATION LEGISLATION.
"I can sympathize with, and even applaud, a father who, with the presumed dread in his mind, is willing to submit to ju- dicial penalties rather than expose his child to the risk of an in- fection so ghastly as vaccination." — Sir Thomas Watson, M. D.
The Anglo Saxon peoples have always proved to be re- fractory soil in which to plant authoritative dogmas — medical or ecclesiastical — and then attempt to put them in force by legis- lative enactments. True, they will tolerate encroachments to a certain limit ; for a time they will endure stripes and fines and persecution ; but at last the spirit of liberty is sure to flame up in emphatic protest, when noble reformers enter the arena, a season of intense agitation ensues, and when the people are made fully aware whether legislative encroachments — in the in- terest and at the behest of a privileged class — are conducting them, they invariably rise and strike down the marauder, even though it involves a political revolution.
This insistence of the Saxon that his personal lib- erty shall be respected and held inviolate, has been illustrated in three notable instances in the last four hundred years in those world-famed movements headed by Luther, Cromwell, and Washington. The first was a successful protest against the divine right of the church to rule over both
go VACCINATION A CURSE.
soul and body of the subject; the second was a revolt against the divine right of kings to rule over the citizen instead of guarding and protecting him in his rights ; the third transferred sovereignty from the king to the people, and made the pow- ers of government derivative from the people — made sover- eignty to inhere in the people ; but this chiefly in theory, since the people have not yet learned how to either protect or exer- cise that sovereignty in their associate capacity.
The people's sovereignty is continually being men- aced by class interests which, through legislation, seek to acquire special privileges by which they may be able to compel them to pay a perpetual trib- ute. Last but not least among these class interests, is the vac- cination syndicate, which is continually lobbying our legislatures for an extension of privileges on the pretense that the public welfare will thereby be enhanced. How exceedingly grateful the public ought to feel towards these gentlemen for their con- tinued good health and welfare ! But dear gentlemen, let me remind you — you who pose as government vaccination sur- geons, members of departments of health, boards of health, mu- nicipal vaccinators, and small-pox scare promoters ; let me re- mind you, your time is nearly up ! The people — when a trifle better informed about what you are really doing — are going to get rid of this vile vaccination nuisance and turn you out of the office you have usurped, disgraced, and run for all the "traffic would bear." You will then be relegated to your proper station, put upon your good behavior, and compelled to wait until you are asked, before you will be permitted to enter our households with lance and putrid pus and run up a fee from one to three dollars per victim !
The government has no more constitutional right to com- pel the people to submit to vaccination in the nineteenth cen- tury, than it had in the eighteenth to enfe~ce inoculation which is now made a penal offence, or of legalizing the mercury prac-
VACCINATION LEGISLATION. gi
tice and blood-letting of the last generation. All these were once regarded as cure-alls and preventives, and would now be occasions for little harm so long as the people are left free to adopt or reject them. It is when physic and the state become united — when the state legalizes and enforces the creed of a par- ticular sect in medicine — that the serious and fatal mischief be- gins to be manifest. No class or creed or practice was ever granted special recognition and support by the state that did not forthwith begin to abuse those powers and make of them an oc- casion for human oppression.
The people desire health and safety quite as much as the doctors desire it for them. And their common sense moreover demands the "open door" and a free struggle for the final survival of the "fittest" among the reme- dial agents brought forward. When these are found and tested — as cleanliness and wholesome living, for example — common sense people will adopt them without a resort to such coercive measures as repeated fines and imprisonments. Those who think vaccination is the absolute safeguard, by all means leave them free to erect this wall of protection, and then if vaccination is the thing they claim it is, at least they will not take the small- pox though every unvaccinated gentile falls a victim to the dis- ease. Excuse us, gentlemen of the lancet, we do not propose to jump out of the "frying-pan into the fire" by substituting the doctor for the priest. You are all right in your proper place ; but when we found the claws of the priest were growing too long for the safety of the innocents, we clipped them ; and we warn you — gentlemen doctors — if you continue to press legisla- tion to assist you in your vaccination scheme, we shall pretty soon clip your claws also. We don't mind having our bodies dragged through the mud now and then — good clean mud — but when you lobby the state to assist you in consigning our bodies, or our children's bodies, to the filthy pool of your vaccine pu- tridity, we object ; our Saxon patience has then gone beyond
92 VACCINATION A CURSE.
its limit, and unless you quit this business something serious is going to happen ! Mark it well !
Happily, though compulsory vaccination laws are on the statute books of nearly every state in our commonwealth, they remain for the most part a dead letter on account of the ex- treme difficulty experienced in enforcing them. They are a flag- rant violation of our constitution, and opposed to the genius and common sense of our average Anglo Saxon intelligence. And if the people adequately realized what consequences are in- volved by submitting themselves or their children to the vaccine poison, they would very soon sweep every vaccination act from our statute books, and relegate this vile superstition to the same obscure retreat to which the inoculation practice of the preced- ing century has been consigned. In the meantime, I should still leave the ordinary ''scrub" doctor free to ventilate his fads, for so long as he would be unable to invoke compulsory legisla- tion in behalf of his practice, the common sense of the citizen, left free to make his own choice, would in the long run choose what best conduces to his own health and welfare. Mrs. Eddy's unique medical creed may, or may not, benefit the world ; at any rate, while left in free competition with the multiplicity of forms constantly arising for treating disease, it is quite powerless for harm. But if it were to receive state support and made com- pulsory, it would then become a glaring wrong and outrage which the people would be justified in overthrowing without much ceremony.
We should bear in mind that physic is in a state of transi- tion. Harsh and drastic modes of treatment were common a century ago. These have been dropped by the profession, one after another, until now the instinctive calls of nature are more or less heeded by the practitioner, and the profession as a whole is daily approximating nearer and nearer a construc- tive art of healing, which takes more account of sanitation and hygienic living, and far less account of drugs and poisons —
VACCINATION LEGISLATION. 93
whether taken into the stomach, or introduced directly into the blood through the skin, as in the accursed practice of vaccina- tion. Inoculation has come and gone, taking with it its hun- dreds of thousands of victims. Calomel and bleeding have had their day as well as the good will of the profession, and during that terrible day the sick chamber was a torture chamber — a gloomy and dreadful place ; the doctor's visit the most dread- ful part of the composite calamity. The light of heaven and the free air were excluded ; pure cold water was "sure death !" The life-blood was drained off through the puncture of the lancet; the mouth and throat and stomach were corroded with mineral poisons — and all this was part and parcel of the "healing art" of those days. From the time of Jesus Christ to the present it has been the same. The "woman which had the issue of blood for twelve years, and had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered but rather grew worse," it seems had much the same experience with the doctors which each generation from that time to the present has repeated. Now we have the greater curse of vacci- nation, backed up by the state, and an effort by its promoters to make it compulsory and universal. But with the growing good sense of the medical profession, I apprehend this supersti- tion would have been short-lived, but for the fact that the prac- tice became allied with the modern commercial spirit and an un- scrupulous class of medical men, who forecasted material ad- vantages in an alleged discovery which they warranted as a sure safeguard against a disease in regard to which the public stand in constant dread.
The appointment of municipal boards of sanitation for the enforcement of cleanliness in crowded and filthy quarters is often urged by vaccinators as identical in principle with compul- sory vaccination. I insist that it is nothing of the kind. Vacci- nation is the medical creed of the class, the relative value and the relative peril of which a diversity of opinion exists, both in the
94 VACCINATION A CURSE.
community ami among medical men; while no class or profes- sion believe that any peril is threatened by thorough sanitation. The public are in practical agreement touching its propriety and necessity. Nobody has conscientious scruples against it. No popular revolt ever rose up to fight against it as a common enemy. The liberty of the citizen is not infringed by the most thorough sanitary measures. Nor do we object to isolation and quarantine during the prevalence of small-pox, yellow fever, or cholera. To insist on the identity of these two procedures is an- other instance of "borrowing the robes of an angel to serve the devil in." No, filth and vaccination arc boon companions; they both belong to the devil's order. Sanitation, like the golden rule, belongs to the divine order, which nobody but the devil or the devil's servants will oppose, or otherwise attempt to identify with their own abominable practices.
COMPULSORY VACCINATION IN ENGLAND AND EXTENT OF REPEALS EFFECTED.
Before the repeal of the compulsory clause in the English vaccination acts in England, there was annually paid out of the public funds on account of vaccination, over half a million dol- lars, while the aggregate receipts of private practitioners must have been largely in excess of this ; and well do these gentry un- derstand how to multiply their fees. A few cases of small-pox are reported, and immediately a rumor is started which is taken up by the press, and a small-pox scare is soon spreading terror among the populace. Then the vaccination harvest follows.
As in all reforms, so in this, the laity are the first to aban- don vaccination; for the medical profession has an interest in addition to the pecuniary one. Having once committed itself — save an honorable minority — to vaccination as a beneficent dis- covery and great boon to humanity, and having adhered to this
VACCINATION LEGISLATION. 95
medical creed for the space of a century, it will not do now to show the "white feather ;" not do to "back water," to surrender prestige by a confession that the profession framed a mon- strous fallacy into its medical creed, which would be an imputa- tion of fallibility. No, it is the air and attitude of infallibility that must be uniformly maintained. Keep the purple robe on the medical oracle and insist that he shall stick to a lie when once told. This is better than the modest truth coupled with a con- fession that the College of Physicians made a great mistake when they took Jenner to their bosom and asked Parliament to vote him £30,000.
When compulsory vaccination was urged upon the atten- tion of Parliament (1853) for adoption, the lords and commons were assured that the medical profession were practically unan- imous on two fundamental points in the vaccination contro- versy : —
(1) That vaccination is an absolute protection against small-pox, and therefore that the vaccination of the entire popu- lation would prevent small-pox epidemic.
(2) That universal vaccination involves no risk to life or health ; that the operation is of a benign character and free from peril.
This protection was promised by Lord Lyttleton, the pro- moter of the Vaccination Bill of 1853, upon the unanimous as- surance of the entire medical profession. And when still more stringent legislation was demanded and secured by the doctors in 1867, Lord Robert Montagu, who introduced the bill, re-af- firmed the original promise, and declared it to be absolutely cer- tain that no person after vaccination could thereafter be in dan- ger of an attack from small-pox. Today there is not a director of a small-pox hospital in the civilized world who holds to that extraordinary view of vaccination.
The worst epidemic of the century (1871-72), which rav- aged thoroughly vaccinated communities, causing the death of
g6 VACCINATION A CURSE.
50,000 persons, in England and Wales, gave a most emphatic negative to the assurances of Lord Lyttleton in 1853, and by Lord Montagu in 1867 in behalf of the doctors.
In regard to the second claim, namely, that the operation is "benign and free from peril," we have already seen how abso- lutely untrue it is ; and I promise that I shall in later chapters summon a "cloud of witnesses" to prove the terrible conse- quences which have resulted from the perpetration of this crime, in the name of the law, on the bodies of millions of defenceless victims. There is now om record in the London archives hun- dreds of pages of evidence brought before the Royal Commis- sion, which declares that loathsome and incurable diseases — syphilis, leprosy, cancer, etc. — have been inoculated into healthy persons at the point of the vaccinator's lancet ; and these facts were fully known to the profession when they lobbied to secure more stringent acts for the most complete enforcement of com- pulsory vaccination. The Borgia, in the sixteenth century, were distinguished for their cunning, cruelty, and perfidy. They plotted and poisoned to remove people who were in their way — if it were a pope, it didn't matter — they resorted to cruelty and perfidy to secure the places and livings they coveted. How much better than these will the vaccination plotters stand in the day of judgment?
Compulsory vaccination laws were passed in England in 1853, 1861, 1867, 1871, 1874, and 1878. In 1840 a vaccination act was passed, making inoculation a penal offence, and provid- ing facilities for public vaccination, but the compulsory vaccina- tion was not enforced until 1853, which made neglect of vaccina- tion punishable by fine and imprisonment. The most important act of the whole series, however, was that of 1867, which im- posed upon guardians the duty of seeing that all children were vaccinated ; and empowering them to appoint and pay officers to prosecute, fine and imprison all recalcitrant parents. True, no person in England has ever been vaccinated by main force ;
VACCINATION LEGISLATION. 97
but the repeated fines and imprisonment of the poor for refusal to comply, is equivalent to force, since the punishment inflicted exhausts their entire resources and wears them out. In Ger- many compulsion is applied literally, as any person who objects is held down by four men and vaccinated by force.
Until 1867 no great amount of pressure was brought to bear to compel obedience to compulsory legislation ; but after that date, the doctors having secured a more vigorous law, be- gan to push the vaccinating business with enterprising zeal and persistence. About 25,000 prosecutions were made in the in- terval of five years before 1873. During the six years following, the total number of persons proceeded against under the vacci- nation acts, was 34,286. Of these 136 were committed to prison, 19,482 were fined, 14 were bound over, and 7,354 suffered vari- ous kinds of punishments. The number of prosecutions reached their maximum in 1888, when vaccinations and prosecutions both began to rapidly decline, because boards of guardians were now being confronted with a thoroughly aroused public senti- ment and protest against these outrageous and oft repeated in- sults against personal liberty. A house to house census, taken about this time in a hundred towns and districts by sturdy mem- bers of the opposition — which had now become organized — re- vealed 87 per cent, of the people opposed to compulsory vacci- nation, and 68 per cent, opposed to both state interference and to the vaccine practice.
Among the British colonies, Canada, Queensland, and New South Wales, there has never been any compulsory legislation on vaccination. In New Zealand they have a compulsory law, but public sentiment is decidedly against its enforcement, and therefore it remains practicallly a dead letter. In Tasmania a law was on the statute books for some years, but it has finally been repealed. In Switzerland vaccination was rejected at the referendum by a large majority in 1882. It has also been aban- doned by Holland. In state-ridden Germany the doctors are
98 VACCINATION A CURSE.
backed up by the government on this question ; yet it is signif- icant that the emperor will not permit his own children to be vaccinated. (See Vac. Inq. July, 1892.) At last in England, by the recent vaccination Act (1898), the compulsory feature in the vaccination laws was repealed. So Switzerland and grand old England, after discussing the matter in parliaments for ten or a dozen years, hearing the reports and sub-reports from men having small-pox hospitals in charge, have rescinded the com- pulsory features in their vaccination laws, and have thereby lifted a degrading and oppressive yoke which had fettered and galled the people to the utmost limit of endurance. Don't forget that in republican Switzerland and conservative old England, vaccination is now optional with parents and the people. And yet, be it said to the shame of America, that we still permit this foul blot from the filth pens of barbarism to smear and blacken the uages of our statute books. Shame on the state that legal- izes prize fights, "embalmed beef," cow-pox virus, discourages woman's suffrage, and persecutes the Mormons. Shame on the state that shuts the door of the school room against the child whose parent has sufficient enlightened common sense not to submit that child to the abominable pollution which, like a fanged serpent, strikes the victim from the point of the vaccina- tor's lance ! Indeed, the Garrison's and Philipp's and Parker's have only entered the American vaccination arena to sound the clarion of reform. Not long — not long will the parents of the land permit this brazen marauder to flaunt his legal credentials as a badge of privilege to continue in his merciless slaughter of the innocents !
ORGANIZED ASSAULT AGAINST VACCINATION IN GREAT BRITAIN.
Previous to 1880 the numerous reformers that entered the field to battle against this common enemy, fought single-handed.
VACCINATION LEGISLATION. 99
and though they did much in the way of enlightening the gen- eral public on the real dangers of the vaccine practice, they ac- complished little or nothing toward mitigating the oppressive laws that were in force throughout the kingdom. The effect of the vigorous measures adopted after the great small-pox ep- idemic of 1871-72, called for an organized and more skillfully conducted movement against compulsory legislation. Hence the formation of the "London Society for the Abolition of Compulsory Vaccination." Notices were sent to every known anti-vaccinator in the kingdom, requesting their attendance at a meeting called in London, Feb. 12, 1881. Only eight persons responded to this call. These met in an upper room at 76 Chan- cery Lane. In our Revolutionary war for American Independ- ence, the ball opened with the banding together of seven famous leaders. In this later movement the forces mobilized with one better, — there were eight, but these were scarred veterans who had seen service on many a battle-field. One — Mr. William Tebb — fought by the side of Garrison in our own anti-slavery struggle. This little organization included a chairman, secre- tary, treasurer, and a provisional executive committee. Every- body told them their enterprise was the most insane project that pestilent agitators and lunatics ever attempted to devise. But they were neither daunted nor discouraged, for the spirit of mar- tyrs and the sublime devotion of Apostles was in their hearts and heads. The London journals ridiculed and abused; the doctors warned; the proprietors of public halls closed their doors "for fear of the Scribes and Pharisees." Bill stickers re- fused to post their bills lest they should lose their jobs. The thorny path of the reformer was indeed theirs to traverse ; but the field of their operations gradually widened ; adherents mul- tiplied ; new centers for propaganda were established ; litera- ture was circulated; the "Vaccination Inquirer" was launched, and writers of ability rallied around their standard. The follow- ing year (1881), a new and powerful impulse was given to the
IOO VACCINATION A CURSE.
movement, by the access of P. A. Taylor, S. P., for Leicester, who was made president and became a powerful advocate of the abolition cause. Within two years 300,000 pamphlets had been published and circulated.
