Sanitation Vs. Vaccination - The Origin of Smallpox

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[sSRI-Research] Epidemics: direct result of the vaccinations

 

 

 

 

Sanitation Vs. Vaccination - The Origin of Smallpox

 

http://www.mercola.com/2001/may/5/vaccination_smallpox.htm

 

by Walter S. Hadwen M.D.

 

Dr Hadwen was a passionate opponent of Jennerian smallpox vaccination

in England around 1900.

 

Since Edward Jenner demonstrated the use of cowpox vaccine against

smallpox in 1796, vaccinations against smallpox were started. Despite

this, a smallpox epidemic swept England in 1839 and killed 22,081 people.

 

In 1853 the Government made smallpox vaccinations compulsory, but the

incidence of the disease kept increasing, and in 1872 another epidemic

killed 44,840 people, most of whom were vaccinated.

 

The compulsory vaccination law was abolished in 1948. Similar

disasters occurred in Germany and Japan, but possibly the worst was in

the Philippines in 1918 when the US Government forced over three

million natives to be vaccinated.

 

Of these, 47,369 came down with smallpox and 16,477 died. In 1919 the

program was doubled, and over seven million were vaccinated, of whom

65,180 came down with the disease and 44,408 died.

 

The epidemic was a direct result of the vaccination program.

 

These facts are described by Dr William F. Koch in his book The

Survival Factor in Neoplastic and Viral Disease (1961).

 

By following the superstitious impulses of Edward Jenner and the

ancient tradition of the Gloucestershire dairymaids, the medical

profession has lost sight of the vital question, what is the origin of

smallpox?

 

The faculty of reasoning upon the subject appears to have become

almost extinct; in its place there has arisen a demand for obedience

to authority. Fashion has usurped the place of scientific thought, and

arbitrary Acts of Parliament and the policeman's truncheon have

supplanted logical consistency.

 

When the question is asked, " Why does smallpox break out at all? " the

twentieth century scientist answers, " Because the populace have not

been 'protected' against it by vaccination. "

 

This reply only begs the question. It presupposes that smallpox is a

natural visitation of Providence which may strike anybody at any

moment, and that the only way by which this presumed inevitable evil

can be met, is to compel every human being in this world to undergo a

process of " protection, " which is to render the system " immune " to attack.

 

This is a negative form of reasoning. It leaves unanswered the crucial

question, what is the origin of smallpox?

 

Why are we to suppose, as was believed in the eighteenth century, that

a smallpox attack is the probable lot of every member of the race?

Why must everybody be diseased to protect him against disease,

especially if that disease is one from which, owing to altered

conditions, he is never likely to suffer?

 

Surely, if a disease breaks out there must be a cause for it.

 

The Source Of All " Outbreaks "

 

Now one fact stands out pre-eminently in every part of the world where

smallpox has appeared -- namely, it has been invariably associated

with unsanitary and unhygienic conditions.

 

From the immemorial it has been called in Austria " The Beggar's Disease. "

 

It has followed in the wake of

 

filth,

poverty,

wars,

pestilences,

famines,

and general insanitation, in all ages.

 

It accompanied the clash of arms of the American armies in their

struggle for independence, and in their Civil and Spanish wars; it

claimed more victims than the battlefield in the ravages of the

Crimea; it formed the dark background to the triumphant marches of the

German army in 1870; it increased tenfold the horrors of the siege of

Paris; and plagued our warriors at Tel-el-Kebir.

 

Even during the late Great War no inconsiderable amount of smallpox

occurred amongst all the armies involved wherever conditions of

insanitation triumphed over the scrupulous efforts made to circumvent

them.

 

Smallpox outbreaks and epidemics have invariably been the call of

Nature to responsible authorities at home: " Put your house in order " ;

personal municipal, and civic cleanliness has been her unvarying

demand, a demand which was couched in one striking injunction by the

prophet of old: " Wash and be clean. "

 

Redruth

 

I remember 26 years ago there was an outbreak of smallpox at Redruth,

in Cornwall. The Press in all parts of the United Kingdom was

immediately supplied with exaggerated reports, and scares were created

by public vaccinators hundreds of miles away. I went down to

investigate the affair on my own account. There were altogether 44

cases; 84 per cent occurred in vaccinated persons.

 

One-fourth of the cases was located in " Trestrails Row, " consisting of

seven houses, each containing only two small low-roofed rooms, and

with no water connections. One midden privy, in the most disgusting

condition, accommodated the seven houses. One of these hovels was

occupied by no fewer than seven persons, all of whom contracted

smallpox, and out of the total of seven deaths three occurred in this

house.

