[SSRI-Research] THE FRAUD OF VACCINATION - January 3, 1923.

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[sSRI-Research] THE FRAUD OF VACCINATION - January 3, 1923.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dr. Hadwen's First Article.

 

From " Truth, " January 3, 1923.

 

THE FRAUD OF VACCINATION

 

Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace in his book The Wonderful Century, devoted a

chapter to " Vaccination, a Delusion " ; Dr. Charles Creighton, an

acknowledged authority on epidemiology, declared independently that

" the bottom had been knocked out of a grotesque superstition, " a

conclusion irresistibly forced upon anybody who gives unbiased study

to the subject. Yet so strong is the effect- of authority, custom, and

endowment, and so prone are people to save themselves the trouble of

personal investigation by the simple process of accepting the

decisions of " the majority " (which they thereby swell, rendering the

process easier to others), that it has been possible, within the last

few weeks, for a gigantic scare to be got up in the interests of

vaccination on the ground of an altogether insignificant outbreak of

smallpox almost entirely confined to one East End workhouse, where the

Public Vaccinator himself was one of the first to fall a prey to the

disease.

 

One well-known daily paper, not a household word for accuracy,

committed itself to the ludicrous statement that two of the adult

patients, having been protected by vaccination in infancy, thereby

secured a mild attack, ignoring the fact that vaccination in infancy

had not prevented the actual death of others. Jenner declared

positively that a primary vaccination protected for life, and his

followers, while obliged to drop this claim (for which piece of

unsupported bombast be received £30,000), have fallen back upon the

theory that it at least mitigates the disease. Evidently these have

been " mitigated " -deaths.

 

SMALLPOX NO LONGER SERIOUS

 

According to a reply given recently by Major Boyd Carpenter in

Parliament, 56 provincial and 7 London districts have had cases of

smallpox during the past year. And in all these places many thousands

of unvaccinated persons, called a " danger to others, " have not even

been a danger to themselves, the total deaths, including vaccinated

and unvaccinated, having only been 27, with the unprecedentedly low

death-rate of barely 3 per cent. The total number of cases all over

the country is given as 902, of whom 271 were vaccinated and 625

either " unvaccinated " or " presenting no evidence of vaccination " and

incubation cases; 6 cases with no information.

 

We are struck here with the remarkable fact that two distinct classes

are included among the unvaccinated, namely, those which presented no

doubt, and those apparently examined for " evidence " which was not

found. Clearly the latter cases are those in which the patients

declared that they had been vaccinated. The marks may have been

concealed by the eruption, or their vaccination may not have "

taken " -in which case, according to the theory, smallpox ought not to

have " taken " either. This circumstance, together with the tricks that

can be played with the classification during a scare-counting as

unvaccinated those alleged to have been " probably " sickening before

the vaccination took place-renders the classification highly

unsatisfactory. I have had personal experience of the tendency to put

down a smallpox case as unvaccinated. Every kind of disingenuousness

is resorted to in order to make the diagnosis agree with a

preconception. The fact has ere now been confessed by the offender.

Even where-if anywhere-the classification is correct , it must be

remembered that the unvaccinated class is liable to contain children

so delicate that the public vaccinator has refused to vaccinate them,

infants a few days or weeks old whose parents are among the sufferers,

and others who cannot be fairly compared with the normal majority. In

the recent Poplar outbreak an official of the Ministry of Health has

stated that only 19 per cent of the child population is vaccinated,

and practically everywhere the percentage of the unvaccinated exceeds

that of the vaccinatcd. This, of course, has a great influence on the

figures. If smallpox breaks out in a school, in a district where most

of the children are unvaccinated, the majority of the sufferers are

bound to be in that class.

 

People have been solemnly warned that the reason why smallpox has just

broken out is because our population is unvaccinated; yet Dr. Killick

Millard complains of primary vaccination as liable to make smallpox

mild and unrecognised, so that the element of danger lies in the

vaccinated! He has his excuse in the circumstance that these have

always started epidemics.

 

THE ORIGIN OF VACCINATION.

 

Why do people believe in vaccination? Why did they ever believe in the

King's touch?