Perhaps the most notable event in the history of this organ- ized crusade, was the "Leicester Demonstration." In that city the doctors had overdone the business of coercive vaccination and public prosecutions, until the people rose en masse in open revolt. Upright, well-to-do and patriotic citizens of Leicester had been imprisoned, dragged through the streets hand-cuffed, and subjected to the most degrading punishments, because they stood for the defense of their children against the detested vacci- nator's poison. This public demonstration and popular protest included a procession two miles long. Hundreds of flags and banners with pictorial displays and a comic setting forth of the Jenner imposture, were carried, of which I will here append a sample : —
Entire Repeal and no Compromise.
Sanitation not Vaccination.
From Horse Grease, Cow-pox, Calf Lymph, and the Local Government Board "Good Lord Deliver Us."
Better a felon's cell than a poisoned babe.
Who would be free themselves must strike the blow.
It is not small-pox you are stamping out, but human creat- ures' lives.
Revolt against bad laws is a christian virtue and a national duty. — Wm. Tebb, "Fourteen Years Struggle ," page 8.
The vaccination acts were publicly burned in the market place, in presence of the mayor and other public officials. In the evening there was a large mass meeting and energetic speeches. I have in previous chapters made prominent mention of Leicester, as the foremost city in England which has come to the front, not only in the complete over-throw of the vacci- nation practice, but with the most rational method for stamping
VACC4NATION LEGISLATION. IOI
out small-pox which any crowded population has yet devised; namely, in a thorough system of sanitation, which, though di- minishing doctor's fees to an alarming extent, gives a most sat- isfactory result in an enormous reduction of zymotic diseases over other cities in England. This was one of the practical fruits springing out of the labors of the society which only the year before organized with eight members.
In 1888 and 1889 the labors of the London society were powerfully accelerated by the appearance of two able works against vaccination, by the highest authorities in England — Dr. Creighton and Prof. Crookshank. The former is a distinguished graduate of Cambridge, and at the top of his profession as a pathologist ; while Dr. Crookshank is professor of comparative pathology and bacteriology in Kings College, London. Dr. Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson, in a critical review of Prof. Crook- shank's work, concludes : —
"The work as a whole is one of reference to which the peo- ple, as well as the profession, will often turn. Already, indeed, the people have turned to it, and the so-called anti-vaccinators with a relish of revenge which is quite dramatic to see, have literally grabbed it. To many of them the work, without doubt, affords a vindication of much that has been said against vacci- nation, especially on the point of the evidence adduced by the too earnest advocates of vaccination and the method of enforc- ing it by compulsory law on free and yet sceptical members of the community. Some will feel that this disqualifies the book in a professional point of view. It should not do so. If it be true that we of physic have really, for well-nigh a century past, been worshipping an idol of the market-place, or even of the theatre, why, the sooner we cease our worship and take down our idol, the better for us altogether. We have set up the idol, and the world has lent itself to the idolatry, because we, whom the world has trusted, have set the example. But the world nowadays discovers idolatries on its own account ; and if we continue the idolatry it will simply take its own course, and, leaving us on our knees will march on whilst we petrify."
— Wm. Tebb's Pamphlet, page 10.
102 VACCINATION A CURSE.
Previous to the public appearance of Doctors Creighton and Crookshank in the vaccination controversy, the reformers chiefly depended upon laymen for their literary authority on the vaccination practice ; and these, medical men affected to wholly despise and discredit. In Doctors Creighton and Crookshank however, they found foemen worthy of their steel.
Soon after the appearance of Dr. Creighton's work, Mr. William White, an accomplished literary champion of the anti- vaccination cause, and author of "The Story of a Great Delu- sion," wrote : —
"Lord Wolseley says the first axiom of war is to know everything about your enemy. It is an axiom we ought to real- ize about vaccination. If we are to prevail, it is not sufficient to dislike the practice ; we must dislike it intelligently. On the political side we have some powerful allies ; our weakness has hitherto lain on the medical side. We are told that medical au- thority is against us overwhelmingly, which is true, although we might dispute the grounds of that assertion. There is scarcely an affirmation by any authority relative to vaccination that is not contradicted by some other authority equally author- itative. Such is our position, and the trouble has hitherto been that we could not obtain a hearing for the facts against author- ity. The inconsistencies of the practice and its multiform irra- tionality have been persistently disregarded. A front of brass has been maintained towards the public by the medical pro- fession.
"This situation has been completely changed by Dr. Creighton's exposition and criticism. Upwards of twelve months have elapsed since his 'Natural History of Cow-pox' was published. It has been widely read and indifferently re- viewed, but, so far, not a single statement made in its pages has been impugned. Next, in the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica,' the article 'Vaccination' has been written by Dr. Creighton, wherein he re-states his position as to the origin and character of cow- pox, its irrelevance to small-pox, its consequent impotence as a preventive of that disease, and its close analogy to syphilis.
"Now another work has been published by Dr. Creighton, the title and contents of which are given above, in which he re-
VACCINATION LEGISLATION. IO3
views the history of vaccination, and describes the various arts and manoeuvres whereby it was conjured into popularity in England and the Continent. It is an extraordinary history, full of interest and instruction ; and no attentive reader who takes up Dr. Creighton's volume will lay it down a believer in the Jen- nerian craft."
The following letter by Mr. William Tebb, which appeared in the "Manchester Guardian," shows the general situation in 1892: —
"Sir. — The importance of the unanimous recommenda- tions of the Royal Commission in their recent interim report, the promise of the government to consider the weight of evi- dence upon which this recommendation was made, and the no- tice given by Lord Herschell to call attention to the subject at an early day, prompt me to ask permission to present certain considerations which, in view of the present state of the ques- tion, can hardly be disregarded at this juncture. When Lord Lyttleton introduced the first Vaccination Bill, in 1853, ne stated that the absolute protection from small-pox by Jenner's prescription was a point upon which the entire profession were agreed. Nothing was said about a temporary benefit which needed renewing by re-vaccination or was effective only when conjoined with improved sanitation. Nor was there any allu- sion to the risk of disease and death now admittedly attendant upon the operation. The evidence disclosed before the Royal Commission shows that vaccination has been a failure from its commencement, and this failure, coupled with the mischievous results of the practice in spreading serious diseases, has caused a widespread and constantly augmenting opposition to the law. The feeling is so acute in places like Keighley, Gloucester, East- bourne, Leicester, Oldham, and other towns, that thousands of intelligent people declare they would suffer any punishment rather than expose their children to the perils of vaccination. A large majority of the people of England (including nearly all the working classes), are opposed to compulsory vaccination, as I have found by personal inquiries in every part of the United Kingdom. Household censuses made in about 100 towns and districts show that 87 per cent, are opposed to compulsion and that 68 per cent, have no faith in vaccination whatever.
104 VACCINATION A CURSE.
"It is unfortunate that the evidence laid before the Royal Commission on vaccination should have been given with closed doors, no newspaper reporter being allowed to be present, so that the public are still uninformed of the extent to which vacci- nation has been discredited. On numerous occasions when the houses of vaccine recalcitrants have been stripped of furniture, or when anti-vaccinators have been handcuffed and sent to prison, large bodies of exasperated citizens have assembled and the public peace has been endangered. I have been told again and again by the more ardent spirits of this prolonged struggle, especially by those who have suffered numerous prosecutions or had their children injured by vaccination, that unless they re- sorted to violence they would never get the law repealed. I have unfailingly counselled the use only of active but legitimate means of agitation, and begged them not to disgrace the cause by overt acts, inasmuch as by the exercise of patience and devo- tion we should be sure to win, the best forces of society being with us. There is a limit to this forbearance, which will not, like Tennyson's brook, 'go on forever,' and the patience of the long-suffering people is already well-nigh exhausted. If new legislation is enacted, as recommended by the Royal Commis- sion, and compulsion is continued even to the extent of one penalty, and that a nominal one, the government will be sub- jected to daily defeat and defiance. In the interests of public order, a modus vivendi should be established, as with the Quak- ers, Nonconformists, Catholics, Jews, and infidels. — Yours, etc.,
WILLIAM TEBB. Devonshire Club, St. James's, London, June 9, 1892.
Four years before the object of the London Society was consummated, in the midst of the heat and struggle for emanci- pation from the vaccination tyranny, Wm. Tebb penned the fol- lowing temperate but earnest words : —
"I would specially take this opportunity to call upon all boards of guardians, in the exercise of that discretion which the law gives them, to abstain from prosecution which inflames pop- ular passions and creates an acute sense of injustice. I would also urgently appeal to our fellow countrymen and country wo- men who cherish liberty, to countenance and aid us in this right- eous struggle for parental emancipation. I would respectfully
VACCINATION LEGISLATION. I05
invite the press throughout the land to give wide publicity to the resolution of the London Society, exposing the unfair treat- ment we have received at the hands of the Royal Commission."
It is generally conceded to the meanest and most wicked criminal, that he has some redeeming feature ; that he is not wholly and hopelessly depraved. This much too, we may con- cede to the Royal Commission, which though appointed and in- structed to ascertain and report the facts upon the whole vacci- nation controversy, was nevertheless privately acting in the in- terest of a vaccination clique — a combination of vaccine promot- ers— apparently determined that the vaccination interests should "pass muster." It was not the people of England, but the vaccine syndicate whom the commission evidently regarded as their real clients, and whom they were bound in honor to vindicate at all hazards.
In their interim report the commission recommended the exemption from compulsion of the "conscientious objector." They did this, however, because the popular clamor had reached the danger point, and because the House of Commons had come to recognize the practical impossibility of forcing English peo- ple to obey a law which they practically regarded as committing them to a species of self-destruction. After forty-six years of compulsory vaccination over one-half of the 270 boards of guardians were declining to put the Act in operation on ac- count of the vigorous nature of the popular revolt. Not only this, but boards of guardians were being elected all over the kingdom on the express ground that they pledged themselves not to enforce the act. Every effort has been made to force the boards to make the vaccination laws operative, but to little pur- pose. The board in Keighley, in Yorkshire, was sent to prison, but they had to be let out, and the local government board found that as long as representative government was left the
106 VACCINATION A CURSE.
people, they could not be ruthlessly trodden upon until hope- lessly deprived of personal liberty.
But why this stubborn persistence on the part of the gov- ernment, in cramming vaccination down the throats of a long- suffering and unwilling people ? Answer : A corrupt ring of medical gentlemen had lobbied a measure through Parliament, and by false promises secured a compulsory law, which their pecuniary and professional interests required should be vigor- ously enforced ; and the government was constantly reminded that it was expected to faithfully perform its part of the agree- ment with the doctors ; which it did until it found it had a thor- oughly aroused and indignant public sentiment to reckon with. This is certainly the most rational explanation which the case will admit of.
The main feature of the Vaccination Act of 1898 is the "conscience clause" — properly the common sense clause : —
"(Sec. 6). No parent or other person shall be liable to any penalty under section twenty-nine or section thirty-one of the Vaccination Act of 1867, if within four months of the birth of the child he satisfies two justices or a stipendiary or metropol- itan police magistrate, in petty sessions, that he conscientiously believes that vaccination would be prejudicial to the health of the child, and within seven clays thereafter, delivers to the vacci- nation officer for the district, a certificate by such justices or magistrate of such conscientious objection."
In all other regards vaccination is still compulsory in Eng- land. The dissentient can avoid arrest, fines and imprisonment only by working the "conscience racket," which he will probably not be slow in doing since only vaccination promoters and the uninformed portion of the community have any interest to con- tinue their connection with the business firm at the "old stand."
VACCINATION LEGISLATION. IC>7
REVOLT AGAINST COMPULSORY VACCINATION
IN INDIA.
The report of the working of the vaccination department in Bengal for 1872, the commissioner says the compulsory law in the rural districts is practically a dead letter. Vaccination is rejected by all high class Hindoos — the Brahmins, Burmahs, Rajputs, and Marwaries ; while among the Mohammedans, the Ferazis hold the rite in the utmost contempt. Nearly every vil- lage— according to the commissioner's report — many families persistently refuse vaccination, and secrete their children to es- cape the vaccinators.
In order to overcome these prejudices, advantage was taken of the Hindoo's known reverence for their ancient sages and philosophers, by palming off upon them deliberate literary frauds. A Mr. Ellis, of Madras, well versed in Sanscrit litera- ture, composed a short poem in the native's language on vacci- nation, tracing the origin of vaccine pus to their sacred cow. This he professed to have deciphered from very ancient parch- ments. In Bengal, similar attempts were made to deceive the inhabitants. Some very ancient leaves were purported to have been found, containing a chapter on "Masurica," or chicken- pox. The doctors quoted the following words, which they al- leged were contained in the ancient Sanscrit, on these musty parchments : —
"Taking the matter of pustules, which are naturally pro- duced on the teats of cows, carefully preserve it, and, before the breaking out of small-pox, make with a fine instrument a small puncture (like that made by a gnat) in a child's limb, and intro- duce into the blood as much of the matter as is measured by a quarter of a ratti. Thus the wise physician renders the child secure from the eruption of the small-pox."
— See "Life of Jenner," by Bazon, Vol. I, page 557.
108 VACCINATION A CURSE.
Think of it — forgery — the actual forgery of manuscripts to keep the Hindoo mind chained to the blood-poisoning Moloch, vaccination. What could be more infamous?
It is much like the practice imputed to the church in gener- ations long gone by ; namely, that it is right and proper to lie and deceive when the interests of the church could thereby be enhanced. At any rate, the vaccination-business syndicate is up to that sort of thing, not seeming to recognize even a remote connection between corporation-conscience and Sunday ser- vice. In India, it can be shown that this species of deception has been practiced on a large scale. Not only this, and notwith- standing the multiplied proofs that vaccination in that country, is not only a complete failure as a prophylactic against small- pox, but a cruel injustice to the native population. Yet there are plenty of English doctors continually plotting to extend co- ercive legislation and increase the penalties for non-compliance with the law. When the Vaccination Bill of 1892 was before the Bombay legislative council, to make vaccination compulsory in certain additional districts, a native Brahmin asked for an amendment, and pointed out the clanger of transmitting leprosy and syphilis by means of arm-to-arm vaccination, and then read before that body a letter from a Brahmin physician — Dr. Baha- durjee — in which he writes: —
"In answer to your letter in which you ask me my personal opinion on the arm-to-arm vaccination method, which it is in- tended to be enforced by the new Vaccination Bill, I have no hesitation in saying that, besides it being not suited to the pe- culiar conditions which obtain in this country, on professional grounds the method is objectionable, and for these reasons : —
1. Arm-to-arm vaccination obviously acts as a channel for the transference of some skin diseases, and affords a ready means for propagating such inherited constitutional taints as those of syphilis and leprosy. No doubt, special rules, with full details, will be framed for the guidance of the operators in their selec- tion of proper subjects, with a view to avoid those mishaps; but
VACCINATION LEGISLATION. log
having regard to the class of men from whom the supply of dis- trict vaccinators is to be obtained, the detailed rules will be of as much use to them as the paper on which they were printed
! I . Syphilitic taint does not necessarily show itself in ill-health at the early age at which vaccination is practiced and demanded by law. A child may be in fair health, and yet have inherited syphilis. Moreover, syphilis does not stamp itself on the face and arms, so much as on the back and legs — parts not generally examined by the vaccinator, and thus apt to be overlooked. Only yesterday I was asked to see a case of skin disease in a child. On stripping the child bare, I found him fairly healthy to look at, and could see no skin blemish on his person. But closer examination of the hidden parts revealed the presence of unmistakable condylomata (syphilitic). These condylomata unnoticed, I should have passed the child as a very fair speci- men of average health, and a fit subject to take the lymph from. Syphilis, as betrayed in obtrusive signs, is not difficult to recog- nize, but when concealed, as is more often the case, it is by no means easy to detect it.
III. In the case of leprosy it is still worse. There is no such thing as a leper child or infant. The leper heir does not put on its inherited exterior till youth is reached. And it is by no means possible by any close observa- tion or examination of a child to say that it is free from the leprous taint. Surely arm-to-arm vaccination will not help to stamp out leprosy. On the contrary, it has been asserted, and not without good reasons, that it has favored the propagation of the hideous disease.
IV. It is acknowledged that extreme care is re- quired in taking out lymph from the vesicles to avoid drawing any blood, for blood contains the germs of disease. Ex- treme care means great delicacy of manipulation, and delicacy of manipulation with children is not an easy task, and requires some experience and training. Is this to be expected from the class of men who are going to act as public vaccinators in the districts ? Supposing a district vaccinator to acquire it to some extent after considerable practice, what about the delicacy of manipulation of one newly put on ?