 

Nearly another fourth of the cases was confined to Adelaide Road and

Raymond Road, where smallpox first appeared, the houses of which were

supplied with uncovered cesspits. Three cases occurred in Falmouth

Road, with one death which took place in a house closely hedged in by

foul middens, a manure heap, and a piggery.

 

Three more cases and one death occurred in the midst of similar

unsanitary conditions at Hockin's Court. Midden privies were the order

of the day, and the ultimate disposal of the sewage was primitive to a

degree. The smallpox rapidly played itself out, and then the

municipality corrected the conditions that had been the cause of the

outbreak.

 

Gloucester

 

I remember, too, the epidemic in Gloucester in 1895-6. I was in and

out of the smallpox houses throughout that visitation of nearly 2,000

cases. The echo of it is still heard among the ranks of Jennerian

followers, and always with the tragic whisper, " Gloucester was an

unvaccinated city! "

 

Never in all the history of professional scaremongering was such a

determined effort made to boost vaccination, and never a word was

uttered as to the shocking insanitary conditions which produced the

tragedy. In fact, those conditions were persistently denied by the

officials who were responsible for them.

 

The smallpox was practically confined to the southern half of the

city, where there was no fall for the sewage.

 

The pipes had been hurriedly laid in this new district without

concrete base or cemented joints.

 

There was a drought that lasted months; the water supply ran short;

flushing of the sewers had to be discontinued, and the sewerage pipes

became choked.

 

When, after the epidemic was over, investigation was made, the pipes

were found to be broken in all directions; in fact, the whole district

of -- for the most part -- crowded houses, many of them back-to-back

with no through ventilation, lay over what was nothing more nor less

than a huge cesspit.

 

The outlets for the sewer-gas consisted of street manholes, which

belched their poison into the atmosphere.

 

I traced the first case of smallpox in every street to the house

nearest to a manhole.

 

Wooden stoppers were made to close them down, but they had to be used

sparingly lest the sewer-gas should be driven into the houses.

Hundreds of the houses were drawing their water supply from shallow

wells, liable to contamination by constant leakage into them from

house drains; and the sewage-pipes in numerous instances ran under the

floors of the houses from the closets at the back to the street in front.

 

Some of the houses had their toilets in the back kitchen. In one

street of 114 houses the latter were supplied with water declared by

the city surveyor to be contaminated with sewage from its source to

its delivery, and as it had not force enough to fill the flushing

tanks, the toilets were never flushed and always choked, the contents

being emptied periodically on to the small garden ground attached.

 

In some of these tiny houses there were seven, nine, and even twelve

cases of smallpox. A sixth part of the whole epidemic occurred in

three streets. In one street the sewage entered the cellars of the

houses, and the choked-up street sewer had to be opened up in the

midst of the epidemic. Nearly half the houses in this street had

smallpox cases.

 

Then the epidemic caught on in two disgracefully unsanitary and

overcrowded, ill-ventilated elementary schools.

 

Forty-five children were struck down suddenly in one of them and 31 in

the other. The patients were removed to what was called an isolation

hospital. It was congregation, not isolation. A woman employed in the

early part of the epidemic as solitary night nurse told me that the

sight and screaming of these poor children at night as they ran about

the wards in delirium so completely unnerved her that she was obliged

to leave.

 

They were allowed no water for their fevered skins, the baths were

choked with dirty linen, and never used. The little ones were packed

three, four, and even five in a bed; vermin was crawling everywhere;

no oil was used for the faces, and the poor children scratched

themselves till they bled.

Of every two taken in to the Stroud Road Hospital one was carried out

a corpse; when the mortuary became choked with dead bodies, the

bathroom was utilized for this purpose.

 

One child lay for two weeks and two days with her eyes scabbed and not

a single drop of water was given to relieve her. When one hospital

became full, another one was opened which had been used as a cholera

hospital many years before.

 

It was built on stakes in a rough, boggy field; it had no sewerage

connections, nor any drainage whatever, and water had to be carried in

water-carts over a quarter of a mile of bog to reach it.

 

The panic became fearful, and a wild, despairing cry went up from the

plague-stricken city as the destroying angel sped from house to house

in these awful slums.

 

And what was the answer the terror-stricken inhabitants received from

the Guardians of Public Health?

 

Still the same mad reply: " These be thy gods, O Israel! " as they

pointed to the vaccine lancets, dripping with their filthy venom; in

helplessness and fear they implored the people, in a unanimously

signed medical manifesto, to bow down and worship at the shrine.

 

At last the rain came. It washed the atmosphere, it flushed the sewers

and drains; it filled the vacuoles of sewer gas in the sandy soil, and

the epidemic died down.