 

Jenner's idea was based solely upon a dairymaid's superstition. He

sought to give it a scientific air by calling cowpox (a disease which

bears no analogy to smallpox) variolae vaccinae-i.e., smallpox of the

cow. The Latin name was not without its effect, and anything that

promised less harmful results than the prevailing practice of the

direct inoculation of smallpox matter (which had been killing people

by hundreds, and afterwards had to be forbidden by Act of Parliament)

was acceptable at the time to the frightened and gullible population.

The rest was an affair of influence. When once an error is accepted by

a profession corporately and endowed by Government, to uproot it

becomes a herculean task, beside which the entrance of a rich man into

the Kingdom of heaven is easy.

 

The Compulsory Vaccination Act was passed in 1853; a still more

stringent one followed in 1867. And between the years 1871 and 1880

there were 57,016 smallpox deaths. Compare this with the small number

in the present day, when considerably more than half the population is

unvaccinated, and when awful warnings are periodically uttered about

the decimating scourge always " bound to come, " which never arrives!

Between 1911 and 1920 the deaths numbered only 110.

 

Let us look at the most recent Annual report of the

Registrar-General-the eighty-third. He states that during the last 15

years 53 vaccinated persons have died of smallpox. In addition, there

were 92 other deaths of the " doubtful " class mentioned above; that is,

those declared by patients or friends to have been vaccinated, but

which have been entered by medical officials as " doubtful " rather than

take the slight trouble of searching the registers for verification.

We may conclude, therefore, that there were 145 cases of smallpox

deaths in vaccinated persons in this country during the last 15 years.

And yet there were only 78 unvaccinaed deaths during the same period.

Thus, the rate of vaccinated to unvaccinated deaths is nearly two to

one. This is the more remarkable seeing that during this same 15 years

England has been largely unvaccinated, probably to the extent of about

75 per cent.

 

DANGERS OF VACCINATION.

 

But the tragedy of the whole sorry business is this:

 

That during thc same 15-year period there is recorded by the same

authority the terrible toll of 165 deaths from " cowpox and other

effects of vaccination! " In short, vaccination not only failed to save

145 persons from death, but actually killed another 165 in addition!

Hence, whereas 78 are alleged to have died because the " preventive "

had not been resorted to, more than double that number died from the

effects of its use. What have the scaremongers who boast of the

" certain and harmless preventive " to say to this? The only way, so far

as I can see, that those 165 poor little victims of the eighteenth

century Gloucestershire dairymaid's superstition were prevented from

having smallpox (if they were ever likely to get it) was in being

killed by the " preventive " before the disease could attack them.

 

In some years more persons have been officially certified as killed by

vaccination than by smallpox. Besides this, enormous numbers are left

with some permanent disability, a fact to which parents, at least, can

testify. Meanwhile, whenever smallpox comes, it is promptly and easily

dealt with, and fails to spread beyond a limited time and area.

Sanitation has practically banished the disease, just as it banished

black death, cholera, and typhus. It would appear that vaccination, so

far from aiding, actually retarded the decline, for the

Registrar-General reported in 1880 that it was the only gross zymotic

which showed a rise in the death-rate-that is, after 30 years of

compulsory vaccination.

 

THE GLOUCESTER EPIDEMIC

 

The advocates of vaccination are never tired of quoting the smallpox

epidemic which occurred in Gloucester in1895-6. A picture of

Gloucester Cemetery is often presented, apparently with the idea of

impressing an ex parte statement upon the memory. Where the picture

itself cannot be given, the statement alone is made-viz., that 279

unvaccinated children lie buried in that cemetery (the picturesque

detail is never by any chance omitted), together with only one out of

some 8,000 children said to he vaccinated before or during the

epidemic. The latter figure may be correct officially, but it is

incorrect actually, for I worked in Gloucester at the time and came

into personal contact with the cases, and I have the names and

addresses of 116 vaccinated children up to ten years of age attacked

by the disease, of whom 27 died.