V. Puncturing a vesicle with such delicacy as not to wound its floor and draw blood is one great dif-
IIO VACCINATION A CURSE.
ficulty. But the selection of a 'proper' vesicle is an- other as great if not a greater difficulty. Products of inflamma- tion are charged with the germs of disease, the contagion of contamination media, as much as the blood itself is. And the contents of an inflamed vesicle are quite as contaminating as the blood itself of a subject who, though charged with the poi- son of (inherited) syphilis or leprosy, has ^none of the obtrusive signs of the taint for identification. And as here inflamed, i. e., angry-looking vesicles are not the exception but the rule, as can be easily told by personal observation and experience and equally easily surmised if the habits of our poor be duly con- sidered. Thus, even if no blood is drawn, the danger of trans- ferring constitutional taints by the arm-to-arm method is by no means small ; remembering that leprosy that claims India, and not England, for one of its homes, does not admit of any detec- tion on the person of a subject from whose arm lymph may be taken, and that syphilis is more often difficult to detect than otherwise, and remembering, also, that both these are often met with largely in some districts."
— "Leprosy and Vaccination," Win. Tebb, page 355.
In nearly every village in India arrests and imprisonments for evading vaccination are of daily occurrence. Of this I speak from personal knowledge having witnessed the fact during my several visits to India and Ceylon. There are numerous fami- lies who if they fail to keep their offspring out of reach of the detested vacinator, after his departure they employ every means to wash and rub out the vaccine poison ; suck it out, cauterize the wound, and treat it much as we should a rattlesnake bite, or the bite of a mad dog. In a future chapter I shall return to the case of India again.
VACCINATION IN THE WEST INDIES.
On the Island Barbados, with a population of 1,096 to the square mile, there is no compulsory vaccination. The popular feeling in the island is so vigorously emphatic against vaccina- tion, that its advocates are afraid to move in the matter, and any
VACCINATION LEGISLATION. Ill
attempt to enforce it would undoubtedly create a riot. William Tebb, who made the tour of the island in 1888, interrogated all classes upon this question and he writes : —
"From the chief justice, Sir Conrad Reeves, to the poorest boatman or sugar plantation laborer, from one end of the island to the other, I failed to discover a single advocate of compulsion. Let those have it who want it, but don't force it upon me and mine, was the general straightforward reply."
Yet epidemics are less frequent in this island than in the well vaccinated islands of Jamaica, Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Hayti. Another reason why they have kept compulsory vacci- nation at bay, is that they have representation in the govern- ment of the island.
In Grenada, another island under English rule, the people being less proud and independent, compulsion is enforced with a rigor which amounts to cruelty, and as might be expected, small-pox frequently occurrs.
The following is from a local paper, "The Grenada People," June 9, 1892 : —
"During this week, upwards of thirty or forty of the peas- ants have been hauled before the police magistrate of the southern district for alleged violation of the vaccination act. In nearly every case fines of half-a-crown have been imposed, rep- resenting almost half of the week's wages which these unfor- tunates, if they are employed, can hope to earn. In face of the Royal Commission on Vaccination, we do not see why the old law, making vaccination compulsory should be still enforced. At most, it is of doubtful benefit ; and doctors differ as to the posi- tive good or injury which it does. The advocates of Jenner's specific can quote very few cases, if any, in its support ; whilst its opponents point with force and truth to the positive injury it has inflicted. Here, in Grenada, pure lymph is seldom employed. As a consequence, many of the children submitted to the pro- cess of vaccination contract therefrom fatal diseases. The lymph, in many cases, is collected from children inheriting a taint of the scrofulous disease which prevails amongst the peas- antry ; and many an otherwise healthy child, after the process
112 VACCINATION A CURSE.
of vaccination, presents the appearance of a disgustingly yaw- sey patient. As eminent medical men differ as to the value and utility of vaccination, we think it ought not to be made an of- fence punishable by fine or imprisonment if parents refuse to vaccinate their children ; but that the law should be amended in the direction suggested by the Royal Commission in their re- cent report, i. e., it should be optional with the parent whether the child should be vaccinated or not."
ON THE CONTINENT.
Among the Latin populations — France, Austria, Italy, and Spain — where personal liberty is taken far less account of than among Anglo-Saxon peoples, the government has far less trouble in carrying out compulsory legislation. In France it has not generally been as rigorously enforced as in England. The higher thinking classes generally opposed it ; but new reg- ulations are coming into force which makes vaccination a neces- sary preliminary for admission into the public schools and into the army. In Italy the vaccination laws are extremely stringent and yet they are yearly meeting with stronger opposition. The authorities are disposed to attribute the spread of small-pox in all cases to the existence of a small percentage of vaccinated persons; and this in faee of the fact that large sections of the Italian population live in the midst of notoriously filthy condi- tions. There are many eminent medical men in Italy, nowever, who view this whole subject from the most enlightened stand- point; and if once the commercial element could be eliminated from the vaccination practice, it would take but a short time to consign the superstition — so far as legislation is concerned — to the under-world where eighteenth century inoculation has gone.
In Holland. Switzerland, Belgium, Norway and Sweden, no soldier is now compelled to be vaccinated. In Switzerland, t lie terrible effects which followed many cases of vaccination caused
"Vaccination is the Curse of Childhood.'7
JOHN PFAENDER.
(See Page 113.)
VACCINATION LEGISLATION. II3
the people to rise in their majesty and overthrow the compul- sory vaccination system. Here is one from a large number of Swiss cases where vaccination published its own repulsive char- acteristics. I subjoin a reprint from a monthly journal of health — Terre Haute, Indiana.
VACCINATION IS THE CURSE OF CHILDHOOD.
"John Pfaender, child of healthy Swiss parents, born Sep- tember 23, 1875, was sturdy, beautiful, and healthy until vacci- nated, June 16, 1876, by the official vaccinator. Eight days later his feet began to swell, abscesses formed, his teeth began to rot, his glands to swell and fistulous sores appeared on his hands and feet. The foregoing photograph was taken in May, 1882. He could neither walk, nor stand. Several of the bones of his hands had rotted out.
"It was such cases as this that led the Swiss people to over- throw the infamous system of blood poisoning, yclepted vacci- nation, which a medical clique was seeking longer to impose upon them. Since its rejection, not only has there been less small-pox, but the general death rate is the lowest in Europe. There are thousands of such cases in this doctor-ridden land. It is time the American people should know the truth in all its hideousness. Surely the spirit of freedom, the good sense and parental affection will soon arise and banish forever this mur- derous outrage and insiduous cause of so much disease and death."
AUSTRALIA.
New South Wales has but a very small per cent, of vacci- nated persons. This fact I fully established during my several visits to this country — and yet small-pox has been literally stamped out by adopting a vigorous policy of isolating small- pox patients and by thorough sanitation in urban districts. Sir' Richard Thorne, in his testimony before the Royal Commission,.
114 VACCINATION A CURSE.
said : "The evidence is so abundant that I could keep you for hours in telling of cases in which epidemics have evidently been prevented by cleanliness and the isolation of the first cases." Sir Richard speaks of twelve different occasions where the disease did not spread beyond the house originally attacked.
COMPULSORY VACCINATION IN UNITED STATES.
In nearly all, if not in every state of our American union, compulsory vaccination laws have been enacted, but in nine- tenths of these states the law is a dead letter on account of the extreme difficulty of enforcing it. The thinking, reasoning masses are strongly opposed to it and this opposition is becom- ing an army. Occasionally boards of health in municipalities are instructed to enforce the law. Then for a time the schools are closed against all children whose parents positively refuse to expose them to this public enemy — this serpent that stings and scars. A hot contest immediately succeeds ; mass meetings of indignant citizens are held and anti-vaccination leagues are or- ganized ; a test case is carried to the higher courts, and in the long run, when the fight is maintained with vigor and unyielding persistence the law is decided to be unconstitutional — as in the celebrated case from Geneseo, 111., — and the doors of the school- room are again opened to children who have been cruelly de- prived of at least one entire term of school privileges. And for what ? That a hungry hoard of second-class, scrub doctors may compel every householder in the land to pay tribute for a public commodity upon which the devil (personified meanness of the vaccine syndicate) has put his stamp. How much longer — oh, how much longer, I ask will the American voter tolerate this infamous travesty of justice, this flagrant outrage upon his per- sonal rights. The American's house is his castle and no doctor
VACCINATION LEGISLATION. II5
with poisoned lancet has a right to cross the threshold of his door and poison and scar his children.
Usually from one to two new-school doctors, or psychic physicians, in a municipality, head the agitation for reform. The balance go with the Scribes and Pharisees and affect to sneer at and despise the dissentients as a crazy lot of agitators, "who make a great ado about a perfectly harmless operation which injures nobody, but is a wholesome precaution against a com- mon danger." Bourbons learn nothing. They are stupidly con- servative. While the rank and file, go the easy way; and not until the danger becomes painfully apparent with swollen arms, ulcerous sores and perhaps death in their own households, do they consider the question of vaccination of sufficient import- ance to engage their serious attention. True, no one is vacci- nated by physical force in this country as they are in some parts of Germany, but exclusion of children from public schools and of grown persons from government employ are unjust and il- legal, constituting an oppressive meanness which American citizens will not continue to tolerate when they come to fully re- alize the true danger and degradation of the situation.
A decision of the supreme court of the state of New York in June, 1874, deprived the health commissioners of the powers which they had previously claimed to enforce vaccination and re- vaccination of adults. The attempt to compel free-born citizens of a representative commonwealth to submit to vaccination on the pretence that it is the "greatest good to the greatest num- ber," when their common sense and higher intelligence not only rejects its prophylactic value, but when their souls likewise abhor the vile intruder as a hundred times more to be dreaded' than small- pox — the attempt to coerce, I repeat — will ere long meet with such an angry, if not violent, protest that every compulsory act will be swept from statute books, else I fail to interpret
Il6 VACCINATION A CURSE.
rightly the quality and rigid energy of our Americanized, Anglo Saxon genius.
Humanity constitutes a brotherhood and what affects one sympathetically affects the whole. Two classes in the United States particularly suffer in consequence of our outrageously unjust vaccination legislation — namely, the poor man and child, and the emigrant who lands at Castle Garden to make his home in this widely proclaimed, the land of the free. "Be vaccinated or be returned in the next census as among the illiterate," we say to every poor man's child. And the public vaccinator — who has become nothing less than a scourge in the land — would have the state keep those innocent children in illiteracy until the parents consent to hand them over to them to be punctured and poisoned at $1.00 a head. "Be re-vacinated or stay out," we say to every emigrant who proposes to adopt an American citizen- ship. Here are a few instances of the practical working of our vaccination laws as they relate to emigrants : —
A German physician left Bremen on the steamer Nekar — Lloyd line — in November, 1882. Besides no cabin passengers there were nearly eight hundred in the steerage. This physi- cian writes : —
"The United States law provides that every emigrant with- out regard to age or physical condition, shall be vaccinated within twenty-four hours after leaving the foreign port. Many of those on board were exceedingly ill, and to anyone who has ever suffered the pains and pangs of "seasickness" it will be ap- parent that that was not a favorable nor a proper time for vacci- nation, but it must be done, for the law is clear and peremptory; there is no evading it, for on our arrival in Xew York, all those who cannot show a certificate from the ship's surgeon are con- signed to Blackwell's Is'and.
"During the three days following our departure from Bre- men, vaccination was the order of the day in the steerage. I was enticed thither by curiosity, and what I there saw was sug- gestive, to say the least, to me. and may be of interest to you. The surgeon sat on a box in the storeroom, lancet in hand, and
VACCINATION LEGISLATION. 117
around him were huddled as many as could be crowded into the confined space, old and young, children screaming, women cry- ing; each with an arm bare and a woe-begone face, and all la- menting the day they turned their steps toward 'land of the free.' The lymph used was of unknown origin, kept in capillary glass tubes, from whence it was blown into a cup into which the lancet was dipped. No pretence of cleaning the lancet was made : it drew blood in very many instances, and it was used upon as many as 276 during the first day. I inquired of the sur- geon if he had no fear of inoculating disase, or whether he ex- amined as to health or disease before vaccinating. He replied that he could not stop for that, besides, no choice in the matter was left with him. Ttoe law demanded the vaccination of each and every one, and he must comply with it or be subjected to a fine. I thought it a pitiful sight, and am persuaded that could the gentlemen through whose instrumentality the law was en- acted, see what I saw of the manner in which it was carried into effect, they would be as zealous in seeking its repeal. As con- ducted, the law is an outrage, and no one can estimate the num- ber of helpless, innocent children, as well as adults, who are in- oculated with syphilis or other foul disease, on every ship bring- ing steerage passengers to our shores." — G. H. Merkel, M. D., in the "Massachusetts Medical Journal," November, 1882.
The following extracts from a graphic letter by a scholarly layman, describes the painful treatment to which emigrants are subjected: —
Brooklyn, New York, May 7, 1883.
Dear Sir : — I found the vaccination tyranny much more than sentiment on board the Adriatic. Aboardship, as every- where, it has attained terrible proportions, which makes it prob- able that in the near future it will become the Great Terror that shall 'cause that as many as will not worship the image of the beast shall be killed,' and that 'no man may buy or sell save he that has the mark of the beast.' *********
"One morning it was rumored that the doctor was coming to examine the passengers, and I went with two friends to the surgeon to state our objections. I told him that as we had been vaccinated, if that fact would let us pass without further trouble, we could satisfy him ; but if not, vaccinated we would never be.
Il8 VACCINATION" A CURSE.
Like most doctors, he was without capacity to understand our conscientious objections, and the degradation involved in sub- mission to the rite. He curtly told us the law was not his ; it was United States law. He should come forward at two o'clock and if we showed him that we had been vaccinated he would give us a certificate, and if not. he would vaccinate us if we chose ; if not, we must take the risk of passing the doctor at the port. It mattered nothing to him. ********
"By and by came the doctor in his gold-laced cap. with his bottle of 'lymph.' pure from the sores of children or heifer's but- tock, and commenced operations. First a rope was stretched efrom a post, and held by two stewards in a horseshoe form, and into this enclosure passed, one by one, the victims of an insane medical legislation, and bared their arms to the Medical Igno- ramus, who stood on the other side. If he there saw the ortho- dox scars, he forthwith bestowed a ticket like this: —
White Star Line.
S. S.
'Adriatic'
VACC
C. S. Murray.
Surgeon.
14th April. 1SS3.
Which further had this
exhortat PASS.
ion on the back : —
Keep this card to avoid detention
at quarantine,
and on
railroad in the
L'nited States
'"There was nothing in common among them save their degradation, and. as I thought, the most degraded of the lot was the vaccinator. How a man with any sense of decency and the congruity of things, could for mere pay consent to the folly that the individuals of such a heterogeneous crowd were all alike liable to small-pox, and were all alike saved by his per- formance, passes my understanding. It is hard to believe in a
VACCINATION LEGISLATION. Iig
man's sincerity in view of such absurdity; and yet he may be sincere. When a lie is taught, and still more when a lie is prac- ticed, it confounds the intellect, and is ultimately taken for the truth of truth. Yours truly,
F. SCRIMSHAW.
In the issue of the New York Tribune, March 18, 1884, is a significant editorial of the "Cow and Hog Doctor" trying to work up a panic among the farmers when some sickness ap- pears among their live stock. These editorial comments apply so exactly to the vaccination doctors that a paragraph will be appropriate here.
"Whence, then, all this noisy affirmation? It emanates from a few persons already in government employ and naturally anxious to enlarge and perpetuate their easy places. Every slight local sickness is magnified and telegraphed over the whole land, as was the case the other day in Columbia county, N. Y. The alarmists are thoroughly organized ; they have been work- ing toward this one end half a dozen years, and it is proverbial that Plea is much more active than Protest."
Certain doctors in San Diego, Cal., headed by one preten- tious Jones endeavored to get up a small-pox scare by starting the report : "Small-pox is spreading with alarming rapidity in Los Angeles and we shall have hundreds of cases here in a few weeks unless the city is thoroughly vaccinated." The cry spread, lancets were unsheathed, and doctors' pockets were filled. I re- peat, if it were possible to eliminate the commercial feature from the vaccination enterprise, this pathetic solicitude, on the part of the dear doctor to guard the public against the alleged danger of small-pox epidemic, would soon be found drooping.
"A SMALL-POX SCARE PROBABLE."
"Compulsory vaccination has been knocked out for the time being in Duluth, and we know that most of the really progres- sive and up-to-date physicians hope that it is knocked out for all time, but not so with the vaccination doctors, who made all the way from five to fifteen dollars a day in the way of vaccination fees during the last three weeks. It is estimated that the recent
120 VACCINATION A CURSE.
bulldozing scheme only brought about one-fourth of the chil- dren for vaccination after all, and the professional vaccinators wish as many of the other three-fourths scared into camp at no distant day, as possible. So, look out for another small-pox scare during the coming winter." — Duluth (Minn.) Tribunal.
A judge of the circuit court of Milwaukee recently decided that compulsory vaccination of children by order of the board of education as a preliminary to their admission to the public schools of Wisconsin, was unconstitutional. The circuit courts in several other states have rendered similar decisions.
