ECZEMA FROM VACCINATION
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2OO VACCINATION A CURSE.
surfaces of the mouth, throat, stomach and lungs. In the Reg-
istrar General's office, London, there were registered one thousand diseases that afflict the human body, the larger pro- portion of which are based on the sequelae or after effects, and not upon the real disease or its productive cause. Moreover. if medical men had a predominant and enthusiastic interest in the public health as they now have in disease, the facts pertain- ing to blood poisoning would receive a very different treatment at their hands. In the discussion of vaccination as a form of
blood poisoning, practitioners have never gone to the core of the subject to find a scientific warrant for the support of their claim. They persistently evade the fundamental aspects of the question, and like a party politician, work upon the fears and prejudices of the populace to enhance a practice which they must know neither cures nor prevents disease. In order to pro- mote these interests, the registration department increases death-causes in general, and others in particular, which are in- definite and so arraigned that vaccine disasters may be screened or covered up at the vaccinators discretion. The leaders in the vaccination movement must be perfectly
aware that vaccination stands condemned, but they have no idea of surrendering it; first and foremost, because of its money value; secondly, because they do not wish to affect or disturb the present disease conditions of the country and the world; and thirdly, they dread the manner in which an awakened con- science and an indignant public would call them to account for a century of blood poisoning. Disease—kept "booming" by vaccination—when discontinued and superseded by sanitation. the death rate will decline so rapidly that the "way faring man though a fool" will be able to see whereof he has been deceived by the rash vaccinating doctor, who thenceforth will be rated at his proper value. Judas went to his own place and that is where he ought to have gone. God is just. |
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INJURIES AND FATALITIES. 201
Such poisons as nature fails to readily eliminate from the
system are stored up in the blood, awaiting the specially excit- ing cause that shall call them forth,—such as deteriorated vital power, bad habits, exposure, anxiety, disappointment, worry, etc. Any or all of these may rouse the poison into fatal activity. Syphilitic, leprous, or cancerous poison may be vaccinated into a family and there remain inert to the third or fourth genera- lion ; hydrophobia poison may lie dormant for a term of years; cancer and scrofula may sleep for a time, but at last each and all of these will usurp the soil in which they have been planted. Dr. Pickering mentions the case of a syphilitic patient with
a bad knee, who, by constant use of mercurial ointment for fif- teen years brought on a most deadly salivation, which ran from his mouth day and night. The tongue became knotted and the odor was so intense as to be offensive to pedestrians passing that way. We may not be able to calculate the results of that first dis-
ease taint which the vaccinator introduces through the skin puncture he inflicts on our little ones. Our eye may not follow it in its various paths, through its sure ramification and develop- ment in later life; through the children and children's chil- dren in whom that blood taint will deploy and accomplish its work of final ruin. It is indeed a serious thing to poison life at its fountain head, even thoughtlessly thinking to avert a possible future danger; but to thus poison the blood—the life forces— deliberately for gain is a most infamous crime against society. Infection and contagion are in truth one and the same
thing; it is a body possessing weight and form, a germ, an egg or sporule containing within it the property of life, which will grow and multiply when sown in a suitable soil, like that of the human blood. Cow-pox pus, broken down cells desquamating from the skin surface of a small-pox patient, and the dissolving tissue of a decaying corpse, contain these poison germs or sporules; and they are so deadly and persistent in their action, |
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202 VACCINATION A CURSE.
that even the boasted "glycerine" with which vaccine calf-pus
is mixed, has no potency to destroy. The presence of these sporules in the blood is blood-poi-
soning and nothing less, no matter whether the effects become manifest in eight days, in eight years or even until the second or third generation. Yet in the hands of an intelligent and cau- tious person this infectious matter is comparatively harmless. It may come in contact with the hands, the face or neck, but if not rubbed in, or if it does not reach an abrazed surface, no in- jurious results may be known to follow. True, a person with a depressed vital tone, with blood corrupted in whom the mucous surfaces of mouth or throat are cankered or slightly abrazed, then there would be danger; the deadly virus might then find ready access to the circulation and infect the person with a specific disease. Probably the most concentrated and deadly animal poison known is found in the female after death from puerperal fever. But even this the dissecting operator may re- ceive on his hands without harm; but dip the point of a cam- bric needle into this putrifying tissue and puncture the skin with it would be an inevitably fatal procedure. The crowded and filthy quarters where infectious diseases
are generated fill the air of all the contignant country with infectious matter, but in and near these centers the contagion is far more concentrated and active. These disease germs lodge in our garments, enter our lungs, get into dwellings, but they will remain inert until their spring season arrives or in other words, until the human soil is suitably prepared. A healthy per- son need not fear them as long as that person is positive, free from fear and worry, and who rigorously guards the portals of the skin. The demon of darkness must have been on an active campaign when the vaccinator obtained permission from the state to assail this sacred inclosure—the skin—and befoul the fountain of life with his septic poisons. |
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INJURIES AND FATALITIES. 203
In time of small-pox epidemic infection is more than ordin-
arily dangerous, because it is then more abundant and concen- trated, and also because the populace are then more negative and susceptible. Whether they have been vaccinated or re-vac- cinated makes no perceptible difference. Small-pox epidemics are nearly always preceded by depressing influences of a general character, like failure of crops, depression in business, lowering of wages and the effects of a grievous war. Then through the mucous surfaces of mouth, throat, stomach and lungs, the germs of disease may crowd and find their way to the circula- tion. Even here vaccination increases but never mitigates the severity of the disease or conditions of fatal sickness. When a whole people shall learn to live in conformity with the natural laws—ethical as well as physical—these zymotic scourges will practically disappear together with the infectious matter which now develops in consequence of an inverted system of physic. |
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EPIDEMICS AND FILTH.