 

The truth is that the whole child population of Gloucester was

practically an unvaccinated population, the vaccinated numbering only

4 per cent.; hence the greater number of unvaccinated attacked is

easily explained. Ten thousand unvaccinated children passed through

that epidemic unscathed. The severity of the scourge was due to

sanitary defects, which were afterwards remedied at great cost, to the

fact that the disease broke out and spread like wildfire in a large

unsanitary elementary school, where the vaccinated teacher was the

first to succumb, and to the utterly disgraceful hospital conditions

to which these little patients were removed. Out of the 1,979 total

cases; about 1,750 occurred in the southern half of Gloucester, where

the sanitary defects above mentioned existed, the unvaccinated

children of time northern half escaping practically unscathed. Nearly

two-thirds of those attacked-viz., 1,211 out of 1,979-were vaccinated,

in spite of the fact that Gloucester was an " unvaccinated city. "

 

GERMANY AND THE PHILIPPINES

 

No European country has had such severe vaccination laws as Germany.

They started in 1834, and enforced continual re-vaccinations. Yet in

1871-2 smallpox carried off no fewer than 124,948 in Prussia alone. In

Berlin itself there were 17,038 vaccinated cases of smallpox, of whom

2,240 were under ten years of age, and of these vaccinated children

736 died.

 

A particularly interesting case is that of the Philippines. When these

islands fell into the hands of the Americans a vast vaccination scheme

was carried out, and smallpox, which had naturally been a scourge

among the inhabitants owing to the bad sanitary conditions, declined

just in proportion as these were remedied. The result was, of course,

put down to vaccination, though there is a certain humour in the

circumstance that, while the natives were suffering less from

smallpox, the vaccinated arid re-vaccinated American soldiers fell

victims to it, dying at a percentage three times higher than that

which obtained among the unvaccinated people they had come to

instruct. Of course, the usual thorough system of cleansing, finding

its parallel later in the Panama region, was pursued, and for many

years it was the great boast of the disciples of Jenner that smallpox

was banished from the Philippines.

 

They boasted too soon. Within the last few years, in spite of the

rigorous vaccination laws, the disease has regained its old virulence,

and there were no fewer than 60,612 cases and 43,294 deaths from

smallpox in the Philippines during 1919-an enormous toll in a

population of something under 11,000,000.

 

Whenever laxity in sanitation occurs, it is clear that smallpox

ignores vaccination, just as typhoid fever ignored inoculation during

the war under similar conditions. The Americans, content with having

once cleansed the Philippines, no doubt shut their eyes to many

unhygienic practices. It is one thing to teach natives how to live and

start them on a right path, but quite another to see that they keep to

it. Vaccination, however, never suffers neglect so long as medical

officials are maintained for the performance of the rite; and it is

somewhat amusing to find that the Filipinos, horror-stricken at the

toll smallpox has been taking, have attacked vaccination itself as the

originating cause which seems to them time most probable.

 

The Birth of the Vaccination Fraud

 

Editorial in " Truth " for January 10

 

In his article " The Fraud of Vaccination, " published last week in

Truth, Dr. Hadwen made some remarks not altogether complimentary to

the discoverer of time reputed prophylactic against smallpox. These

remarks led one reader to denounce both Dr. Hadwen and myself- Dr.

Hadwen for libelling one of the greatest benefactors of humanity, and

myself for propagating the libel. Dr. Hadwen is well able to take care

of himself. For my own part, not wishing to do any injustice to the

name and fame of the late Dr. Jenner, I asked Dr. Hadwen what he had

against him, and he replied by sending me a pamphlet he has written on

the subject. This I have compared with the account of Jenner's life

given in the Dictionary of National Biography, and the result is so

illuminating that I will now give the salient facts as briefly as

possible.

 

To begin with, it is clear that Jenner never possessed anything that

would be recognised to-day as a medical qualification. At the age of

16 he was apprenticed to a country surgeon and apothecary, and at 21

he was sent for two years as a pupil to Dr. John Hunter, of London,

who undoubtedly was the most eminent surgeon of his day, and, like

Jenner himself, a keen naturalist. At 23 Jenner returned to his native

village and started to practise as surgeon and apothecary. Here he

remained for 17 years, just a plain unqualified country surgeon and

apothecary, unknown to the world at large, but keeping up a

correspondence with Hunter on a variety of natural history subjects.