But the noble state of Illinois has given the hardest blow to compulsory legislation which has yet come under my observa- tion. Thanks to the pluck and persistent fighting qualities on moral grounds of a single man. A test case was brought from Geneseo in which George Lawbraugh was the plaintiff. Five years ago the board cf education of that town issued their man- date, that all unvaccinated children after a certain period would be excluded from the public schools. Mr. Lawbraugh had a little girl whom he proposed should remain in school, which as a citizen owning real estate, he had paid his lawful tax to sup- port. He also proposed that his daughter should not be pol- luted with the vaccinator's lance and poison pus. He had al- ready lost a little boy from the effects of vaccination and he de- clared in terms most positive that his remaining child should not take a similar risk; and yet, she was peremptorily excluded from the school. Upon Mr. Lawbraugh's representation the state superintendent of schools advised the board of Geneseo not to enforce their mandate against this little innocent girl ; but the doctors standing shoulder to shoulder behind the board, the board stood by their mandate. Then Mr. Lawbraugh brought an action in the circuit court on two grounds :
(i). That compulsory vaccination was unconstitutional.
(2). That it was dangerous to the health of the rising gen- erations.
That court decided against Mr. Lawbraugh. He then car- ried the case up to the appellate court and again lost it. Brave, honest, cultured, and true to principle, he then carried his case to the state supreme court, where, after a patient hearing, that august body rendered a sweeping decision for the plaintiff — a decision which declared the vaccination act unconstitutional.
VACCINATION LEGISLATION. 121
This moral contest upon the part of Mr. Lawbraugh was not only noble and commendable, but it has likewise established a precedent in this country by which hundreds and thousands of children will escape the wicked work of the detestable enemies of our rising generation. It is indeed a sad commentary on the form of society under which we live, that human interests in- stead of being mentally helpful, morally up-lifting, and produc- tive of brotherhood, are largely destructive and antagonistic to health and happiness. Each class thrives, or strives to thrive, at the expense of every other class, warring not only against its rivals in the same field of activity but likewise against the com- mon social integrity.
The corner-stone of modern society is self-interest and in its service we do not identify our brother's interests with our own, but rather sacrifice that brother that our own selfish self- interest may the better thrive. It has been too often and too truly said, that the interest of the lawyer is prompted by quar- rels ; that of the priest by ignorance, superstition, and creeds ; the dividends of corporations by the helpless dependence and impoverishment of the masses ; and finally that the self-interest of the doctor depends upon a sort of composite degeneration and degradation, ignorance, dirt, disease, dependence, and trans- mitted superstition. Thus we have a "brotherhood of thieves," for each of the four cardinal points of the compass. How is it possible then for the masses to rise and throw off this and that incubus when all institutions are framed with a special reference to plunder and despoilation manipulated by politicians ?
Nevertheless, it must needs be in this preliminary state of unfoldment, "that offences will come ;" but great and good men — men full of faith, the mean- time, will hail the faintest token of the approach of the normal order in which there will be no bitter war among the members, but each will contribute to the up-building and moral integrity of the whole, while the whole will exercise more than a mother's care for the nourishment and protection of each member. Good men will hail the approach of that order in which the lawyer, unless peradventure their breed will have become extinct — will have no quarrels to promote or prolong; wherein the priest will give love for love and service for ser- vice, instead of preaching the obsolete dogmas of a petrified
122 VACCINATION A CURSE.
Calvinist creed for five thousand dollars a year ; an order in which corporate interests will include the whole people and where commerce will bestow its unstinted blessings upon every member of the commonwealth ; aye, an order in which the phy- sician, a physician, indeed, from whose ranks the blood-poison- ing vaccinator shall have disappeared ; an order in which the doctor will become the chief educator, a welcome guest in every household ; a friend whom the youth and maiden can counsel with and confidingly trust, who will rejoice in the public health and the private health of both soul and body, and from whose abundant personality will radiate and How forth the same quality of health and life and joy which made the Christ dear to his disciples. Jesus healed both soul and body. This is the work of the true physician.
SUMMARY OF VACCINATION ACTS, OF ENGLAND, CONSIDERED.
1840. To extend the practice of vaccination.
1 841. To amend the vaccination act. 1853. Vaccination made compulsory. 1861. To facilitate prosecutions.
1867. To consolidate and amend the acts.
1871. To amend and more vigorously enforce the act.
1874. To explain the act of 1871.
1898. To insert the "Conscience Clause."
CHAPTER V.
LOCAL CONTESTS ON THE VACCINATION QUES- TION.
"I can sympathize with, and even applaud a father who, with the presumed dread in his mind, is willing to submit to ju- dicial penalties rather than expose his child to the risk of an in- fection so ghastly as vaccination." — Sir Thomas Watson, M. D., London.
Although the courts in many states have decided that boards of health or education cannot compel school children to be vaccinated, there is nevertheless a general and a vigorous move of late by these same boards to enforce compulsory legis- lation on the subject. These "boards" pretend to be acting in the interests of humanity and of the public health. Similar pub- lic interests were near and dear to the hearts of the Spanish In- quisitors, who drove the Huguenots out of France and burned scores of thousands at the stake on account of their "mischiev- ous" opinions. No, the intelligent portion of the American peo- ple have at last taken the true measure of such physicians as wield the lancet and the poisoning, putrifying calf pus. As doc- tors they are behind the age in their profession ; as business men they will pocket fees, though their professional edicts turn every poor man's child out of the public school. I ask, how much longer are intelligent Americans going to submit to this
124
VACCINATION A CURSE.
infamy? How much longer will they permit an unscrupulous class to victimize their children and defraud them of their birth- right for the sake of putting shekels in their pockets ? These health boards and examining boards be it remembered, have only in rare instances been asked for by the people. They are part and parcel of the vaccinating business firm, who instead of teaching sanitation and cleaning up centers of pollution where zymotics originate, enforce upon a long suffering populace a vile and discredited commercial commodity. As we always have the "poor" with us, so likewise the body politic is weighted down with a surplus of doctors turned loose from the medical colleges every year to prey upon society, not one-half of whom have the slightest genius for physic, and ought by all means to have kept their place in the ranks of the "Alan with the hoe." Not able to get a living in the field of legitimate medical prac- tice, they become "shysters" of the noble profession, secure ap- pointments cm boards of health, corrupt legislatures, get up small-pox panics, and saddle the public with fees for services which are curses and nothing else.
Doctors must be supported, aye, right royally supported. Vaccination and compulsory laws are what they have found to be a superb thing. The public welfare — it is a hypocritical pre- tence ! Some of them would consign every child in the com- munity to an incurable disease, or slam the door of the school room in their faces, for the sake of the profit their lymph-poi- soning practice affords them. The public health is the least and last thing that concerns many of them. The compulsory law was not gotten up to make people more healthy, nor to pre- vent disease. If it had been, its promoters would manifest some solicitude regarding the real causes which every well informed person knows are the principal sources of all the zymotic dis- eases in this country, in the poor and crowded quarters of all large cities. These the vaccinators, like the Levite, pass by.
LOCAL CONTESTS. 125
Read the fearful arraignment of the distinguished Dr. A. M. Ross, of Toronto : —
"In March, 1885, my attention was aroused by a report that several cases of small-pox existed in the east end of Montreal. Knowing something of the filthy condition of certain localities, I made a careful sanitary survey of all that part of the city east of St. Lawrence street, and southwest of McGill and St. An- toine streets. What I saw I will attempt to describe — what I smelt cannot be described ! I found ten thousand seven hun- dred cesspits reeking with rottenness and unmentionable filth ; many of these pest-holes had not been emptied for years ; the accumulated filth was left to poison the air of the city and make it the seed-bed of the germs of zymotic diseases. Further, I found the courts, alleys, and lanes in as bad a condition as they possibly could be — decaying animal and vegetable matter abounded on all sides. Everywhere unsightly and offensive ob- jects met the eye, and abominable smells proved the existence of disease-engendering matter, which supplied the very condition necessary for the incubation, nouiishment and growth of small- pox.
"Knowing well the fearful consequences that would result from the presence of such a mass of filth in such a densely popu- lated part of the city, I gave the widest publicity to the subject, hoping thereby to rouse the municipal authorities to a proper appreciation of the danger that menaced the health of the city. But I was an alarmist ; my advice went unheeded and the filth remained as a nest for the nourishment of small-pox, which grew in strength and virulence rapidly, until it swept into un- timely graves, from the very localities I have mentioned, thirty- four hundred persons! — victims of municipal neglect. Instead of removing the filth and putting the city in a thoroughly clean, defensive condition by the enforcement of wise sanitary regula- tions and the adoption of a rigid system of isolation of small- pox patients, the authorities were led by the medical profession to set up the fetish of vaccination and proclaim its protective virtues, through the columns of an ignorant, tyrannical and time-serving press. Day after day the glaring, snaring head- lines of 'Vaccinate ! vaccinate!' 'Alarm! alarm!' appeared in the morning and evening papers. A panic of cowardice and mad-
126 VACCINATION A CURSE.
ness followed, and tens of thousands of people were driven (like sheep to the shambles of the butcher), to the vaccinators, who reaped a rich but unholy harvest. Not less than 100,000 people were vaccinated while the panic lasted, yielding an unrighteous revenue to the vaccinators of at least $50,000.
"Cleanliness, sanitation, and hygiene were 'nonsense,' un- worthy of notice or consideration by the board of health ! Tens of thousands of beastly vaccine points were imported and dis- tributed among the vaccinators, who were sent forth to poison the life blood of their victims and kindle the flame of small-pox.
"I did all in my power to convince the authorities and the people of the sad mistake they were making; but ignorance, vaccination, and love of money gained the ascendancy, and threi thousand four hundred innocents were sent to untimely graves.
"The truth of my prophetic warnings in March, 1885, was amply and sadly verified by the sickening and mournful fact that thirty-four hundred persons, mostly children under twelve years of age, died from small-pox in the very localities I pointed out as abounding in filth ; while in the west end, west of Bleury and north of Dorchester streets, where cleanliness prevailed, there were only a few cases and these sporadics. I do not hesitate to declare it as my solemn opinion, founded upon experience ac- quired during the epidemic, that there would have been no small-pox epidemic in Montreal if the authorities had discarded vaccination and placed the city in a thoroughly clean and defen- sive condition when I called upon them to do their duty in March, 1885. The greatest incompetency, cowardice, indiffer- ence and fickleness prevailed among the health officials. When at last the dread disease carried off sixteen hundred victims in October (although 100,000 people had been vaccinated), they began to enforce a system of isolation, which I had repeatedly but vainly recommended during March, April and May. When vaccination ceased and isolation was enforced, the epidemic rapidly subsided.
"The causes, then, which gives rise to and propagate small- pox are within our control and are preventable. They may be summed up briefly as follows : —
"Overcrowding in unhealthy dwellings or workshops, where there is insufficient ventilation, and where animal or veg- etable matter, in a state of decomposition, is allowed to accu-
LOCAL CONTESTS. 127
mulate ; improper and insufficient diet, habits of intemperance, excess in eating, idleness, immorality, and unsanitary habits of life, such as the neglect of ablution and the free use of pure water, want of proper exercise, and other irregularities of a like nature."
No money in that sort of thing for the third rate vaccinat- ing doctor ! It may be conceded that the average physician is an honorable man personally, the same as the average priest or lawyer or merchant ; but vaccination with him is not philan- thropy, but business ; it is one of his modes of making a living and getting on in the world.
Dr. Ross, above quoted, and most of the truly great physi- cians whom I have quoted in these pages, belong to the real no- bility of the profession. These are physicians who place the public health and welfare above merely commercial motives. These are physicians of the normal order, the true friends of the race, whom future generations will delight to honor. These not only see where the trouble is located, but do what they can to remove the active causes of disease. It is this class who are laboring to secure better sanitation, and who are trying to teach the people that the real preventives of sickness lie in the observance of the natural law. But it is small headway that a few noble reformers can make in the direction of thorough san- itation when they have to deal with corrupt and unscrupulous politicians and municipal boards who are continually plotting selfish schemes for place, pelf, and privileges for themselves.
Now, if the citizens of each municipality wiH exhibit a little firmness and more conscientious enthusiasm they can make a dead letter of the "edicts" of local boards of health and educa- tion. In the highest courts these edicts are invariably set aside. To each parent I declare : if you submit to have your children vaccinated ; if you allow this public enemy to enter your house- holds with his lancet and putrid pus to imperil the future of your children, you are morally responsible before high heaven !
128 VACCINATION A CURSE.
The legal authority by which the vaccinator assumes the right to perpetuate this outrage upon the innocent little ones commit- ted to your charge, is a hase, infamous, and un-American usur- pation which your state constitution and your highest court do not sanction. You need not submit your children to this ac- cursed rite, nor need you submit to have them defrauded of school privileges which you have been taxed to provide. In many towns local boards have been chosen in accordance with an enlightened public sentiment; and these, knowing their con- stitutional rights, pay no attention to the Philipics and edicts of any state board. In other towns the sentiment is aroused, but the health and educational boards, being creatures of the political "ring," issue their mandates and then a hot contest is at once precipitated.
A HOT CONTEST IX SAX DIEGO, CALIFORNIA.
I spent the winter and early spring of 1898 in my sunny home in San Diego. Early in February — if I remember — the local board of health directed the school board to issue a per- emptory order thai every child attending the public schools should be required to present a certificate of vaccination to their teacher, and on failing to do so should be excluded from further attendance. The battle was cm. Among the papers in the city, the Union was conservative, rather siding with the vaccination doctors; but the Sun and Vidctte freely opened their columns to my pen sketches of the situation. ( >nly erne doctor — P. J. Parker, M. D. — saw fit to publicly notice my arraignment of the vaccinati' n practice, and he was extreme'.', reserved and guarded. I opened the ball with the following h tier to the Daily Sun : —
"Eciilor Sun: At the close of my lecture Sunday evening in the hall, literally packed, the subject came up relative to vac-
LOCAL CONTESTS. I2Q.
cinating our school children. The consensus of opinion was de- cidedly against it — a majority of certainly nineteen-twentieths of those present. Further, it was a general expression that the doctors, lawyers, druggists, and merchants be vaccinated or re- vaccinated, and that the school children — our dear school child- ren— be spared.
"When I began the practice of medicine over 50 years ago, bleeding was far more popular with doctors than vaccination is today. Times change. Vaccination 'wearing out,' as the theory is, in from about three to seven years, I was induced to be re- vaccinated in San Francisco just after the commencement of our late civil war, and came near losing my arm from the dire effects of the deadly poison. It put me in bed three weeks and impaired my health for several years. Personally, I should in- finitely prefer the small-pox, treating myself, than to undergo another such life-endangering siege of suffering from vaccina- tion.
"While there is no epidemic of small-pox in our city, nor the likelihood of there being any, it seems not only presumptu- ous but absolutely appalling that health officers should order vaccination. It certainly cannot be for the picayune finances that will accrue to a few physicians. They surely are not so grasping and heartlessly greedy as that. Can it be from a lack of information ?
"It is well-known by the most eminent and erudite physi- cians of today that while vaccination is not even a common safe- guard against small-pox, it often conduces to blood-poisoning, erysipelas, eczema, and consumption.
"Am I told, referring to 'tubes and points,' that calf-lymph- glycerinated vaccine, 'the pure,' will be used? Pure poison! Think of it, parents! Pure pus-rottenness — think of it! Pure calf-lymph from calves' filthy sores put into the arms of inno- cent babes and school children. 'Pure !' Why it is virtually beastly calf-brutality thrust into our children's budding hu- manity !
"The battle for compulsory vaccination was waged by spells most vigorously in the British house of parliament for nearly a dozen years, and finally a parliamentary commission,
I30 VACCINATION A CURSE.
after a long and most rigid investigation, virtually reported that vaccination should be 'optional,' rather than compulsory.
" A personal friend of mine, William Tebb, of London, one of God's noblemen, was arrested, if I rightly remember, four- teen times for refusing to have his children vaccinated. He paid his fines — and now wears a victor's wreath. And I, too, would be arrested — aye, I would rot in jail before I would again have that damnable vaccine poison thrust into my arm or into my children's arms.
"Prof. Kranichfield, of Berlin, said in an elaborate report : 'I, too, vaccinated my children at a time when I did not know how injurious it was. Today I would resist if necessary the au- thorities and the police law.'
"Dr. Gregory in the Medical Times, June 1, 1852, (and then medical director of the London Small-pox hospital) said : 'The idea of extinguishing the small-pox by vaccination is as absurd as it is chimerical, and is as irrational as it is presumptu- ous.'
"Dr. Stowell, after twenty years' experience as a vaccine physician in England, said : 'The general declaration of my pa- tients enables me to proclaim that the vaccine notion is not only an illusion, but a curse to humanity.'
"In a house to house census of a number of cities, towns, and villages in the north of England to furnish an average test of the dangers of vaccination, there were reported '3,135 cases of injury and 750 deaths, alleged to be due to vaccination.' This report was sent to the members of Parliament and to the prime minister.
"P. A. Taylor, a member of Parliament, said in a Com- mons' speech: T have seen scores of parents who tell me that they honestly believe that their children had died from vacci- nation. I am opposed to making it compulsory.'
"Alfred Russell Wallace, LL. D., F. R. S., the compeer of the great Charles Darwin, says : 'that vaccination is the probable cause of about 10,000 deaths annually, by five inoculable dis- eases of the most terrible and disgusting character.'