During the Middle Ages the nations of Europe were peri-
odically devastated by four distinct forms of plague—the plague proper, the sweating sickness, the black death, and the small- pox. They were each about equally fatal and each most at home in the midst of squalor and filth. During the last century, in consequence of improved sanitation, three of these scourges have practically disappeared in the West, though they continue their hold upon the Orient, where sanitary laws are quite un- known. In the West we have only small-pox left, which should have departed with the other three, and would have departed had the doctors and the state brought to the altar the same dis- interested solicitude (?) to secure general sanitation, which they have displayed to enforce vaccination. It cannot be too often repeated: the present home of small-pox, as in times of yore, is |
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204 VACCINATION A CURSE.
where filth abounds; and its proper antidote is not vaccination,
but cleanliness. It pays not the slightest respect for a vaccina- tion certificate, but does take full account of dirt and dissipation. To the drunkard and prostitute it says: "I have a mortgage on that man's, that woman's life; they are mine!" and so it moves among the motley crowd, letting its pestilent shadow fall upon the dirtiest and most wretched, gathering these as its pre-or- dained harvest. Of the importance of cleaning up these hells of dirt and stench the vaccinator says not a word, but lobbies the legislative bodies to compel every member of these dirty dens to be vaccinated. Circumcision so long practiced by the ancient Egyptians
and later up to this clay universally insisted upon by the Jews in all countries as well as by many Orientals, is considered cleanly and health inspiring. Phimosis is certainly abnormal and un- healthy often leading, by irritation through the sympathetic nervous system, to the secret vice. It has also indirectly caused death. Why not then, inasmuch as the circumcision-practicing jews are the healthiest and about the longest-lived people on earth—why not, I say, enact a rigid circumcision law? And as this would require a surgical operation, politico-doctors could by persistent lobbying legislators, make it compulsory. And fur- ther, it could also be made a fertile source of medical and surgi- cal revenue. This matter has already been favorably agitated in San Francisco, Cal. I should rather favor such a law myself, provided one of the clauses compeled the doctors by way of ex- ample, to be the first to submit to the surgical knife. Would not our medical gentlemen pronounce this a menace to per- sonal liberty? Speak out doctors! Dr. Pickering, in an interview between daily visits among
small-pox patients, penned the following paragraph which is in- serted in his very important work on "Sanitation or Vaccina- tion,' page 47:— "Epidemics, and, in fact, all 2ymotic diseases, may be said
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INJURIES AND FATALITIES. 205
to be filth-diseases. There is no exception to that rule. Whom
do they attack? The unclean. What neighborhoods do they visit ? The filthiest. What towns do they select ? Those where sanitary conditions are the most neglected. Note the last small- pox epidemic, and take Leeds as an example. Who were the victims? The very lowest classes of society, children that were filthy, neglected, and ill-fed, others living in houses that were overcrowded, destitute of proper ventilation, and in courts and alleys where sanitation is a term unknown; adults, who are tramps, drunkards, prostitutes, men and women without homes, wanderers,—with a very modest sprinkling of the very lowest sections of the working classes; these formed seven-tenths of the patients who passed through the hospital of the Leeds Union, and these are the very self-same people, resident in the came houses, streets, and neighborhoods, who would have fallen the first victims to any other epidemic which had sprung up. If they had not yielded to the small-pox they would have suc- cumbed to scarlet fever, typhoid, or the like. If the unsanitary surroundings are there, and the physically deteriorated in health within reach, then the conditions for producing an epidemic are present, and the result cannot fail to be disastrous. The strong and healthy do not take the small-pox." But if they have been vaccinated poisoning the blood, searing the flesh, and depleting the vital forces, they have opened the door and invited small- pox to enter. A Mr. John Cryer, an ardent anti-vaccinationist, taught
school in Bradford, Eng. One day he noticed a lad of about twelve years—a new pupil in school. He questioned him: "Where did you come from?" "Sheffield, sir." "How long have you resided there?" "Six years, sir." "How many are there in the family ?'' "Six of us, sir." "Then you were in Shef- field during the small-pox epidemic ?" "Yes, sir." "Did any of you have the small-pox?" "Oh, no, sir, we lived in a front street." That last sentence tells the whole story. It is worth |
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206 VACCINATION A CURSE.