At the end of this period he made his first bid for fame. In 1787 he

sent a paper on " The Natural History of the Cuckoo " to the Royal

Society, and, as a result, with Hunter's influence, he was elected

F.R.S. The paper contained a number of commonplace facts and some

others, which Jenner stated to be from his own observation. The latter

turned out to be purely imaginary, Jenner having accepted the report

of a youthful nephew on the incidents he described. The coveted

fellowship, therefore, appears to have been obtained by something very

nearly approaching fraud. Three years later he applied to St. Andrew's

University for an M.D., and as St. Andrew's in those days was no more

squeamish about granting degrees than some of the so-called American

Universities are to-day, so long as the fees are forthcoming, Jenner

became Dr. Jenner for the modest outlay of £15. Later on in life,

after several applications, he was also granted an M.D. by the

University of Oxford, though this was not until after his discovery

had been generally adopted.

 

As for the discovery itself, it appears to have been founded upon what

Dr. Hadwen calls a " superstition among the dairymaids of

Gloucestershire that a person who had suffered from cowpox would never

have smallpox. " I hardly think anyone would to-day regard this as more

than superstition. Smallpox was then one of time commonest, most

dreaded diseases in all ranks of society, and it was already the

custom to inoculate people with it in order that they should get the

disease under the most favourable circumstances. Jenner appears to

have bethought himself of testing the Dairymaid's superstition, and

with this object he inoculated a boy named James Phipps with lymph

from a vesicle on the hand of a dairymaid suffering from cowpox in

May, 1796. In July of the same year he inoculated the same boy with

smallpox by what Dr. Hadwen calls the " bogus Suttonian method, " which

" afforded no evidence as to protection. " Yet it was upon the strength

of this solitary experiment that Jenner had launched his discovery

upon the world, claiming that cowpox was a prophylactic against

smallpox, while to give some sort of scientific colour to the claim he

labeled cowpox with the name " Variolae Vaccinae " (smallpox of the cow).

 

On the later developments and time exploitation of vaccination there

is no need to dwell at any length. Jenner obtained both cash and

credit. He received £30,000 in grants from Parliament for his

wonderful discovery, and all classes, medical and lay, tumbled over

themselves in their desire to do him honour, though even then there

existed a few sceptics who asked for better proof of the claims made

for time new prophylactic. That those claims could not be fully

substantiated was proved when he was called upon to attend the son of

Earl Grosvenor, who was suffering from confluent smallpox, although

vaccinated in infancy by Jenner himself. He thereupon modified his

claims for the protective powers of his cowpox vaccine, and he was

content to assert that vaccination had modified the disease so that

his patient's life was preserved.

 

What strikes me as most remarkable about the whole story is the ease

with which Jenner got his theory accepted. It is true that medical

research was a very different thing in the early days of the

nineteenth century from what it is to-day ; but even then the picture

of the whole of time Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons swallowing

the theory of an unqualified country apothecary, based on one totally

unreliable experiment, seems scarcely credible. Jenner's personal bona

fides is a different matter. It is unquestionable that he obtained his

Fellowship of the Royal Society by humbugging that learned body with

his yarn about a cuckoo; but that he deliberately set himself to

humbug the whole of the public as well as the medical profession 'with

his " Variolae Vaccinae, " I hesitate to believe. I should imagine that

he was one of those unscientific researchers who, like the

spiritualists, are on the look out for facts to fit their theories,

instead of first making sure of their facts. His methods were those of

the quack, but of the self-deluded quack. But how any real scientist

can accept his theories to-day seems astounding, except under the

supposition that they have been supported by later and more conclusive

experiments.

 

From " Truth, " January 17, 1923.

 

SANITATION v. VACCINATION.

 

THE ORIGIN OF SMALLPOX.

 

 

 

By following the superstitious impulses of Edward Jenner and the

ancient tradition of time Gloucestershire dairymaids, the medical

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

smallpox? The faculty of reasoning upon time 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 time populace have not

been 'protected' against it by vaccination. " This reply only begs the

question. It pre-supposes 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, lie 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 time world

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

with insanitary and unhygienic conditions. From time 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

unsanitation 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 time 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 time ranks of Jennerian

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

unvaccinated city! " Never in all time 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 time 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; time water supply ran

short; flushing of the sewers had to be discontinued, and time

sewerage pipes became choked. When, after time 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 time 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 w.c.s 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 w.c.s 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

insanitary 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 time

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, time

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 utilised 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 time atmosphere, it flushed the

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

soil, and the epidemic died down. The councillors 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 time 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 flood-gates 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 time 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 time. He was vaccinated in infancy,

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

three times. 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 sma1lpox? " 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?