"William Tebb on July 2, 1892. gave evidence before the Parliamentary Royal Commission as to 2,138 cases of injury, and 540 deaths alleged by the proper medical signatures to be due to vaccination up to the end of 1889. * * * In the
LOCAL CONTESTS. 131
third report, (page 172), the number of injuries is increased to 10,309 — think of it — and this in solid, conservative old Eng- land.
"If necessary I can furnish the testimony of many eminent American physicians, college professors, in confirmation of the danger, and of the deaths resulting from compulsory vacination.
"Upon the grounds, therefore, of continuous good health to our children ; upon the grounds of absolute right ; upon the grounds of personal liberty vouchsafed by the constitution of the United States, and upon the grounds of regard to the ma- ture judgment and cultured consciences of many educated parents and prominent San Diego citizens, I hope — earnestly hope — that this vaccination order will not be pressed.
J. M. PEEBLES, M. D."
The moral indignation of the community was aroused, and the local press teemed daily with articles from indignant citizens and with spirited editorials on the all-absorbing controversy — the two papers named siding with the people ; but the Union editorials abounded in expressions of "good Lord and good Devil," yet leaning perceptibly toward the latter. Among the protests from citizens, the following is a sample : —
"Editor Sun : I consider that I have a grievance that it is my duty to put before the people of this city.
"My son tells that he is excluded from the schools be- cause he can not show a certificate of vaccination. I sent a note by him this morning to Professor Freeman in which I desired the following information : If Jamie, my son, is not allowed to continue in the school, please, in justice to me, give me a writ- ten notice of his expulsion. I added also : I have been a tax- payer for many years, and if I am not to have any of its ben- efits, unless I bow down before one of the most un-American laws that was ever lobbied through a legislative body, I should have notice of it.
"He wrote on the back of the note with a pencil, as fol- lows : —
" 'Mr. Nulton : You appear to be aware of the law. We simply do our duty under it when we forcibly exclude children who have not been vaccinated.'
"What conclusion can I arrive at from his answer ? I have
I32 VACCINATION A CURSE.
never brought his devotion to duty in question, neither do I doubt that he may have excluded pupils from his school during his past life. But I would like to know whether the boy is play- ing 'hookey,' or whether it is the professor himself?
"Is there anything in his answer that would show to a court of justice that the boy has been excluded from the schools?
"I have been required several times to write notes to teach- ers why the boy was absent from school on certain days, and when I want information they seem to be as silent as a grave- yard.
"In regard to vaccination, I have this to say. I have heard of many that have died from vaccination and a great deal of suf- fering resulting from it. Now, the question is, shall I offer up my child to this vaccine god with the hope that a ram will be caught in the bushes and his life spared? or shall I stand on my feet like a true American and say to this Moloch, whose taste for children is proverbial, 'Stand out of the way and let the car of progress move on.'
"If a parent forces his child to be vaccinated and he die from its effect, who murders him? Is it the parent, the vacci- nator, or the law, or should we wag our long ears and exclaim : 'Mysterious Providence.'
"A good thing can never be over-multiplied ; inflate it as much as you please, there will be no bad results. If vaccination is a good thing you cannot overdraw at this bank either. Com- mence with the doctors, then the old men and worn n, and some of us have nothing but an old shell left, and it would not take much vaccine matter to fix us ; then the middle-aged, then the youth, babes, cats, and dogs. S. D. NULTON."
It is but justice to say, that Dr. Remendido, the leading physician and surgeon of the city, came out through the press and definitely condemned compulsory vaccination. The other physicians, with one exception, were as dumb as the dens of frozen adders.
About this time — early in February, 1899 — 258 children had been sent home by the teachers for not presenting certifi- cates of vaccination, and many more were kept home by their
LOCAL CONTESTS. 1 33
parents who wished to spare their feelings, knowing what the result would be if they appeared without the official vaccinator's "tag." Parents were calling at my residence every day for ad- vice about what they could do ; so accordingly I published the following letter in the Daily Vidette : —
"Editor Vidette: Honoring your moral bravery and ad- miring the breadth of thought and freedom of expression that characterize your daily columns, allow me to say that the heads of twenty-three families have called upon me at my residence during the past week, saying, 'What shall we do, doctor, about having our children vaccinated? We think vaccination danger- ous. We do not believe in it, and yet we want our children to attend school and be educated. What shall we do?'
"My invariable reply has been, I am not 'my brother's keeper.' You must exercise your own judgment. I am frank, however, to tell you what I should do.
"First : I should send my children to school unvaccinated, unpoisoned with pox-lymph virus, and put the responsibility upon the official authorities for refusing to educate them in the schools, for the support of which I had been taxed. I should then, as they have in Philadelphia, commence legal proceed- ings. It should not be forgotten that before the adjournment of our recent legislature, Senator Simmons introduced a bill pro- viding that if any injury or detriment to health was produced by vaccination, both the school authorities and the vaccinators might be sued for damages. This was right. The bill did not come to a vote. How could it, in a legislature charged and counter-charged with bribery — a legislature neither intellect- ually nor morally competent to elect a United States senator?
"Second : Or, I should teach my children in my own home, inviting some of my neighbors' more advanced scholars to come in and teach them the higher branches.
"Third : Or, I should unite with the citizens of my ward and organize a private school, employing competent and cul- tured teachers. For such a purpose I will contribute liberally in the eighth ward.
"Fourth: Or, I should emigrate from slow, lag-behind San Diego, to some one of the states east where compulsory vacci- nation is not enforced ; or, perhaps what would be more prefer- able still, bidding adieu to the American flag (the presumed
134 VACCINATION A CURSE.
symbol of freedom and personal liberty), I would settle in some country, decent enough, civilized enough not to enact a monstrous compulsory vaccination law, and enlightened enough not to enforce if there was such a law.
"Queensland, Australia, has no compulsory vaccination law; and grand, conservative old England, after a dozen years' fight of the people, assisted by the ablest members of Parlia- ment, against a majority of the doctors (who evidently had an eye to business), passed what has been termed the 'conscience clause,' as an addendum to the vaccination bill. This was signed by the queen, August 12, last year. Therefore, any person, now going before the registrar of the district, and making declara- tion before the justice of the peace that he conscientiously be- lieves vaccination to be detrimental to the heakh of the child, is exempt from arrest or penalty. All honor to England !
"Accordingly, in the single city of Oldham, Lancashire, England, 43,000 certificates of exemption under the 'conscience clause' had been issued up to the first of March. Other cities and towns are doing nearly as well. Shame, shame, to San Diego to thus snail-like drag — drag along in great reforms be- hind England, Australia, and some of the isles of the ocean.
"There are not only thousands of our citizens, but there are members of the health and school board, just as strenuously opposed to compulsory vaccination as I am. I speak by the book. 'But it is the law.' Granted. 'It has been sustained by the supreme court.' Then, in the name of law and oredr, why was it not entorceel by the previous health and school board au- thorities? Did they not know their duty? Why were they not dismissed from office or fined $500? Who was responsible for that gross, official neglect ? and why has this vaccination law been virtually a dead letter throughout California these past ten years? and what has caused this present health-spasm? There is no small-pox in our city — and it is the general opinion that there has been none. Why do not doctors post themselves? Why are they such consummate cowards?
"Finally, this so-called compulsory law, now the terror of so many parents, is not law. That only is law which is based upon the principle of justice, of right and of personal liberty. Enactments are not necessarily laws. Enactments made by one legislature are very often repealed by the next. The 'fugitive
LOCAL CONTESTS. I35
slave law' was once pronounced 'law' by politicians influencing even the supreme court ; and yet a band of Quakers, with my- self and many others deliberately violated that law — defied it, in fact, as often as possible, by helping such frightened, fleeing negroes as Fred Douglas, on their way toward the freedom of the British flag in Canada. The framers of that law are now remembered only in pity, or deserved infamy. And so history will brand the mark of Cain upon the legislature that ten years ago passed that infamous, unconstitutional, compulsory vacci- nation enactment. I would not — will not, obey it ! I defy it ! Arrest me, jail me, imprison me behind iron bars. I would stay there and rot in prison before I would obey it. And further, in the future I will vote for no member of the legislature till I know — positively know, how he stands upon this vaccination question. We must organize for the battle as they did for years in England; we must call meetings and distribute literature.
"Only recently a judge of the circuit court in Milwaukee, Wis., decided that 'the compulsory vaccination of children by order of the board of education as a prerequisite to their admis- sion to the public schools of that state, was unconstitutional.' Another compulsory vaccination tumble ! And yet, San Diego, sitting under the shadow of Old Mexico, and brooded by the skeleton of a dead-letter legislative enactment, forbids her child- ren to enter the public schools — compels them to remain in ig- norance because, forsooth, their intelligent parents refuse to have brutality — cow-pox virus, calf-lymph cussedness, or any- thing of this nature thrust into their system, believing it to be unconstitutional, a violation of personal freedom, and danger- ous to health. Is this America — proud, progressive America, or old sixteenth century Spain ? J. M. PEEBLES, M. D."
Next came what may be designated the Peebles-Parker discussion which appeared in the columns of the Daily Sun. The following is Dr. Parker's first letter: —
"Editor Sun : In a recent issue of your paper you say you are opposed to vaccination of school children, as required by law, and you give as your reasons that physicians are divided among themselves as to the utility and advisability of vaccina- tion, and also that you do not like the idea of sticking scabs onto
I36 VACCINATION A CURSE.
people. Permit me to reply that we do not use scabs for such a purpose. We use lymph taken from healthy young cattle steril- ized, put up in glass tubes and hermetically sealed up until used. The greatest care is used in vaccination. The arm or leg where the little wounds are made is thoroughly disinfected and cleansed before the work is begun, and the instrument used is boiled be- fore using, and then a light dressing of sterilized gause placed over the wound to prevent the entrance of any poisonous germs Done in this way there is no danger. Some years ago when scabs were used at times as well as lymphs, and no great care used to sterilize or keep the vaccine pure, and surgeons were careless in breaking of the skin without sterilizing or boiling in- struments, we had trouble with infection and blood poisoning. Also sometimes diseases were conveyed by using humanized virus. But with the old methods vaccination was a God-send to the human race. Before the days of vaccination the annual death rate from small-pox was about 3,000 per million of the population in England. At that rate, the death rate in the United States per annum would be over 200,000. Deprive the people of this country of the privileges of vaccination for twenty- five years and we would have about the same result. Modern treatment and care would lessen mortality some, but modern facilities of travel would spread it more than in former times.
"One great danger in the spread of small-pox is the long incubation period, for it is about twelve days after exposure be- fore a person becomes sick. Anyone could be exposed to small- pox in Cuba or Porta Rica and travel to San Diego before he would get sick.
"In reference to the division of opinion among physicians, there is in reality very few who oppose it. It is about as near unanimous as it is possible for any question to be. Only about one physician in this city speaks against it, and he says pus is used for vaccinating. I would expose vaccination if we had to use pus for such a purpose. This Dr. Peebles also stated in a public address before the Mother's Club that he had treated hundreds of cases of small-pox without losing a case. Any comment on such statements are unnecessary.
"In the year 1889, Queen Victoria appointed a commission composed of eight of the most noted medical men of England and quite a number of eminent men in other professions, to in-
LOCAL CONTESTS. 1 37
vestigate the question of the effect of vaccination. The com- mission spent seven or more years in their investigations, held one hundred and thirty-six meetings, examined about two hun- dred witnesses and investigated six epidemics, which has oc- curred in recent years at Gloucester, Sheffield, Warrington, Devosberry, Leicester, and London. In Gloucester the prac- tice of vaccination had been greatly neglected for some years prior to the outbreak of small-pox. At Gloucester 26 vaccinated children under ten years of age were attacked, of whom one died ; of unvaccinated children of like age 680 were attacked, of whom 279 died. The report of the commission was unani- mous in favor of vaccination as the only effective means for the protection against the ravages of small-pox. In Germany where vaccination has been compulsory for years, small-pox is almost unknown in recent years. Hoping I have not made this too long, I am, Yours very trulv,
P. J. PARKER, M. D."
Peebles replies : —
"Editor Sun : In-as-much as Dr. P. J. Parker, of our city, brought my name before the public in your issue of the nth, touching the question of compulsory vaccination, you will cer- tainly grant me equal space in your ably conducted journal.
"In expressing an opinion adverse to compulsory vaccina- tion, you doubtless reflected the convictions of a large majority of the parents of San Diego. That the eighty-nine doctors, or the most of them, favor it, counts but little. Doctors without an exception once favored bleeding in fevers. Both Washing- ton and Byron, it is believed, died from blood-letting. Doc- tors do not bleed men now-a-days ; nor will they vaccinate in the near future. Much less will they dare, however ignorant they may be of Jennerism and the dangers attendant upon calf- poison, to compel vaccination. I recommend medical incompe- tents to weigh well these candid words (published Sunday) by the leading physician and surgeon of our city :
" T am not in favor of anything that interferes in any way with the personal liberty or action of any individual. If a per- son seriously objects to being vaccinated or to having any mem-
138 VACCINATION A CURSE.
ber of his family vaccinated, the feelings of such a party are en- titled to respect, etc' — Dr. Remendido.
"Certainly every man's 'feelings,' every man's conscientious convictions, are entitled to 'respect.' Every man's house is his castle, and upon the constitutional grounds of personal liberty, no vaccination doctor, lancet in one hand and calf-pox poison in the other, has a legal or moral right to enter the sacred pre- cincts of a healthy home and scar a child's body for life.
' 'This' Dr. Parker informs the public that 'scabs' from cow and calf-pox sores are not used now. That is true — doctors have advanced from arm-to-arm 'scabs' to a more refined filth — a more delicate form of the poison pox-lymph. It is taken from 'healthy young cattle,' we are told. How is it known that these cattle were 'healthy?' They were dumb. That they were 'healthy' could only be proven by vivisection and dissection. Physicians know that tuberculosis is common among cows in some parts of the country. To say that these cattle are 'healthy' is an assertion — nothing more ! All technical terms and pedan- tic jargon aside — would a man be considered healthy if any por- tion of his body was spotted and dotted with pustules, with in- flamed bases — 'running sores ?' 'Only about one' doctor, we are gravely told (there are some eighty-five or ninety in San Diego) speaks against vaccination — so much the worse for the doctors ! 'Only about one.' Well, I am proud to be that one ! for in fact one with the right, is a majority. Truth is never in minority — and laggards often find it out to their sore disadvantage.
"Yes, 'Dr. Peebles stated in a public address that he had treated many cases of small-pox and never lost a case.' How many did 'this' Dr. Parker ever treat? and how many of them lived? I shall be pleased to hear the doctor's 'comments.' I pledge you my word he will be dumb.
"On my journey around the world, while in the Godavari district, India, with a population of between two and three mil- lions, not a day passed after the first week there that I did not treat or assist in treating from twelve to twenty small-pox pa- tients lying in bungalows, outside tents, and bamboo huts.
"In July, 1869, appointed by General Grant, the United States consul to Trebizonde, Asiatic Turkey, I was in this old city, crowded with Turks, Circassians, Georgians, Armenians, and other races — a city of filth — during its small-pox epidemic
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139
— and here again I treated or assisted other physicians in treat- ing for weeks and months small-pox patients. Small-pox is closely allied to filth, and sanitation, hygiene, pure air, healthy diet, sunshine, and bathing are much' more efficacious preventa- tives than vaccine virus, in whatever way manipulated, and whether called scabs, pus, lymph, serum, or calf-virus — words do not render poisons any the less malignant.
"Speaking of 'humanized virus,' Dr. Parker says : 'The old method of vaccination was a God-send to the human race.' On the contrary I pronounce it emphatically a death-send, a scourge, and a most damnable curse. Here are a few of my au- thorities proving it :
"In the English 'Digest of Parliamentary Returns,' No. 488, session of 1878, entitled, 'Vaccination Mortality,' we find the startling statement that : 'Twenty-five thousand children are annually slaughtered by disease inoculated into the system by vaccination, and a far greater number are injured and maimed for life by the same unwholesome rite.'
"Prof. Trousseau, of Paris, France, wrote in the 'Clinique Medicale,' 1874, a medical journal published in France: 'The transmission of syphilis by vaccination appears now to be an estalished fact.'
"Prof. German, in 1878, in an address to the Diet of the German empire, said : 'Above all, the direful fatality which lately occurred at Lebus, would alone warrant the abolition of the vaccination laws. Eighteen school girls, averaging 12 years of age, were re-vaccinated and thereby syphilized, and some of them died.'
"The report of the German vaccination commission of 1884, contains the following: 'Up to 1880, fifty cases have be- come known in which syphilis, inoculated with vacine virus, caused severe illness to about seven hundred and fifty persons.' A strange 'God-send !'
"The report of the British commission, appointed by the queen in 1889. was not unanimous in favor of compulsory vac- cination which fact ought to know it. By this report, anti-vac- cinationists 'obtained a great measure of parental freedom,' writes Dr. Winthrop from London to the New York Sun.