more than a dozen reports of Local Guardians; worth more
than whole columns of statistics. It hits the nail square on the head, and locates the disease. Why didn't the lad say: "Oh, no, sir, we were all vaccinated?" Because children tell the truth, and this was a spontaneous utterance which in one brief sen- tence gave the facts, the law and the philosophy. "We lived in a front street." When all streets shall be made like unto this front street, and all the people observe hygienic habits; when all shall be washed and made clean; when vaccination stations shall be superseded with free public baths—in that city small- pox will not be able to secure a night's lodging. For that city small-pox epidemics will have been numbered; and no class know this better than the medical profession. But then, what would become of the vaccinating fraternity if the last epidemic of small-pox should bid a final farewell and be no more known about its accustomed haunts ? No, for the present the profes- sion must cling to antidotes, specifics and prophylactics as their main chance, while they give to sanitary science a merely formal and tacit recognition. The profession are well aware that such mitigation of zymotic plagues as the civilized world have been able to realize in the last fifty years, is chiefly due to improved sanitation, while prophylactics and antidotes have played but an infinitesimal part, and that part generally working more injury than good. I never yet met a fever case where the cause was difficult to
find; either personal uncleanliness, a vitiated atmosphere, im- pure water, a cess-pool nuisance, or defective drainage; these or their kind, have invariably been found the exciting cause. When I am called to the bedside of a small-pox patient, I never once inquire whether the person has been vaccinated. What is the state of that patient's skin ? Were there any abrazed sur- faces about the body through which the disease could gain ac- cess to the blood? Is the house well ventilated? No, the at- |
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INJURIES AND FATALITIES. 207
mosphere is foul. I discover, too, that from the convenience off
the hall a sewer gas stench proceeds and fills the whole house. The house is in a crowded quarter. I know the rest. It was not neglect of re-vaccination but neglect of the simplest rules of health which caused the small-pox infection to "take." It was in its native soil and the conditions favored its springing forth. Here is a case which illustrates how the small-pox may be communicated through an abrazed skin:— "In the small-pox epidemic of 1871-2, a lady's housemaid
caught the small-pox. It was a mild attack. She did not leave the house. I called to assist the enquiry as to how she had got it. I said to the lady: 1. Is the maid a cleanly girl in her per- son and habits? Yes. 2. Is the house in a fairly sanitary con- dition ? It is in a good condition, in every respect. 3. Does she offer any explanation? Only today. She said that about ten days before her attack she called at the small-pox hospital for a sister who had had the disease and was discharged that night, and took her home. 4. That circumstance of itself would not account for the small-pox unless the girl had an abrazed skin or spots in process of healing about her where the blood would be directly inoculated by the germs held in the air of the room. Enquire of her if she can bring to mind any incident of that sort? The girl cannot tax her recollection with any such facts. 5. To be more particular, please enquire again—had she scratches on her hands, face, or neck, where a wound of any kind was in a bleeding state? This time, I think, we have got a clue to the mishap. The girl is subject to chapped hands in frosty weather, and they are worse on the washing day. The evening she went to the hospital was during the severe frost in the second week of December; she had a hard day's washing, and she says she remembers that her hands bled very much from 'deep cracks' on the second joints of her fingers on both hands. "The small-pox is accounted for, I said, and you will be
more satisfied now that a cause has been found which explains the phenomenon. "The attack was mild—1. Because the girl was possessed
of a vigorous habit of body. 2. Because the air in the waiting |
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room was constantly changing by persons passing to and fro,
and the contagion was not strong enough to infect the system thoroughly. Had she remained there half-an-hour instead of five minutes, her case would have been more severe. This coincidence shows how careful people should be not
to have open wounds in exposed places. Even the scratch of a pin is dangerous in the presence of an infected atmosphere. A piece of Diachylon plaster should be near at hand in every Household, or the wound should be covered with a little clean cotton fastened by a bit of thread. It also shows the danger of vaccination. Many of the children of the poor go direct home to an infected atmosphere, the blood is inoculated, and from the supervening fever, or its sequelae, they perish—thousands per annum! * * * The vaccinator never dreams of the danger of blood-inoculation."—Pickering, page 72. And here is the royal household of small-pox:—
"I called upon the chief constable of Leeds one evening
and preferred the following request, viz: 'I want a detective told off to go with me to the common lodging houses. I wish to see how people live, in the small hours of the morning.' 'It shall be as you require. If you call here at 1 a. m., the detec- tive will be in waiting.' I went home and tried to obtain a few hours sleep, but the prospect of my novel undertaking was too engrossing. I slept not. At midnight I wrapped myself in the folds of a Scotch plaid and started for the police office. Arriv- ing there a few minutes before the appointed time, I found my detective ready for business. Of course we took an easterly direction. Detective observed, 'We shall have to be discreet as to the representations we make to hide the real object we have in view; so I shall be on the lookout for a criminal, and you will have to support me in that bit of deceptiveness. It does not do to call these people up at 2 a. m. and search the house from top to bottom without an adequate motive.' 'I un- derstand,' I said. 'and I am pleased to hear that our search is to be from top to bottom.' 'Well,' he answered, 'I suspect you do not want to do it by halves.' It was in the month of December, a bitterly cold night, the
moon shone brightly, and the stars twinkled in their merriest fashion as we knocked loudly at the door of a C. L. H., No. 7, |
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INJURIES AND FATALITIES. 209
in a narrow street leading out of Kirkgate. In turn we woke up
the principals of four of these museums of uncleanliness. "To describe one is to describe them all. The houses were
composed of three floors—ground, first, and second—the cellars were only used for coals and lumber. All the rooms were spa- cious for that class of house, perhaps 15 by 13 feet. Half a cen- tury ago the houses were respectably tenanted, no doubt, but they had come down in the world's esteem. The kitchen, which served as a living room for twenty-eight or thirty people from 5 p. m. one day to 10 a. m. on the next day, was in a filthy condi- tion—essentially filthy. Pots and pans of all patterns and sizes were thrown on chairs, tables and shelves, unwashed, bearing upon their exterior no evidence of having been cleansed since the day they were made; whilst the stocks in trade of a dozen venders of gimcrack varieties were piled up in a corner. Not a crumb was to be seen. Bones of all sizes and odors, well picked, lay scattered about. There was no waste in that domi- cile. The window was stuffed with bits of rag to exclude the fresh air and to keep in the warmth. This was a noticeable fea- ture in all the rooms of the house, and very successful it was. But how shall I describe those bedrooms, two on each floor, each one affording sleeping accommodation for seven or eight adults of both sexes, married and single, with sundry 'infants in arms' in addition? The latter don't count as lodgers, they are 'given in.' "These children, the very dregs of mankind, head the list
in the statistics of the 'Unvaccinated' who perish annually in the periodic outbreaks of small-pox-, bronchitis, measles, diarrhoea, syphilis, and their kinsfolk. Unfit for vaccination—nay, unfit for life—they are the 'unhealthy unvaccinated' who picnic in the vital statistics of Dr. Barry and Dr. Buchanan as the 'unvacci- nated.' and whose deaths, thus basely certified go to prop the cranky columns on which Jennerism is sustained, and to throw doubt on the veracity of the leaders in the anti-vaccination en- terprise who adhere to that representation. "But to return to my story. On opening the door of the
bedroom I met with an atmosphere laden with the exhalations from herrings, onions, and compounds not mentioned in cook- ery books in various stages of digestion and indigestion. In |
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210 VACCINATION A CURSE.