 

The councilors who put up at the next municipal contest were one and

all indignantly swept away at the polls by the enraged voters, and

anti-vaccinationists took their place; a new sewerage system was laid

throughout the whole smallpox district at a cost of some £30,000;

20,000 sanitary defects in the houses were rectified, and no smallpox

has occurred since, although nearly 90 per cent, of the population is

unvaccinated.

 

But even in that awful epidemic, smallpox picked out the vaccinated

for attack; two-thirds of the sufferers had been " protected " by the

filthy superstitious rite.

 

Sheffield And Other Cases

 

I remember Sheffield and its epidemic in 1887-8. No less than 98 per

cent of the population had been vaccinated; it was the best vaccinated

town in the kingdom the public vaccinators had reaped a richer harvest

of bonuses for " successful vaccination " than those of any other town,

and yet they had 7,000 cases of smallpox.

 

It originated and clung to an unsanitary area of 175 acres covered

with cesspits -- which was called The Croft. The medical profession

helplessly cried " vaccinate " and " re-vaccinate " -- as if the pubic had

not already had enough of it.

 

At last the floodgates of heaven were mercifully opened, and the

bountiful rains suddenly accomplished what 56,000 vaccinations had

failed to effect.

 

I went to Middlesbrough in the great epidemic of 1898. I visited every

smallpox hospital ward, and investigated the conditions of the houses,

and their environment, from whence the smallpox came. As everybody

knows, the houses at that the had been run up at an enormous rate,

much too fast for the sanitary officials to keep pace with them.

 

The part where the smallpox raged was situated chiefly over a swamp

where it was difficult to find foundations for the houses; many of

them were raised on piles driven through the soil.

 

The only method of house sanitation in all that district was that of

pails in the backyards. But whatever else had been neglected,

vaccination had been sedulously attended to -- the inhabitants were

vaccinated up to 98.4 per cent, of the population.

 

Nevertheless the vaccinated and re-vaccinated hospital officials fell

before the disease side by side with the vaccinated and re-vaccinated

inhabitants.

 

Nine hospital ward-maids, one trained nurse, one medical man and three

policemen fell victims to the disease.

 

Outraged Nature laughed outright at the Jennerian fetish and declared

in plain and unmistaken language that if smallpox was to be prevented

the conditions which caused it must be remedied. Poisoning human

bodies with the products of a foul eruption on a cow's udder could

only add fuel to the fire by reducing the vital resisting powers of

the sufferers.

 

I call to mind the case of one adult male I interviewed in one of the

smallpox hospital wards at that the. He was vaccinated in infancy, had

smallpox when eight years old, and was subsequently re-vaccinated

three thes.

 

That man died of smallpox. I took a particular interest in that case,

and was staggered to find when the official report was published that,

owing to his having had the eruption so badly as to cover his

vaccination marks, he was actually declared to be " unvaccinated " !

 

I have visited Glasgow in two of its smallpox epidemics. The slums in

which they occurred; the overcrowded and unsanitary condition of the

tenements told, the same tale as elsewhere. Nothing but sweeping away,

the rookeries, where smallpox invariably, takes hold, can ever save

those parts of the city from periodical visitations.

 

Space forbids further reminiscences but it is the same story

everywhere. Go back to the records of Old London and we find

insanitation and smallpox keeping company throughout.

 

The Lesson Of The Public Health Act

 

Before the passing of the Public Health Act of l875 in this country,

every succeeding epidemic of smallpox was worse than its predecessor

in spite of more and more compulsory vaccination; but with less and

less vaccination and more and more sanitation smallpox has become a

comparative curiosity. It is only in unsanitary quarters it can gain a

hold.

 

Sir Edwin-Chadwick, the veteran sanitarian, has well said:

 

Smallpox, typhus, and other fevers occur in common conditions of foul

air, stagnant putrefaction, bad house drainage, sewers of deposit,

excrement sodden sites, filthy street surfaces, impure water, and

overcrowding, and the entire removal of such conditions is the

effectual preventive of diseases of those species, whether in ordinary

or extraordinary visitations.

 

When will the medical profession arouse itself to ask the question:

 

" What is the origin of smallpox? "

 

When will a Ministry of Health cease to bring discredit upon itself by

the advocacy of a disgusting fetish that has proved, itself a failure

as a preventive of the disease in every part of the world in which it

has been adopted for the last century and a quarter?

 

When will a British Government that boasts of its progress and

civilisation cease to ally itself with a filthy, uncivilised,

unscientific practice that has done nothing but spread disease and

death amongst the populace for generation and which is opposed to the

common-sense views of the majority of thinking men and women in the realm?

 

From " Truth, " January 17, 1923