Dr. Parker's statement concerning Gloucester and its vac- cination, is not only misleading but false. If figures do not lie
I40 VACCINATION A CURSE.
those that make them can, and often do. The Gloucester Of- ficial Reports are decidedly against the benefit of vaccination. I have them at my command. Dr. Parker is no authority. His Ipse Dixit neither counts nor carries weight with either students of science or medicine. The report of the British commission so influenced Parliament that it pronounced against compulsory vaccination — and made the matter optional with the people. And so the matter still stands.
"In Rhode Island, after a committee of the senate had heard evidence on both sides of the question, it repealed the vaccination law by a majority of 16 to 9. Petitions should be hurried on to Sacramento demanding that this disease-breeding law be promptly repealed.
" \ late press dispatch informs us that Wm. Nagengast, of Cleveland, O., aged n years, was vaccinated in the free dispen- sary on January 4th. His arm soon became terribly swollen. The same night he exhibited symptoms of lockjaw, and the next evening he died, suffering intense agonies. In London, from 1859 to 1896, there were one thousand and two hundred and seventeen admitted deaths from vaccination. There were doubt- less five times this number, say the minority reports, but they were 'hushed up to prevent vaccination from further reproach.'
"Engaged wholly in literary pursuits and depending upon a livelihood from neither the vaccination business nor local med- ical practice of any kind, I can find leisure to ventilate the vic- iousness and villainous consequences of compulsory vaccina- tion, and I shall do it with ungloved hands, and will therefore say that if Dr. Parker desires a journalistic controversy with me upon the merits and demerits of compulsory vaccination he will find me girded for the conflict ; and I promise him a "foeman worthy his steel." J. M. PEEBLES, M. D.
San Diego, Cal., Feb. 13."
I will now extend my above reply and notice the following statements contained in Dr. Parker's letter :
(1). "The instrument used is boiled before using."
(2). "England before the days of vacillation had a death rate from small-pox of 3,000 per million of the population."
(3). "Deprive the people of this country of the privilege of vaccination for twenty-five years * * * and we should have the same result."
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(4). "At Gloucester 26 vacinated children under ten years were attacked with small-pox — one died. Of un -vaccinated children of like age 680 were attacked, of whom 279 died."
(1). This statement by Dr. Parker is very careless, for in many noted instances it is conspicuously untrue, in fact. I will give one instance where a United States official vaccinator uses the lance on scores of immigrants without once cleansing it. Our laws require that every immigrant arriving at Castle Gar- den shall be vaccinated before they land, unless they can show a vaccine mark or a certificate. "The surgeon sat on a box in the storeroom, lancet in hand, and around him huddled as many as could be crowded into the confined space, old and young, children screaming, women crying; each with an arm bare and a woe-begone face. * * * No pretense of cleaning the lan- cet was made ; it drew blood in very many instances, and it was used upon as many as 276 during the first day. I inquired of the surgeon if he had no fear of inoculating disease, or whether he examined as to health or disease before vaccinating He replied that he could not stop for that, besides no choice in the matter was left with him. The law demanded the vaccination of each and every one, and he must comply with it or be sub- jected to a fine." — G. H. Merkel, M. D., in Mass. Ec. Med. Jour. November, 1882.
Here is a fact which I offset against Dr. Parker's statement — "the instrument used is boiled before using." When we con- sider that the point of a cambric needle, dipped in the blood of a leprous or syphilitic patient is sufficient to communicate the disease, if this is punctured through the skin, what a fear- ful indictment we have against the practice of vaccination ! Two hundred and seventy-six victims vaccinated without the lancet once being cleaned ! In this way it is possible for the "calf- lymph" to pick up on its way about all the curses which human flesh is heir to.
(2). "Small-pox deaths in England before vaccination were 3,000 per million of the population." In the connection in which it is used this statement as before said is entirely misleading. There is no hint here that other zymotic diseases in England have declined in a similar ratio with small-pox during the cen- tury just closing; and we are entitled to claim that the same causes that diminished scarlet fever also diminished small -pox.
I42 VACCINATION A CURSE.
But the decline in small-pox has really been far less than in other zymotics, from which it may be fairly claimed that vacci- nation instead of mitigating it has kept it alive notwithstanding the presence of other really mitigating causes. By implication Dr. Parker assumes that such investigation of the disease as we have been able to secure, is to be set down to the credit of vaccination. Xo other mitigating factor is hinted at. In dis- cussing the causes of small-pox vaccinators stick to vaccination as Mr. Gladstone stuck to "Mitcheltown." They never pollute their lips by speaking aloud the word filth — having plenty of that article in their antidote. They are silent about sanitation. They do not tell us that small-pox is a filth-disease ; that it thrives on filth ; that it is chiefly confined to the dirty and crowded quarters in our cities. Had the doctors vaccinated for the plague, black-death, and the sweating sickness, they would now be claiming the credit for vaccination as the sole agent that was efficient in practically stamping these three zymotics out of Eu- rope. Since they cannot set up that claim, pray what has been the cause of their decline? I answer, sanitation and improved habits of living. Prof. Wallace, taking the Reports of the Reg- istrar Genera! from 1838 to 1896, makes a thorough statistical analysis and presents the result in diagramatic form — "Wonder- ful Century," page 305. Then he writes : —
"The main teaching of this diagram — a teaching which the commissioners have altogether missed by never referring to diagrams showing comparative mortalities — is the striking cor- respondence in average rise and fall of the death-rates of small- pox, of zymotics, and of all diseases together. This corres- pondence is maintained throughout the whole of the first part, as well as through the whole of the second part, of the diagram ; and it proves that small-pox obeys, and always has obeyed, the same law of subservience to general sanitary conditions as the other great groups of allied diseases and the general mortality. Looking at this most instructive diagram, we see at once the absurdity of the claim that the diminution of small-pox in the first quarter of our century was due to the partial and imperfect vaccination of that period. Equally absurd is the allegation that its stationary character from 1842 to 1872, culminating in a huge epidemic, was due to the vaccination then prevailing, though much larger than ever before, not being quite universal
LOCAL CONTESTS. 143
— an allegation completely disproved by the fact that the other zymotics as a whole, as well as the general mortality, exhibited strikingly similar decreases followed by equally marked periods of average uniformity or slight increase, to be again followed bv a marked decrease. There is here no indication whatever of vaccination having produced the sligtest effect on small-pox mortality."
How utterly misleading and untrue therefore is the state- ment of Dr. Parker which I am here commenting upon. Noth- ing but his vaccination hobby is permitted to come in sight when he would explain the causes which effect the periodical acceleration and decline of small-pox mortality. Vaccination is paraded as the sole cause of small-pox decline ; neglect of vaccination the sole cause when small-pox waxes strong and rages like a conflagration.
Dr. Parker must be aware that during the period he re- fers to, before Jenner's discovery (?) when he says small-pox waxed stronger ; that the doctors then had a "sure thing," con- gener of vaccination, inoculation, — which they had "boomed," as they now boom vaccination. Inoculation was just as rational as vaccmation ; yet by the same act in 1840 England made in- oculation a penal offence and vaccination compulsory.
But finally, I utterly deny Dr. Parker's allegation that small-pox deaths in England before vaccination was "3,000 per million of the population." This monstrous statement was taken from Dr. Lettsom's evidence before the Parliamentary Committee in 1802. How did Mr. Lettsom arrive at this fig- ure? He first assumed that the small-pox mortality of London before vaccination was 3,000 per million of population — which, in a future chapter I shall prove was only 2,000 per million — and then takes that as basis for the entire population of the kingdom, town, village, and country, making not the slightest allowance for the cleanliness and general wholesomness of the country in comparison with over-crowded, filth-accumulated and poverty-stricken districts in the city of London. The popula-
144 VACCINATION A CURSE.
tion of the kingdom was estimated to be twelve times as large as that of London, so London population was multiplied by twelve to yield the 36,000 annual small-pox fatality for the king- dom. Difference in sanitary conditions never was taken the slightest account of by advocates of vaccination. It is such glaringly false statistics as these that Dr. Parker, and vaccina- tors generally, are in the habit of quoting.
(3). "Deprive the people of the country of the privileges, etc." Here again has Dr. Parker by implication raised an ir- revelant issue. Who has said anything about depriving the people of this country of the privilege of vaccination? I would not deprive one American citizen of the "privilege" of taking a half gill of calf-pus daily — either through the skin or into the stomach if he is inclined that way. That is not the present is- sue. What I am contending for, doctor, is that you have taken the state in with you in this vaccination disgrace ; and that you two have agreed between you, that I shall be compelled — or my children shall be compelled— to lake your medicine! Hence I .cay — and I speak it in stentorian tones — take your unholy hands off from me and mine ! Leave me to my liberty regarding the practice of superstitions and degrading calf-lymph-poisoning rites, and be assured , I shall leave you to yours.
(4). The statements of Doctor Parker relative to small- pox fatalities in Gloucester are still more misleading and un- true than anv of the above. He is silent regarding the quarter of the town in which nine-tenths of the small-pox cases oc- curred ; silent too, regarding the unmistakable causes that made the epidemic so fatal. I have space here to merely summarize results; and 1 shall state nothing but what I stand ready to sup- port by the annual reports of the medical officers of health. Those for the years 1875 to T888 are the work of Mr. John P. Wilton; those for 1889 to 1895 of Dr. John Campbell. At the time of the Gloucester epidemic — 1895-6 — the urban population was 40,000; the rural population 11,000. In the southeast quarter — the poor, filthy and crowded quarter — the drainage was the worst possible. The new system of drains was con- nected with the old, crooked and much dilapidated brick cul- verts. The water supplied for domestic use was totally unfit to drink, charged as it was with sewage pollution. Into an exten-
LOCAL CONTESTS. 145
sive bed of gravel — from which this portion of the city was sup- plied with water, the drainage from cesspools and sewers had free access. In the language of the medical officer: 'The drainage of houses either empties into cesspools constructed close to them, and leaking into the bed of gravel, or is carried away in brick culverts, which, whenever they are uncovered, are found to be faulty, thus allowing their contents to ooze into the gravel. It is thus absolutely impossible that there can be any pure water in the district."
In 1889 a flood choked these sewers and caused a back flow, mixing vast quantities of sewage with the water on the surface. The medical officer reports : "This water became so charged with sewage that I feared serious consequences in the houses that became flooded."
In this pestilence-breeding and foul quarter the epidemic started late in 1895. At the end of the year 25 cases had been reported, 24 of which we confined to this southeast end. Here, my dear doctor, was the breeding ground and source of the Gloucester epidemic of 1896. You did not think these facts worthy of mention ! Just so, that is a common fault with vacci- nating doctors. You should have also stated, that out of the 2.036 cases of small-pox reported during the epidemic, 1,822 were confined to this same God-forsaken South Hamlet while only 214 cases were reported north of St. Michael's Square, where the city possessed a tolerable sanitary aspect.
Another fact : The great scarlet fever epidemic of 1892 was likewise practically confined to this South Hamlet. Every- body with a grain of common sense knows that this epidemic was caused by the wretched unsanitary condition at the south- east end of Gloucester. They know, too, that the small-pox epidemic originated in the same causes and was fed from the same source. Yet we are assured that the "un-vaccinated" were the occasion of the whole trouble. Get vaccinated and re- vaccinated, and then if the sewage comes up to your window- sills and you have no other fluid to drink, still you need not fear the smal'-pox! These little matters are unworthy of men-
I46 VACCINATION A CURSE.
tion when a vaccinator is handling small-pox statistics. "Vac- cination had been greatly neglected in Gloucester before the epidemic," from which the reader is supposed to infer that this species of neglect was the real occasion of the fearful outbreak. What was neglected before the other epidemic broke out — the scourge of scarlet fever? Vaccination cannot be made to do duty here. Now I place these facts by the side of Dr. Parker's statements, and leave the decision to the common sense of my readers as to what occasioned the small-pox epidemic in Glou- cester.
Dr. Parker also refers to Leicester as one of the stricken cities, due to vaccinal neglect. He had better have remained silent regarding Leicester, for it has a thunderbolt in reserve for the vaccinators. After their small-pox epidemic of 1892-4, the citizens rose to the dignity of the occasion and turned the vaccinators out of office; then elected boards of guardians who were pledged not to enforce the compulsory law. At present the vaccinations are only one per cent, of the births. Did they stop there? No, but they set about real prevention by putting the city under more thorough sanitary regulations. Now Lei- cester is not only the freest city in England from the small-pox scourge, but the freest from scarlet fever and other zymotics as well.
It is just as silly and illogical to refer small-pox fatality to neglect of vaccination, as it would be to refer fatalities from cyclones in the middle west to this same neglect.
I will now resume account of the struggle in San Diego. The next step in the program was the organization of the Anti- Vaccination League — Dr. J. M. Peebles, president : E. P. Brooks and Col. J. L. Dryden, vice presidents, and F. M. Gregg, secretary. A little later — some time in April — a rousing mass meeting was held in the M. E. church. The following are ex- tracts from my address on that occasion, published in the Daily Sun: —
LOCAL CONTESTS. 147
"We have assembled tonight from the different city wards to take into consideration the compulsory vaccination law of California — a law that has thrown nearly four hundred of our children out of the public schools, that we have been taxed to support.
This compulsory cow-pox enactment, so at variance with the higher medical science and personal liberty ; so repulsive to cultured manhood, the finer instincts of womanhood, and the God-implanted intuitions of childhood has remained like other unconstitutional laws passed by politicians and lobbied legisla- tures for the past ten years, a dead letter. Why — why, if this law was just and right, has it not been executed? Why is it now raised ? Who rolled the stone away from its mouldy and moss- shingled tomb? Who were the instigators? There is no small- pox in the city, and in the opinion of Mr. Hedges and the gen- eral public, there has been none. Who was responsible then, for the "scare," and who have been the financial gainers by it?
Why are children with certificates in their hands from Dr. Stockton, the health officer, stating that, owing to their physical condition, they were not fit subjects for vaccination, turned away from the schools? Why this merciless blow to education and personal freedom? Why are the conscientious convictions of hundreds of intelligent San Diego parents violated or ridi- culed by vacincating officials? Why are the public school doors slammed in the faces of innocent children — children who, turned into the streets, wend their way home weeping for a lack of the privilege of gaining an education ? Do these health and school boards feel justified in making and enforcing a compulsory igno- rance law? Need I say that not only thousands of San Diego students, thinkers, and tax-paying parents, but thousands upon thousands are indignant at this state of things. It is currently reported that one of our city doctors said that nobody but 'Mexicans, niggers, and ignoramuses' were opposed to compul- sory vaccination. This is the compliment that superstition, big- otry, and infamy pays to the intelligence of San Diego's cultured citizens. It is as certain as the stars are abiding, that thousands in this city will never — NEVER submit to thrusting a blood- poisoning virus into their children's systems. They will do as two families have done today, move over to Coronado, or they will move into the country townships to educate their children,
I48 VACCINATION A CURSE.
or they will establish private schools — and I honor them for their decisions. Some families have already lc*t the city to ed- ucate their children.
"This meeting has been called to consider — to devise ways and means concerning this very serious subject, and I counsel calmness and dignity of deportment. No matter how intense the indignation that may thrill you to your soul's depths, con- trol the temper and be guided by the dictates of moderation and reason. You are in the right. And in the end you are sure, each to wear a victor's wreath. This meeting is but the prelude to a series of similar gatherings. These will be educational, and thrillingly interesting, and, further, they will probably con- tinue here and in other portions of the state until the assem- bling of the next legislature, when our votes will count. There is nothing that a wiley, unprincipled politician so much fears as an honest vote.
"The battle touching this compulsory vaccination law is fully on. The people are aroused. They are organizing. They are thoroughly in earnest. There is no lack of finances to conduct the campaign. And like the immortal \Ym. Llovd Garrison, these anti-vac cinationists 'will not equivocate, will not excuse, and they will be heard.' And I may add, they will politically 'mark' every man at future elections who favors compulsory blood-poisoning.
"Anti-vaccinationists, anti-compulsionists, vou are a power. You have culture, finance, influence, conscience, energy, and I charge you to mark such doctors as seek to enforce this dead- letter compulsory vaccination law ; mark such doctors as tell you privately that they are opposed to compulsory vaccination, yet are too sneakingly cowardly to openly express their honest convictions ; mark such school officials and members of health and school boards as make themselves unnecessarily offensive to those who conscientiously differ from them on the vaccina- tion question ; mark such public men, especially politicians as hunt with the hounds and run with the hares, and all to catch votes to get into offices ; mark such daily newspapers (NEWS- jiapers), as are owned, or edited by hunting poltroons, shaped like men. rather than by brave, fair-minded, royal-souled men, the worthy sons of this magnificent century !