sober sadness, if I had remained in that room inhaling the me-
phitic fumes at an elevation of five feet from the floor, there would have been an end of me and my fads in fifteen minutes. I feel quite certain on that point. I could only account for life maintaining itself eight inches from the floor on the principle that some little fresh air crept into the apartment under the door. The inmates lay feet to feet, covered with the clothes they wore in the daytime, with some small article of underclothing squeezed up into a bundle for a pillow; they were fast asleep, not one showed any symptoms of life beyond the hard breathing of those who were semi-asphyxiated as they slept; but I was destined to learn there was philosophy in the exclusion of fresh air from each of these dormitories. "I enquired of our guide, the female owner of this fever
den, why all the bedrooms were so studiously air-proofed. 'Oh, yer don't know then. It's just 'ere. If they'ev fresh air, when they waken up they're hungry; but. if they ev'nt,—they're not hungry. D'ye see?' 'Yes,' I said, with a sigh, 'I see.' This was my first initiation into the patent method of cheating the stom- ach, and it was a saddening lesson I learnt. "During the small-pox epidemic of 1871-2 I saw these same
houses and visited them. Each one supplied its quota of victims to swell the death-rate from the prevailing zymotic, and to dem- onstrate the fact that the small-pox is a filth disease, connected strangely with the sin of overcrowding. "And yet there are Simons, Playfairs, Barrys, and Buchan-
ans in any number, diffused in space, saying, 'Small-pox is not a disease due to unsanitary conditions,' thus lying in the face of facts, in the face of Nature, and of God. "Oh you philosophizing machines, did you ever go, between
2 and 5 a. m., exploiting amongst the fever-stricken outcasts of society and the dens in which they live, to watch how fevers do germinate and grow up in first specimens ? No, I should not surprise you at that game. Of what value, then, is your long- eared theory as to small-pox not being a filth disease. 'Small- pox is a special disease, needing a special remedy, Vaccination,' So you say. I know better. Small-pox is a filth disease, it never was anything else. Do you think you can go on deceiving this nation, her Queen, her Parliament, her people, and her poor |
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INJURIES AND FATALITIES. 211
for ever? Your theories, like Pindar's razors, are made to sell.
Vaccination is worth so much, so many hundreds of thousands per annum, to the medical faculty and the observance must be continued, let the consequences be ever so disastrous. The vac- cinator has said to Evil, 'Be thou my good.'"—Dr. Pickering, page 74. ***********
"To show that small-pox is a filth disease I call Sheffield
into the witness-box. I cling to Sheffield, as Mr. Gladstone clings to Mitchelstown. There's nothing like a big broad fact to hurl at an enemy when you know he is misstating events or statistics to cover his own failures. So I refer to Sheffield, a town where, in 1887-8, there was a fatal epidemic of small-pox; a town reeking in its own filth, vaccinated up to 95 per cent. of the births; a town with, perhaps, ten anti-vaccinators in it, just enough to save it from the fate which befell the Cities of the Plain in the days of Abraham; and a town where all who per- ished were either vaccinated or unfit for vaccination—the last- named were as good as dead to begin with—not one healthy 'unvaccinated' person perished in that epidemic! Not one! What, then, becomes of the official report of the Sheffield epi- demic and of the statistics inside? Nothing, the thing—the book,—I mean, like Pindar's razors, was made to sell! 'Tis a re- port crimson'd in falsehood. "I call Leicester and Keighley into the witness-box. I
could call several other very populous towns if I stood in need of their evidence. Neither of these two towns, in 1887-8, had any filth, any vaccination, and the small-pox, like the Levite, passed by on the other side. "A thriving trade in filth and vaccine—means plenty of
small- pox. "No trade in filth and vaccine—means no small-pox.
You Local, but illogical, Government Board, what say you
to this indictment? "'Ephriam is joined to idols; let him alone.'"—Pickering,
pages 73-74. If one will read a description of the city of London during
the early part of the eighteenth century, he need not look any further for the causes which insured a periodical return of the |
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212 VACCINATION A CURSE.
plague and black death. In the Appendix to Prof. Wallace's
chapter on Vaccination, he gives quite a lengthy account of London's unsanitary condition two hundred years ago, a por- tion of which I will quote and the other portions condense:— "In the early part of the sixteenth century London was in
a condition of over-crowding and general filth which we can now hardly realize. The houses were low and overhung the streets and almost all had cess-pools close behind or underneath them. The streets were narrow, the main thoroughfares being paved with cobble stones, which collected filth and allowed it to soak into the ground beneath until the soil and the subsoil became saturated. Slops and refuse of all kinds were thrown into the streets at night, and only the larger streets were ever cleaned. The by-streets and the roads outside London were so bad that vehicles could only go two or three miles an hour; while even between London and Kensington, coaches sometimes stuck in the mud or had to turn back and give up the journey. The writers of the time describe the streets as dangerous and often impassible, while only in the main thoroughfare were there any footways, which were separated from the narrow roadway by rows of posts. Gay, in his Trivia, speaks of the slops thrown from the overhanging windows, and the frequent dangers of the night, adding— 'Though expedition bids, yet never stray
Where no ranged posts defend the rugged way.' And throughout his poem, dirt, mire, mud, slime, are continually referred to as being the chief characteristics of the streets. They mostly had a gutter on each side, and with few exceptions rain alone prevented their being blocked with refuse. The ef- fects of a heavy shower in the city are forcibly described by Swift in his usual plain language,— 'Now from all parts the swelling kennels flow,
And bear their trophies with them as they go ; Filths of all hues and odours seem to tell What street they sailed from by their sight and smell. * ***** Sweeping from butchers' stalls, dung, guts, and blood,
Drown'd puppies, stinking sprats, all drench'd in mud, Dead cats, and turnip tops, come tumbling down the flood!' |
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INJURIES AND FATALITIES. 213
Macaulay tells us that down to 1726, St. James' Square, though
surrounded by houses of the nobility, was a common receptacle for refuse of all kinds, and that it required an act of Parliament to stop its being so used. Hogs were kept in St. George's, Han- over Square, and in 1760 many were seized as a common nuis- ance. "The numerous small streams which flowed through Lon-
don from the northern heights—Langbourne, Wallbrook, Fleet, Tybourne, and Westbourne—which were in earlier times a source of health and water-supply, gradually became noisome open sewers, and one after another were arched over. There were many wells in London, indicated by such names as Holy- well, Clerkenwcll, and Aldgate Pump, and there were also con- duits in Cheapside and Cornhill; but it is certain that, from the filthy streets and house-cesspools, all the water derived from them must have been contaminated, and thus helped to produce the terrible mortality from plague and fevers of the seventeenth century. It has been often suggested that the Great Fire of London in 1666 was thc cause of the final disappearance of the plague, but how, except that the new house were for once clean and wholesome, has not, I think, been satisfactorily explained. I believe, however, that it can be found in the action of the fire upon the soil, which for more than a thousand years had been continually saturated with filth, and must, as we now know, have afforded a nidus for every kind of disease-germs. The long continued fire not only destroyed the closely-packed houses, but in doing so must have actually burnt the whole soil to a considerable depth, and thus have destroyed not only the living germs, but all the organic matter in it. The new city for the first time for many centuries, had beneath it a dry and wholesome soil, which to this day has not had time to get fully polluted as before the fire. When we remember the filthy condition of the streets, and
that owing to the cess-pools either under or close behind the houses, the scarcity of water, and the absence of ventilation, the shops and living rooms were always full of foul air, bad smells, and poisonous gases, how can we wonder at the prevalence of zymotic diseases and the dreadful amount of infant and general |
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mortality ? AnS in many houses there was an additional peril
in the vicinity of church yards. In Nicholl's "Illustrations of Literary History" (vol. iv. p. 499), Mr. Samuel Gale is quoted as writing (in 1736,) as follows:— "In the churchyard of St. Paul, Covent Garden, the burials
are so frequent that the place is not capacious enough to contain decently the crowds of dead, some of whom are not laid above a foot under the loose earth. The cemetery is surrounded every way with close buildings; and an acquaintance of mine, whose apartments look into the churchyard, hath averred to me, that the family have often rose in the night time and been forced to burn frankincense and other perfumes to dissipate and break the contagious vapor. This is an instance of the danger of in- fection proceeding from the corrupt effluvia of dead bodies.' "Many illnesses then originated in churches, and even those
whose houses were exceptionally wholesome were often ex- posed to a dangerous atmosphere when they went to church on Sundays. "The general food of the poor and the middle classes added
greatly to their unhealthiness, and itself caused disease. Owing to the absence of good roads, it was impossible to supply the large population of London with fresh food throughout the year, and, consequently, salt meat and salt fish formed the staple diet during the winter. For the same reason fresh vegetables were unattainable; so that meat, cheese, and bread, with beer as the common drink at all meals, was the regular food, with chiefly salted meat and fish in winter. As a result, scurvy was very common. Dr. Cheyne, in 1724, says, 'There is no chroni- cal distemper more universal, more obstinate, and more fatal in Britain, than the scurvy.' And is continued to be common down to 1783, when Dr. Buchanan says, 'The disease most common in this country is the scurvy.' But very soon afterwards it de- creased, owing to the growing use of potatoes and tea, and an increased supply of fresh vegetables, fruit, milk, etc., which the improved roads allowed to be brought in quantities from the surrounding country. "Now it is quite certain, that the excessively unhealthy con-
ditions of life, as here briefly described, continued with very partial amelioration throughout the middle portion of the cen- |
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INJURIES AND FATALITIES. 215
tury; and we have to consider what were the causes which then
came into operation, leading to the great improvement in health that undoubtedly occurred in the latter portions of it and in the early part of our century. "Beginning with improvements in the streets and houses,
we have, in 1762, an act passed for the removal of the overhang- ing signboards, projecting waterspouts, and other such obstruc- tions. In 1766 the first granite pavements were laid down, which were found so beneficial and in the end economical, that during the next half-century almost all London was thus paved. In 1768 the first Commissioners of Paving, Lighting and Watching were appointed, and by 1780 Dr. Black states that many streets had been widened, sewers made, that there was a better water supply and less crowding. From this date onward, we are told in the 'Encyclopoedia Britannica' (art. 'London'), a rapid rate of progress commenced, and that since 1785 almost the whole of the houses within the city had been rebuilt, with wider streets and much more light and air. In 1795 the western side of Tem- ple Bar and Snowhill were widened and improved, and soon afterwards Butcher's Row, at the back of St. Clement's church, was removed. Of course, these are only indications of changes that were going on over the whole city; and, coincident with these improvements, there was a rapid extension of the in- habited area, which, from a sanitary point of view, was of far greater importance. The agglomeration of streets interspersed with spacious squares and gardens, which extends to the north of Oxford street, was almost wholly built in the period we are discussing. Bloomsbury and Russell Squares and the adjacent streets, occupy the site of Bedford House and grounds, which were sold for building on in 1800. All round London similar ex- tensions were carried out. People went to live in these new suburbs, giving up their city houses to business or offices only. Regent's Park was formed, and Regent street and Portland Place were built before 1820, and the whole intervening area was soon covered with streets and houses, which for some con- siderable period enjoyed the pure air of the country. At this time the water supply became greatly improved, and the use of iron mains in place of the wooden ones, and of lead pipes by which water was carried into all the new houses, was of ines- |
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2l6 VACCINATION A CURSE.
timable value from a sanitary point of view.