LOCAL CONTESTS. I49
"This cow-pox poison put into innocent children's arms is often from diseased calves or heifers, and can resultant disease prevent disease or produce health ? Do men gather grapes of thorns ? I say diseased heifers. You take supposed healthy- heifers from the fields, confine them in 'sterilized stables' (a phrase used by a San Diego doctor), rope them, throw them, shave their abdomens, puncture this portion of the hairless body with 'small-pox pustular poison ;' and then watch the irri- tation, watch the animal's thirst, the increasing inflammation up to the point of pus-rottening — and now call this brute healthy do you? Would you consider your own body healthy if half- covered with inflamed pustules and discharging sores? Then watch the applied clamps as they squeeze out the putrid mucus- like pus mingled with a little of the animal's inflamed blood, to be manipulated into 'pus-lymph' for your children's arms ! Is not the thought, th^ sight disgustingly infamous? *
"How would it do to take catarrh mucus from the nose of some otherwise healthy young lady and manipulating up to the point of pure catarrh lymph, introduce it compulsorily into the school children's arms as a preventive say, against the grippe, erysipelas, or some kind of eczema? Some doctors advanced the theory awhile since, that traced back through the complex laws of heredity far enough, it might be shown that there is a close genetic relation existing between pure catarrh lymph, pure syphilitic lymph and pure cow-pox lymph. Be the rela- tion near or afar, I would stoutly resist any compulsory vacci- nation law that insisted upon introducing any such lymphs — 'PURE LYMPHS'— into the human system.
"During this conflict we shall demonstrate beyond any pos- sible question that :
*NOTE — In gatheringitue materials for this volume I failed to secure one of Dr. Parker's letters in defense of compulsory vaccination, appearing in the "Daily Sun." Writing him for his full correspondence and forward- ing the same by special messenger, he informed me later that he did not wish his correspondence to appear in the volume. Considering its diluted contents in connection with that bad cause, calf-lymph poisoning, none can seriously blame him. Nevertheless his published letters in the "Daily Sun" became public property. And as such I am justified in using them. Only one however appears. His last letter was an indirect plea to be let down off from his "compulsory" stilts, gently as possible. This I did with my accustomed grace and gentleness.
I50 VACCINATION A CURSE.
"I. Vaccination docs not prevent small pox. This every well-read, intelligent physician already admits.
"II. Vaccination, by reducing the vitality through trans- mitting poisonous pus-brutality into the human system, not only tends to, but actually invites the epidemic termed small- pox.
"III. That our soldiers vaccinated in the San Francisco camps previous to sailing for the Philippines, and told that they were immune from small-pox, a number of them had the small- pox over there and several died from the disease.
"IV. That, as vaccination weakens the constitution, affects deleteriously the red blood corpuscles, it necessarily deteri- orates the public health and is a danger, a menace, to the same. The death rate was greatly diminished both in Switzerland and in Leicester, England, after compulsion was abandoned.
"V. That vaccination lays the foundation for erysipelas, eczema, carbuncles, abscesses, nervousness, pimpled faces, con- sumption, and cancers.
"VI. We shall show that there is no such thing as pure calf lymph. To talk of pure lymph is equivalent to talking of pure poison originating from a putrified pustular sore, which, according to the distinguished Dr. Creighton, bears a striking resemblance symptomatically to syphilitic poison. The Hon. J. A. Bright, M. P., and member of the London Royal Vaccina- tion commission, testified that 'there are no means of determin- ing the purity of lymph or limiting the certainty of its inflamma- tory effects.' (The Lancet, Oct. 20, 1892.)
"VII. We shall show that compulsory vaccination, while it does not prevent small-pox, has maimed thousands for life and caused the death of hundreds upon hundreds. In the third report of the minutes of the vaccination evidence commission, 1890, testimony was given before the Royal Commission of six thousand two hundred and thirty-three cases of serious injury and eight hundred and forty-two deaths from vaccination. Can parents afford to run the fearful risks of vaccination poisoning?
"VITI. Finally, as a registered physician in the state of California, as a professor for several years in a medical coMege, as a United States consul in Asiatic Turkey, during a portion of General Grant's administration, counseling with an English physician, or personally treating small-pox, which, by the way,
LOCAL CONTESTS. 151
T should prefer to have, under proper sanitary conditions to Jenner's cow-pox, I protest against the compulsory vaccina- tion law of this state that turns many of our children out of the public schools. I denounce it as a menace to good health, as a violation of personal freedom, and opposed to all those fraternal interests that constitute us the parts of one great brotherhood, clearly conscious that what affects one affects all through the laws of thought, of sympathy, of heredity, and the amenities of social life."
Previous to sending the manuscripts for this volume to the press, I forwarded a communication to Dr. Parker by a special messenger, asking him for all his letters appearing in the daily press in defence of vaccination, for publication in this volume. He but briefly noticed my request. Evidently he was not very anxious to be booked and read in public libraries. This, on his part, was a shrewd stroke of discretion.
Compulsory vaccinationists dare not meet in open manly debate anti-vaccinationists. They lack the courage of their convictions. Statistics and yawning graves face them. During this struggle in San Diego with the doctors, the health and school boards, with my didactic energies, saving nothing of an innate Scotch grit, I challenged the vaccinating-believing doc- tors to meet me in open discussion upon this subject in the opera house, the proceeds above the expenses to go to some benevolent institution. These were to be the questions or prop- ositions for consideration.
1. Resolved, That the Jenner inoculation and the later calf- lymph-virus vaccination, while not a preventative of small-pox, endangers health, by poisoning the blood and promoting various zymotic diseases.
2. Resolved, That compulsory vaccination laws are uncon- stitutional, un-American in genius, a barrier to education, and a menace to personal liberty.
And believe me, readers, — not a doctor entered the arena. Such dastardly cowardice required no comment ! * * * * Now, in the face of California's compulsory vaccination laws,
152 VACCINATION A CURSE.
the un-vaccinated children of the city attend the public schools side by side with their cow-pox scarred playmates.. Such re- sults can be secured in any town or city of the commonwealth if the people will arouse themselves, distribute literature, get up public meetings and air this terrible delusion — calf-lymph vac- cination.
In the midst of this local controversy I sent the following communication to the R. P. Journal, San Francisco, which was published in its issue of Feb. 16, 1899: —
CALIFORNIA VACCINATION LAW.
For over fifty years I have been battling in such movements as anti-slavery, temperance, prohibition, the reform health- dress, woman suffrage, class legislation, "doctors' trusts," and now I am fighting on the vaccination battlefield. And the mad battle is fully on, here in San Diego.
A vaccination law, passed some ten years ago by the Cali- fornia legislature, has remained nearly a dead letter ; but now, without a case of small-pox in our midst, the board of health, afflicted with a sort of health-spasm, has proposed that all the school children of this city, whose population is 22,000, be vac- cinated. And the threat is thrown out that unless parents com- ply and have that putrid calf-lymph put into their children's arms, their children will be denied the privilege of attending the schools. I repeat, the battle is on. My whole nature is aroused and I have written articles in every San Diego newspaper except one against the enforcement of this unjust law. Of the eight- five resident doctors in San Diego, only three or four are op- posed to vaccination, and these, with one exception, are too cowardly to stand up and say so, or to even sign a legislative pe- tition to repeal the law or so amend as to make it optional with the parents. The school board has not yet issued the order, though the health board is urging them to do so.
LOCAL CONTESTS. 1 53
The public is thoroughly awake. At the Mothers' Club meeting in our city lately the lower room in the school house was literally packed to hear the vaccination question discussed. Though many doctors were invited to come and defend vacci- nation, only two made their appearance. These spoke in its de- fense. I was present, clad in medical war paint, with my left hand full of anti-vaccination documents, sent me by Wm. Tebb, of London, Prof. Alexander Wilder, of Newark, and others. The discussion was keenly, critically hot. Thank the gods, a large portion of the mothers present were opposed to vaccinat- ing the children. My opposition was vehement, if not violent. I defied the law. I pronounced it unconstitutional ; and, treas- onable or not, I advised the mothers present to positively re- fuse to have that diabolical poison put into their children's arms — a poison that upon the highest medical authority does not prevent small-pox — but does kill thousands every years. Fool- ishly vaccinated a second time myself when in San Francisco in 1861, I was in bed three weeks from the poison. I came near losing my arm, and I felt the effects of the villainous virus for several years.
What the doctors call pure virus — "tubes and points" — I publicly pronounced filthy, vile, impure, calf-lymph "cussed- ness." During the discussion I advised that instead of vacci- nating and poisoning the blood of our clean, sweet-faced chil- dren, that the doctors, druggists, lawyers, and preachers of San Diego — all be vaccinated and the dear, innocent children be spared. This was not a popular presentation to the vaccina- tionists present, and yet, two-thirds of the ladies cheered me roundly. Oh, that our mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters could vote, as they do in New Zealand, Wyoming, and some other states ! Heaven hasten woman-suffrage.
IS THIS VACCINATION LAW CONSTITUTIONAL? Assuredly not. The law of God, written in the moral na-
154 VACCINATION A CURSE.
ture, is above any law enacted by political legislatures. Many of their pronounced laws, though having the signatures of govern- ors, are not laws. They are often repealed during the very next session of the legislature. Law to be law, must be based upon the eternal principle of right — the absolute principle of right and justice. I will not obey an unconstitutional law — a law that entails disease and death — a law that infringes upon my personal liberty. And be it treason or not,-— I will urge in the faces of popes, priests, and politicians, others not to do it. This vaccination law is undoubtedly unconstitutional — and is in per- fect keeping with ''medical trusts" and these nefarious "doc- tors' laws" that seek to compel patients to employ only physi- cians of their own school.
This vaccination law is so odious, so dangerous to health, that it has never been enforced to any considerable extent in our noble state, California. It never will be. The people are too progressive. Petitions are now being circulated in this city for its speedy repeal. The English Parliament has recently, be it said to the glory of England, made vaccination optional with the parents.
The old fugitive-slave law was once the law of this coun- try, North and South. And this law was compulsory ; Northern nen were required to hunt, catch, hold, and return the negro (nine-tenths white perhaps) back into slavery, who were run- ning for the freedom of Canada, and for safety under the British flag. I would not, did not obey this law. Though compara- tively much younger then than now, I defied it, and I am proud to say that with a family of good Quakers in Cayuga county, New York, I helped several runaway negroes to make their way by the "underground railroad," as it was called, into the Cana- dian dominion. Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, the Quakers, and thousands of reformers, were charged with trea- son for criticising a government that enacted such a congres- sional law (the Fugitive Slave Law), in the interests of per-
LOCAL CONTESTS. 1 55
petual slavery. They refused to obey it. Garrison was mobbed in Boston, Foster was egged in Worcester, Foss was stoned, others were vindictively persecuted by unprincipled politicians and conservative bigots. But the law was finally repealed — and slavery itself abolished. Now Phillips, Garrison, Foss. Ab- bie Kelley, Parker Pillsbury, Henry C. Wright, and many of those brave old soldiers of freedom, — scarred soldiers, fighting lor personal liberty and equality before the law, — are honored, and their very tomb-stones are wreathed in unfading laurel ; while the congressional and political manufacturers of that old fugitive-slave law, are either forgotten, or their names have 1 alf-rotted-away into the silence of merited infamy. Such will he the fate of this California vaccination law, and its doctor-in- spired makers. Let the eighty-five doctors of San Diego, and • he board of health — one or more of which are doctors — take due notice. Justice is sure to come !
J. M. PEEBLES, M. D.
A SMALL-POX SCARE! During February (1899), as the controversy was waxing warmer, the doctors of San Diego made a sortie to get up a small-pox scare ! The wife of J. O. Hedges came to San Diego from Los Angeles, and died Feb. 19th. Before leaving Los An- geles she received a severe strain from lifting a heavy box. This caused back-ache, headache, vomiting and hemorrhage. The doctors pronounced it a case of small-pox and further reported the woman knew she had been exposed to small-pox, and con- fessed to this. But the husband denied that she had been ex- posed or that she had made any such confession ; as he was in the room during the consultation and heard all that was said. Nine different persons had been in the sick-room before the woman died, and everyone of these was quarantined for twenty- one days, not one of whom took small-pox. One doctor ad-
156 VACCINATION A CURSE.
mittec' the woman died irom hemorrhage — so the husband stated — and not from small-pox. But the doctors succeeded just the same in working up a panic, in moving the local board to en- force the compulsory law on vaccination — and withal, in enrich- ing their purses. There was not the shadow of a small-pox case in the city.
The sequelae as the doctors would say, or after effects of this scare, may be in part gleaned from a Sun editorial, March 17:—
"The finance committee of the common council will meet tonight at 7 :^o o'clock and some interesting bills will come up for approval or rejection. Among the number will be one from Dr. Jones, who was quarantined for 21 days by order of the board of health. Dr. Jones wants $210 for the twenty-one days' service." How modest the fee !
"Then there are claims of $2.50 per day each for three ex- tra policemen for twenty-one days necessitated by this same sus- pected small-pox case. The pest house, too, has been repaired at an expense of some $350 to date and small claims for medi- cine, disinfectants, etc., amounting to $50 will also be presented, making a total of $767, chargeable to the small-pox scare to date. The -bill of Nurse Lowe, who escaped quarantine has not yet been settled nor that of the undertakers, who buried Mrs. Hedges, but both bills will doubtless bring the amount up to over $1,000.
" 'A few more small-pox cases and we're a busted com- munity, rain or no rain,' said a city official this morning, and really it does seem expensive to have these little luxuries.
"By virtue of sec. 17 of article 13, of the city charter, the board of health has power to appoint additional health inspect- ors and at a conference held yesterday it was decided to appoint a committee to inspect all passengers coming on trains from Los Angeles. This will cost a few hundred dollars, but the health board feels the precaution is necessary."
This small-pox scare — when there was no small-pox — made San Diego's doctors the laughing stock of all the regions 'round about. Only one. Dr. Jones, however, was quarantined ! * * * It can now be stated that the labors of our Anti-Vaccina-
LOCAL CONTESTS. 1 57
tion league have been largely crowned with success. True, we have not as yet secured a repeal of the detestable compulsory law, but we have compelled a truce on the part of the local boards and opened wide once more the doors of the public schools. Complete victory is in sight.
The municipal boards of Los Angeles are still enforcing the compulsory law, and so in my October "Temple of Health," I thus warned northern tourists who were expecting to spend the winter in Southern California to shun Los Angeles : —
"Persons with families, proposing to spend the winter in Southern California, sending their children to the public schools, should avoid Los Angeles as they would a den of vipers, and go on down to San Diego, where parents are not (now) com- pelled by school boards to have their children's blood poisoned with cow-pox virus, before they can enter the public schools."
This, the editor of a Los Angeles paper, Dr. A. P. Miller of the East Side News, copied, and then added: —
"Let us add, that it was Dr. Peebles' efficient work which rescued the children of San Diego from the tyrant's clutch. Live another hundred years, doctor, and sweep all such mon- strous usurpation of power from off the earth."
The Boston Daily Globe — Nov. 24, 1899, — says : "Four children of one family at Highland Falls, N. Y., are dangerously ill as the result of vaccination. All are badly poisoned, and the results will probably prove fatal. The school trustees ordered the vaccination. The father of the little ones is an inmate of the Soldiers' Home, and the mother is a poor washer-woman." A "poor washer-woman!" No redress for that stricken family, for that disrupted and ruined home ; and the next time the con- servative M. D. comes down from his professional stilts to no- tice an anti-vaccinator, he will repeat the stale declaration : "We use lymph taken from healthy young cattle, sterilized, put up in glass tubes and hermetically sealed up until used." Hence, how could the lymph be to blame? It must have been an "act of Providence." The school trustees ordered it. Who takes the risk in this business ? Why, the American people of course, among whom there is only a small per cent, of such characters
158 VACCINATION A CURSE.
as Wm. Tebb and Dr. Ross. The rank and file of our American citizens are today tamely and supinely submitting to this form of legal criminality, contented with a passing record of facts as a matter of daily news, and only rarely proving themselves equal to the supreme occasion, as Mr. Lawbraugh did in Gen- eseo, 111., fighting the vaccinators until he reached the steps of the state supreme court, where he got his rights.
Here is another case reported in a Boston paper. I clip the following from "The Banner of Light," of Dec. 9, 1899: —
"The supporters of that divinely-inspired barbarism known as vaccination are no doubt rejoicing with exceeding great joy over the beneficent effects of its application in Maiden, Mass. Percy Tanner, a boy of thirteen years, is the latest victim to this wicked practice. lie was vaccinated on Friday, Dec. 1, and his arm began to swell shortly afterward. On Saturday he went into convulsions, and passed away on Sunday. Medical aid was summoned, but the doctor could do nothing to save the boy. If the boy had been stabbed, or killed by a blow, his assailant would have been arrested for murder. As it is, the vaccinating doctor is still at large, ready and even anxious to treat other healthy patients by similar methods. Wherein does murder by assault differ from murder by vaccination ? Only in one respect — the latter is enforced by law, and those who commit it are protected from punishment. Other kinds of homicide are deemed crimes, but this one seems to be a special privilege of a few men called doctors, to whom the state gives a license to kill ad libitum. Young Tanner's death is the third caused by vaccination in Maiden alone.
"N. B. — There are no cases of small-pox in Maiden, nor is there any special danger from that disease. When will the people assert themselves and secure the repeal of this most odi- ous law?"