"Then, just at the same time, began the great improve-
ment in the roads, consequent on the establishment of mail- coaches in 1784. This at once extended the limits of residence for business men, while it facilitated the supply of fresh food to the city."—A. R. Wallace's "Nineteenth Century." In 1801, London, within the Bills of Mortality, was in-
creased in area by almost fifty per cent. with comparatively very little increase of population, owing to the suburban parishes of St. Luke's, Chelsea, Kensington, Marylebone, Paddington, and St. Pancras being then included; and even in 1821 this whole area had only a million inhabitants, and therefore enjoyed semi- rural conditions of life. This was a powerful sanitary cause which led to the great diminution of mortality, both general and from the zymotic diseases. Then the change of diet from bread, beer, and salted meat, to potatoes, and fresh meat, substituting tea for beer, occasioned a marked change in the death rate. Po- tatoes were first used in hospital diet in 1767. Now, the various classes of improvements here briefly in-
dicated—wider and cleaner streets, construction of sewers, bet- ter water supply, more wholesome food and especially the spreading out of the population over a much wider area; all oc- curing simultaneously, are in their combination amply sufficient to account for the remarkable decrease of mortality which oc- cured within the half century from 1775 to 1825. Small-pox is only included with all zymotic diseases in the decrease, yet the Royal Commissioners lay particular stress on the connection of small-pox with vaccination as the cause for the decrease of that particular disease. Prof. Wallace concludes :— "I have now supplied the last piece of confirmatory evi-
dence which the commissioners declared was not forthcoming; not because I think it at all necessary for the complete condem- nation of vaccination, but because it affords another illustration of the curious inability of the commission to recognize any causes as influencing the diminution of small-pox except that |
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INJURIES AND FATALITIES. 217
vaccine-virus operation. In this, as in all the other cases I have
discussed, their report is founded on the opinions and beliefs of the medical and official upholders of vaccination; while the great masses of national experience, embodied in statistics of mortal- ity from various groups of diseases, as well as the well-known facts of the sanitary history of London during the critical half century, 1775-1825, are either neglected, misunderstood or alto- gether overlooked." With the vaccinating doctor these pest breeding centers of
filth are trivial and unimportant matters in comparison with vac- cination. Never mind the dirt and stench, but if you neglect to vaccinate it is at your own peril! It is better that the populace wallow up to their necks in the cess-pools than to neglect to vaccinate and re-vaccinate. Indeed, vaccination is the main prop and dependence of the old outworn school of physic. It is a conservator of old superstitions, of the bank account and an available friend in the period of senility. Not a good thing to mitigate too much. Financial conditions should be kept in a state of equilibrium. When a money center becomes disturbed everything is disturbed. "Hang it," said Thoreau, "if it were not for these pestilent agitators how smooth this business would run." Small-pox appears and disappears under precisely the same
conditions that attend scarlet fever, typhoid, and diarrhoea. It is met with in the streets, in the same haunts and amongst the same people. Vaccination has no more effect to mitigate one than it has upon any other member of the group of zymotics. We shall never stamp out small-pox, cancer, consumption, or leprosy, so long as we continue to stamp them in through the idiotic rite of a vicious cow-pox vaccination. The Germans en- deavored to stamp out syphilis by stamping it in with syphilized vaccine pus. They have abandoned that now, and later they will abandon vaccination altogether. It should be a question for every householder to know that his only protection is in per- sonal and domestic cleanliness. Sanitation is the only accessi- |
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2l8 VACSINATION A CURSE.
ble agency which God has placed within our reach; and this
agency is full and adequate if we will apply it with religious fidelity. Let us turn from the idol which the "King" com- manded us to worship :— "And a tempest arose, thunders and waves and lightenings,
and the moan of winds; and the dome of the Temple was rent; and the whirl and the rains rushed in. And behold! a flash, and it rolled down like a God; and grappling the Image it smote it from head to foot, and dashed it in fragments; its crown of jewels was broken; its scepter was a ruin; its law as lies a blackened corpse; it was stricken into small pieces, and the rain roared and buffeted its remnants."—Enock. |
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CHAPTER VII.
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SYPHILIS AND LEPROSY TRACEABLE TO VACCI-
NATION. |
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"Vaccination differs, however, from all previous errors of
the faculty, in being maintained as the law of the land on the warrant of medical authority. That is the reason why the blow to professional credit can hardly help being severe, and why the efforts to ward it off have been, and will continue to be so in- genious."—Dr. Creighton. "I want no proof that if I imbibe the causes of disease, I can
only disguise the result,—I can never escape it,—by artificially infusing fresh disease. That I can thus escape or lessen it, is the monstrous doctrine to which our wise vaccinators commit themselves."—F. W. Newman, Emeritus Professor, Weston- super-Mare, April, 1876. The specific vegetable and animal poisons that war against
the physiological processes in man have a very wide range in their action, both as regards their relative intensity, and the period after being planted when they commence their work of destruction. Some poisons, conveyed to the blood through the skin, are instantaneously fatal; others will apparently lie dor- mant for a term of years and then become roused to action, fasten upon some organ—like tubercle in the lungs—disinte- grate its tissue and destroy the life. Still others—like leprosy— slowly but surely breaks down the tissue of every organ from nerve to bone, until the entire body falls a mutilated and inde- scribably repulsive ruin. The vaccine virus proper acts with |
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220 VACCINATION A CURSE.
comparative promptness in producing its specific disease; but
is at the same time the most insiduous and dangerous among the poison-fiend on account of the masked, many-sided and multiform properties that lie concealed within its substance. It has traveled a sinuous journey and nested with every con- ceivable species of infernality, picking up on its way micro-or- ganisms and chemical subtleties which neither bacteriologist or organic chemist are able to detect; but which nevertheless are potent and implacable enemies when sown or cast into the circu- lating life-stream of a human being. Almost daily we read of vaccinal disasters, of cases that have "gone wrong" though only the "immaculate" and "sterilized" calf-lymph was used in the operation! All vegetable and animal poisons inoculated through the
skin is blood-poisoning. Some of these may be physiologically combated and gotten rid of without serious harm. Other poisons, which the blood cannot expel—like scrofula, cancer and tubercle and vaccine—are sequestered for a season and reduced to a min- imum of mischief, a truce having been arranged between the or- ganism and the poison, each waiting for an opportunity to worst the other. Necroscopic poisoning proves fatal in a few days. Syphilis, it were far better to prove fatal and be done with it. The savages of Lamas and Ticunas, South America, extract a subtle vegetable poison by fires from divers plants, and with this they treat their arrow-points, which when they pierce on ani- mal's skin, cause instantaneous death. Yet their flesh is not thereby rejected for food. Mous de la Condamine, of the Royal Academy of Science, Paris, experimented with this poison on dogs, bears, cats, rabbits, birds, etc., and in nearly every case death was instantaneous; but the same amount of the poison introduced into the stomach was inert; inert also when applied to the surface of the skin. It is beneath the skin—where it can reach the circulation—that its fatal effects are manifested. The |
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SYPHILIS AND LEPROSY. 221
bite of a musquito, or red ant, or the sting of a bee, or the bite
of a rattlesnake, or puncture from a lance tipped with cow-pus, each and all are forms of blood-poisoning. When deliberately inflicted, blood-poisoning is a murderous operation. Vaccina- tion is blood-poisoning with expectations of the fee. How many removes is it from a capital crime against society? The poisons concealed in calf-pus permanently affect the blood; but the ef- fect is often not perceptible until a time arrives when the physi- cal powers are deteriorated by bad habits, exposure, disappoint- ment, or depressing influence of some kind, and then it is that the special poison begins to manifest its fatal effects. Syphilis, cancer, scrofula, or tubercle, borne into the blood with the vac- cinal virus, may lie dormant for a series of years, but its oppor- tunity punctually arrives when it will claim and conquer its vic- tim. |
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VACCINO-SYPHILIS.
In 1862, M. Ricord, one of the most eminent authorities on
syphilitic affections, during a lecture in Hotel Dieu, Paris, said: "If ever the transmission of disease with vaccine-lymph is clearly demonstrated, vaccination must be altogether discontinued; for in the present state of science, we are in possession of no cri- terion which may permit the conscientious practitioner to assert that the lymph with which he inoculates, is perfectly free from admixture." The following year (May 19, 1863,) standing in the same
place, this same eminent authority declared:— "At first I repelled the idea that syphilis could be trans-
mitted by vaccination. The recurrence of facts appearing more and more confirmatory, I accepted the possibility of this mode of transmission, I should say, with reserve, and even with repug- nance ; but today I hesitate no more to proclaim their reality. * * * Who, pray, will run such risks to escape the small- pox?" |
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222 VACCINATION A CURSE.
In 1868, Dr. Ballard, one of the vaccine inspectors for the
English government, observed:— "There can be no reasonable doubt that the vaccine virus
and the syphilitic virus may both be drawn at the same time, upon the same instrument, from one and the same vesicle. The vesicle which is thus capable of furnishing both vaccine and syphilitic virus may present, prior to being opened, all the normal and fully developed characters of a true Jennerian vesicle or ordinarily met with." |
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ESSAY ON VACCINATION.
During the same year (1868) Dr. Cornell, president Home-
opathic Society of Pennsylvania, said in his annual address: "To no medium of transmission is the wide spread dissemination of this class of disease so largely indebted as vaccination." Dr. Heim, public vaccinator, Wurtemburg, declared: "I have my- self planted syphilis from a child which seemed at the time per- fectly healthy."—"Horrors of Vaccination," page 26. A patient was brought to the class room of the Clinical So-
ciety and exhibited to Dr. Hutchinson, when he said: "We have now emerged from the reign of doubt to one of belief in the pos- sibility of such an untoward occurrence. * * * The facts now before the public will tend to rouse them, if they have not been roused already, from the false security into which they have been lulled."—"Med. Times and Gazette," Feb., 1872. Here is a record which the heads of every family in the land
should carefully read and ponder. The teaching of the medical faculty that blood inoculation, either as a preventive or modify- ing agent of any disease is a fallacy of the worst type. It is false in principle and pernicious to the last degree in practice. Inoc- ulation for measles, scrofula, and syphilis have all been tried, and abandoned on the fullest proof that the antidote is far worse than the original disease, and that it neither prevented nor mod- ified a second attack. The vaccination folly not only fails to mit- |
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SYPHILIS AND LEPROSY. 223
igate small-pox, but it is a fearful agent of disease by communi-
cating along with the vaccine virus, diseases far more to be dreaded than the small-pox—diseases which threaten to depopu- late tropical archipeligos, and even the continents, if compul- sory vaccination were to be enforced for another century. Prof. Germann said in an address to the Diet of the German Empire: "Above all, the dire fatality, which lately occurred at Lebus,
a suburb of Frankfort-on-the-Oder, would alone warrant the abolition of the vaccination laws. Eighteen school girls, aver- aging twelve years of age, were re-vaccinated, and thereby syph- ilised, and some of them died. * * * Yet the lymph, the syphilitic lymph, used in this case, was obtained from the Of- ficial Royal Establishment, and was the new regenerated or 'an- imalized' vaccine lymph so warmly recommended for the re-vac- cination of schools." In 1877, Brundenell Carter, surgeon to St. George's Hospi-
tal, London, observed: "I think that a large proportion of the cases of apparently inherited syphilis are in reality vaccinal; and that the syphilis in these cases does not show itself until the age of from eight to ten years, by which time the relation be- tween cause and effect are apt to be lost sight of."—Med. Exam., May 24, 1877. In "Journal d' Hygiene," Aug. 25, 1881, Dr. Desjardins
gives a detailed account of the syphilization of the 58 French re- cruits in Algeria. The most cautious silence was maintained by the military authorities. These soldiers were solaced in a small measure by being granted pensions. Dr. G. W. Winterburn, physician-in-chief to Manhattan
Hospital, gives the details of a very distressing case that came under his observation. In December, 1879, there came to the out-patient department of the hospital, a mother with her little girl, twenty-one months old. The husband had died of pneu- monia, leaving mother and three children, which the mother supported by odd jobs at laundry work. Poor but neat, they excited Dr. Winterburn's attention and sympathy. According to the mother's report, the three children seven weeks previ- ously, had been forcibly vaccinated in a house to house visita- tion. The arms of all her children had remained sore ever since. |
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224 VACCINATION A CURSE.