This winter (1900) there is a movement all along the line to enforce the compulsory law. In almost every state school boards have issued peremptory orders to vaccinate, or other- wise to exclude the children from the public schools. The taxes paid by the parents for public school service are not considered. The law, the boards and the vaccinators have the power of life
LOCAL CONTESTS. 1 59
and death, the same as was arrogated by the ancient kings. Lobbies and corrupt politicians make the laws. "Damn the people," say these impious usurpers ; "their province is to obey the laws and pay taxes." And half the people seem willing to pay this price for the privilege to live. The millionaire classes near rule in America today. The idea of the sovereignty of the citizen, has come to be regarded by the privileged classes as a form of silly twaddle which orators may affirm and re-affirm on the Fourth of July ; but it has become obsolete as a working principle for business men. Aye, business men, including the vaccinating syndicate, who "stand in" with the politicians and get the kind of legislation they want, and then proceed to dic- tate terms lo the protesting citizen with impunity.
I admit that the coined phrase — "damn the people" — stands for a certain fact, since only a minority in the mass are sturdy and self-sacrificing defenders of both general and personal lib- erty. A very considerable contingent among our voting popu- lation do not appreciate or care for any stake they may have in the government, and therefore hold their vote as a com- mercial commodity which they are ready to sell in the market and which political parties are just as ready to buy. This class of people, too, will generally turn their children over to the vac- cinator rather than be subject to any expense or inconvenience in protecting them.
Civilization breeds curses unknown to barbarism. A prim- itive and childlike people are sure to fade and die out by con- tact with a civilization like the mercenary Anglo-Saxon. Our sectarists and schools do not compensate for the evil effects of our vaccination-virus syphilis and "rotgut" whiskey. In a later chapter I shall show that vaccination imposed by the countries of Europe and the United States upon the West Indies, Sand- wich Islands, South Africa and Hindustan, outweigh all the other curses we have imposed upon those unfortunate peoples. Japan, though civilized, is departing from her ancient traditions
l6o VACCINATION A CURSE.
and borrowing her mo.Jels from the West. She is now being taken in hand by the commercial sharks and has recently adopted our vaccination practice and issued a decree making it compulsory. In the Philippines, too, the irrepressible vacci- nator is plying his unholy calling. There, as here, it is finan- cially profitable.
Down in Georgia the vaccinators are likewise busy. I clip the following from the New York World, Nov. 17, 1899: —
"Americus, Ga., Nov. 16. — Two cases of small-pox exist here and the local authorities have passed an ordinance making vaccination compulsory. Half a hundred members of the First Church of Christ (Scientists) oppose vaccination as against the doctrines of Christian Science, and the affair will be settled in the courts.
"Where citizens have refused to obey the new ordinance charges of disorderly conduct have been made against them in the Mayor's court.
'"Yesterday Mrs. C. B. Raines, wife of a prominent physi- cian, was summoned to court for refusing to be vaccinated. She is a Christian Scientist. Upon her refusal to be vaccinated or leave the city, Mrs. Raines was sentenced to thirty days in the police barracks. At the request of friends sentence was sus- pended until today, when the entire Christian Science church congregation was summoned to court upon the same charge. Among the number were many young girls, business men, matrons, and mothers with their babies.
"Attorneys for ihe Christian Scientists secured a continu- ance until tomorrow. The Christian Science church is an incor- porated body and holds a chaiter from the state of Georgia guaranteeing reiigious liberty. The members will steadfastly refuse to be vaccinated contrarv to their religious creed, and the entire membership will doubtless be sent to prison tomor- row for contempt of court."
This appears in the daily press merely as an item of newsj no comments ; no protest against this flagrant injustice and vio- lation of individual rights. Here is a religious body who have normal and conscientious scruples as well as rational and scien-
LOCAL CONTESTS. l6l
tific objections, against vaccination. The vaccinated are safe anyhow — according to the oft-repeated assertion of the vacci- nators— from all danger of taking small-pox from the unvacci- nated. Then why not leave the unvaccinated to their own lib- erty ? Answer : because the aggregate fees from the whole pop- ulation being vaccinated would be greater than those accruing from only a part being vaccinated. As long as the state has guaranteed this business, why not run it on "business princi- ples?" In the tithing days of the compulsory priest-tax, if we didn't pay up promptly, we were threatened with future damna- tion. Now, having transferred the privilege of compulsion from the priest to the doctor, he brings calf-lymph-virus-hell right into our households, here and now ; — brings it to stay and blos- som cut into eczema, sores, tumors, and various skin diseases.
I clip the following editorial from the Los Angeles "Med- ium," Sept. 21 : —
"The foulest blow that could possibly be struck at liberty of conscience has been dealt out this morning, (Monday, Sept. 18,) when the doors of the public schools (by decree of school directors backed by the board of health and an infamous state law,) closed against our children because we cannot consent to have their young bodies poisoned and enfeebled by the injection of vaccine rottenness into their healthy veins.
"This invasion by the doctors of the most sacred right of home, (the protection of our children's welfare,) is the most hu- miliating subjugation to another's will in a matter where intelli- gent conviction of duty points in the opposite direction, which parents can endure. Humiliating as it is for the fathers to bare their backs to the lash of these diplomatized tyrants, these, ras- cally whippers-in. it is ten thousand times more so for the mothers. Fathers have the one noble and unquestioned right remaining, viz. legislative protest and appeal. Woman has no such able weapon as the ballot with which to defend the objects of her supremest love from desecration by these M. D.'s in their unholy work. Is it possible that woman needed this last and most audacious heart-thrust to goad her on to demand and secure the noblest right of citizenship, — a voice in making the
l62 VACCINATION A CURSE.
laws by which she shall be governed in the fulfilment of her duty to her children?
"Mother love is the highest expression of the human soul, and must yet command every resource for the carrying out its sacred impulses.
"We especially ask our brother voters, to meet with us and tell us whether they intend to pay their school taxes while their children are robbed of the benefits so precious to every Ameri- can heart ; — to consider what steps to take toward the repeal of the infamous law ; — to take counsel with the mothers as to the surest and most speedy way to secure an honorable representa- tion in the legislative halls of the state.
"Since our children cannot be allowed to run in the streets deprived of the advantages of school, while we carry forward measures for the repeal of this unrighteous law, we must devise means for assuming the unjustly imposed burden, of private schools for them. Come one, come all, to the meeting an- nounced on opposite page. MRS. O. F. SHEPARD."
T clip another protest from the Chicago "Times-Herald," Nov. 20, 1899: —
"Chicago, Nov. 20.--T0 the Editor: The article bearing the title 'Vaccination for Chidren' should be read by the parents of all school pupils. I had just such a case of vicious vaccinat- ing and my little boy died from the poison introduced into his system by the vaccination. When the entire city becomes aroused against the crime of vaccination then will every attempt to carry out the outrage of vaccinating healthy children be sup- pressed. There is no law to compel pupils to suffer any person to tamper with the health of school children, and the doctors know it, yet they threaten the parents with keeping out of school the children who are told to leave the school if vaccination is at- tempted to be enforced. Let no rest be given the agitation of anti-vaccination. It is a crime, and no mistake, to infect a healthy babe with poison of anv kind.
HENRY C. STRONG,
778 North Rockwell Street."
I will now go a little outside the local province and insert a letter from an able Italian physician — Charles Ruata, M. D.,
LOCAL CONTESTS. 1 63
Professor of Hygiene and of Materia Medica in the University of Perugia, Italy. It was published in the New York Med. Jour., July 22, 1899:—
VACCINATION IN ITALY.
PERUGIA, Italy, June 21, 189^ To the Editor of the New York Medical Journal :
"Sir: In his presidential address to the American Medical Association Dr. Joseph M. Mathews had the goodness to call mad people, misguided people those who have not the good luck to be among the believers in the preventive power of vac- cination against small-pox. It is not surprising to hear such language from fanatics ; in fact it is most common to see igno- rant men make use of similar vulgar expressions ; but it seems to me almost incredible that the president of such a powerful as- sociation as the American Medical Association in his address showed himself so enthusiastic in his belief as to forget that re- spect which is due to his colleagues who do not have the same blind faith.
"It may be that we anti-vaccinationists are "mad" and "mis- guided," as Dr. Joseph M. Mathews affirms in his late address, but I feel that we are far more correct in our expressions, al- though we do not believe, but are quite sure, that vaccination is one of the most wonderful and most harmtul mistakes into which the medical profession has ever fallen. I can assure you that if I am a madman, my madness is very contagious, because all my pupils for several years have become as mad as I am, so that several thousands of the foremost medical men in Italy are suffering now with the same kind of madness.
"One of the most prominent characteristics of madness is shown in illusions and hallucinations which are accepted as fun- damental truths. Now, let us see what are the main facts about vaccination and small-pox in Italy :
"Italy is one of the best vaccinated countries in the world, if not the best of all. This we can prove mathematically.
"All our young men, with few exceptions, at the age of twenty years must spend three years in the army, where a regu- lation prescribes that they must be directly vaccinated. The of- ficial statistics of our army, published yearly, say that from 1885 to 1897 the recruits who were found never to have been vacci-
164 VACCINATION A CURSE.
nated before were less than 1.5 per cent., the largest number be- ing 2.1 per cent, in 1893, and the smallest 0.9 per cent, in 1892. This means, in the clearest way, that our nation twenty years before 1885 was yet vaccinated in the proportion of 98.5 per cent. Notwithstanding, the epidemics that we have had of small-pox, have been something so frightful that nothing could equal them before the invention of vaccination. To say that during the year 1887 we had 16,249 deaths from small-pox, 18,110 in the year 1888, and 13,413 in 1889 (our population is 30,000,000) is too little to give a taint idea of the ravages produced by small- pox, as these 18,110 deaths in 1888, etc., did not happen in the best educated regions of our country, but only in the most igno- rant parts, where our population live just as they lived a century ago — that is, the mountainous parts of Sardinia, Sicily, Cala- bria, etc. .Among the great number of little epidemics which produced the 18,110 deaths mentioned, T will only note the fol- lowing: Badolato, with a population of 3,800, had 1,200 cases of small-pox ; Guardavalle had 2,300 cases with a population of 3,500; St. Caterina del Jonio had 1,200 cases (population, 2,700) ; Capistrano had 450 cases (population, 1,120) ; Mayerato had 1,500 cases (population, 2,500). All these villages are in Calabria. In Sardinia the little village of Laerru had 150 cases of small-pox in one month (population, 800) ; Perfugas, too, in one month had 541 cases (population, 1,400); Ottana had 79 deaths from small-pox (population, 1,000), and the deaths were 51 at Lei (population, 414). In Sicily 440 deaths were registered at Noto (population, 18,000), 200 at Ferla (population, 4,500), 570 at Sortino (population, 9,000), 135 at San Cono (population, 1,600), and 2,100 deaths at Vittoria (population, 2,600)! Can you cite anything worse before the invention of vaccination? And the population of these villages is perfectly vaccinated, as I have proved already, not only, but I obtained from the local authorities a declaration that vaccination has been performed twice a year in the most satisfactory manner for many years past.
"Vaccinationists were not a little puzzled by these facts, and yet with the greatest certainty they asserted that this enor- mous number of deaths was due to wane of revaccination. Hap- pily, in Italy we are able to prove that revaccination has not the
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least preventive power. I only give a few figures : During the sixteen years 1882-97, our army had 1,273 cases of small-pox, with 31 deaths; 692 cases, with 17 deaths, happened in soldiers vaccinated with good result, and 581 cases, with 14 deaths, hap- pened in soldiers vaccinated with had result. This means that of a hundred cases of small-pox, fifty-four were in persons vac- cinated with good result, and only forty-six in those vaccinated with bad result, and that the death rate among those vaccinated with good result was 2.45 per cent, and only 2.40 per cent, in those vaccinated with bad result.
"Vaccinationists say that when vaccination does not 'take' the operation must be repeated, because no result means no pro- tection given. Now, we see that soldiers not protected because vaccination did not 'take' were less attacked by small-pox than those duly protected by the good result of their revaccination ; and that the death rate in those vaccinated with good result was greater than among those in whom vaccination did not 'take.'
"Our vaccinationists did not lose their extraordinary cour- age before these facts, and they objected that they might be ac- counted for by considering that during the years before 1890 vaccination was not well performed. I can not understand this objection, but accepted it, and have limited my analysis to the last six years, during which the only lymph used in all our army has been animal lymph, exclusively furnished by the government- institute for the production of animal Ivmph. The results are the following: The total number of our soMiers during these five years was 1,234,025, of which 783,605 were vaccinated with good result, and 450,420 with no result. In the first the cases of small-pox were 153 — that is, 1.95 to every 10,000 soldiers, while in the others the number of cases was only 45 — that is, 0.99 cases to every 10,000 soldiers. The 'duly protected' soldiers were at- tacked by small-pox in a proportion double that among the 'un- protected' soldiers.
As you see, these are official statements, extremely trust- worthy, because the official statistics were made in a country where and at a time when no one thought that it was possible to raise a doubt against the dogma of vaccination. In our coun- try, we have no league against vacination, and every father
l66 VACCINATION A CURSE.
thinks that vaccination is one of the first duties ; for these rea- sons no bias could exist against vaccination %n making these sta- tistics. I could continue for a long while to quote similar facts, but I wish to call your attention only to the two following ones : During the three most terrible years of epidemics that we have had in Italy lately (1887, 1888 and 1S89) the death rate from small-pox among our people of the same age as the soldiers (twenty, twenty-one, and twenty-two years) has been 21 per 100.000, and it was 2J.7 during the worst year (1888). Tn our army the same death rate during nine years (1867-75) na* been 20 per 100,000, and it was 61.3 during the worst year (1871).
"In consequence of our young men being obliged to spend three years in the army, it happens that after the age of twenty years, men are by far better vaccinated than women, and, if vac- cination did prevent, after the age of twenty small-pox should kill fewer men than women. But in fact just the reverse has happened. I give here the statistics of the three years 1887, 1888 and 1889 as the ones of greatest epidemics, but all the other years give the same results :
Deaths before Man. Woman. Man. Woman. Man. Woman. Man. Woman.
the age of 20.... 5.997 5.983 7.349 7.353 5.625 5.631 18.972 18.968 After the age of 20 2.459 i-8io 1990 1.418 1.296 863 5749 4091
"After these facts I would most respectfully ask Dr. Joseph M. Mathews if he can show that in considering them I have lost my mind. At any rate, I do not consider it correct for a medical man to make use of such language against other medical men, who have the only fault of considering facts as they are, and not as one wishes they should be.
"The progress of knowledge has for its principle base, truth and freedom, and I hope that in the name of truth and freedom vou will publish these observations, badly expressed in a lan- guage that is not mv own, in your most esteemed journal.
CHARLES RUATA, M. D."
CHAPTER VI.
VACCINAL INJURIES AND FATALITIES.
"Small-pox, typhus, and other fevers, occur on common conditions of foul air, stagnant putrefaction, bad house drainage, sewers of deposit, excrement-sodden sites, filthy street surfaces, impure water, and over-crowding. The entire removal of such conditions is the effectual preventive of diseases of these species, whether in ordinary or extraordinary visitations." — SIR ED- WIN CHADWICK, C. B.
In the last century it was the intelligent poor who, with an unerring instinct in such matters, were the first to rise in open revolt against the practice of inoculation, a practice which the doctors assured the general public would modify and mitigate the severity of small-pox to the extent that would render it harmless. The inoculators had a pecuniary interest in the prac- tice then, the same as vaccinators have in the practice they are now, through legislation, pushing to the front for its compulsory enforcement. It was thoughts and votes — it was the popular dread and the persistent opposition of laymen which finally over- threw the old inoculation practice. So in this more modern practice, if the doctors were not supported by political legisla- tion, there would be little to complain of. The vaccinator would be but rarely consulted, and it would not be long before the gen- eral verdict would be pronounced against it.
l68 VACCINATION A CURSE.
There are very many painful facts associated with the prac- tice of vaccination which point toward a distinct vaccinal dia- thesis as having been engendered in the general population from ihe presence in the blood of the vaccinal virus as an active mor- bid agent. But few families in this country have escaped its baleful effects. This deadly virus works its way slowly, perhaps, into the weakest organs of each child, and there industriously sets up its inversive kingdom to wage an unrelenting war against ;he physiological integrity of the organism. The vaccine virus once introduced into the blood it extends its poisonous influ- ence, and later usurps permanent possession. It has come to stay, and henceforth make a hades ot trouble for the possessor. This malignant spirit, intrenched in the very center of the life forces, will defy all the arts we may employ to exercise it. Some poisons are swift, instantaneous : they speedily accomplish their destructive work and then depart : but the vaccine-poison is a composite fiend into which has entered the subtle germs or sporules of eczema, leprosy, consumption, cancer, erysipelas, scrofula, syphilis, and tetanus together with other diseases known and unknown, picked up on the way from Jenner to the present time. Once installed beneath the skin, they take their time to "develop their claim" — one year, ten years, this genera- tion or the next ; no matter, death has a mortgage on the prem- ises and will claim his own and receive it on demand. If vaccina- tion were made a penal offence today, yet would the crop of dis- eases which the vaccinator has sowed continue to yield its terri- ble harvest of disease and de