For about a week before calling at the hospital she had noticed
ulcers on the body of one, and applied salve from the drug- store ; but the child grew worse. The day before she noticed places breaking out on the second child—the little girl twenty- one months old—and had brought it to find out what was the matter. Dr. Winterburn says :— "On examining the child, I found the place of insertion of
the vaccine virus, a shallow, cleancut ulcer, filled with a dirty exudation. The cellular tissue round about it was infiltrated and very hard, extending over nearly one-half of the upper arm. The axilla was tender, and the glands swollen. There were six ulcers on the body; four of them very small, just forming that day, and two somewhat larger, having appeared thirty-six hours previously. These ulcers began, like a blister, the size of a split pea, with a swollen indurated base of a copperish hue, and in all respects resembling syphilitic rupia. The ulcers were so charac- teristic, that I ordered the whole family to appear before me on the morrow. When, on the following day, I saw the infant strip- ped of its clothes, revealing no less than thirty dreadful ulcers, some of them as large as a silver dime; it made me heart-sick. Some of these had already begun to scab, showing the peculiar watch-crystal formation, so characteristic of this eruption. On the oldest child I found four small blisters on the back, and she also, in a day or two, had a full share of syphilitic sores. Here were three children, which a very careful investigation in the neighborhood, where they lived, showed that they had been, up to the time of their vaccination, in very good health, suddenly stricken with the most incontestible evidences of this dreadful disorder."—"The Value of Vaccination," Winterburn, page 130. In his appendix to the 37th annual report of the Registrar
General of Great Britain, Dr. Farr, page 121, writes: "Syph- ilis was twice as fatal in the five years, 1870-1874, as it was twenty years ago. Its most fatal recorded forms occur in chil- dren under one year of age." The following table gives the re- lation between vaccination, small-pox and syphilis, from 1850 to 1881. It is from the nth annual report of Local Government Board, page 346: |
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SYPHILIS AND LEPROSY.
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Thus the average increase of syphilitic fatality has been 50
per year during a period of thirty years, while deaths from small-pox waxes and wanes without any seeming connection with vaccination as affecting its producing cause. |
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226 VACCINATION A CURSE.
Dr. J. G. Beaney, of Melbourne, says—"Constitutional
Syphilis," page 373 :— "And I at once announce at the outset my firm belief that
syphilis is in very many instances communicated by means of 'child's vaccine lymph.' This opinion I have deliberately formed and as firmly defend. The evidences of such being the case have, in my practice, been numerous and well-pronounced; so dis- tinct, indeed, that no doubt whatever could exist as to the na- ture of the eruptions, and the certainty of transmission." Dr. Scott Tebb, of London, publishes a table giving 700
cases of vaccinal syphilis in countries outside of England. The cases which first attracted serious attention in England, were those of Dr. James Whitehead, of the Clinical Hospital, Man- chester, 1857. Out of 1,717 children brought to the hospital, 1,435 had been vaccinated, a large number of whom the mothers blamed vaccination for the persistent and troublesome erup- tions which subsequently appeared. Among these Dr. White- head found thirty-four children suffering from vaccinal syphilis. I subjoin cases 2, 11 and 56 from Dr. Whitehead's Third Clin- ical Report:— "Case 2. An infant, aged nine months, of a bad habit of
body. Copper-colored blotches appeared after vaccination. When seen, there was a mixed eruption on the face and scalp and extreme irritability of the whole surface; the vaccinated spots remained unhealed at the end of five months, presenting a well-formed rupia with excavation. The father and mother are described as apparently healthy. "Case 11. An infant, aged eleven weeks, of medium habit
of body. When seen, there were two deep ulcers with hardened bases where the vaccine vesicles were formed three weeks pre- viously ; copper-colored roseola on the nates and chin, sallow complexion, mucous tubercles round the the anus, eruptions and intertrigo behind the ears, coryza, atrophy, and dysentery. The history of the case is that roseola appeared from twelve to four- teen days after the vaccination, at the age of two months; the mucous tubercles nine weeks after, while, under treatment, and atrophy four months after. Father said to be healthy; mother |
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SYPHILIS AND LEPROSY. 227
feeble, but apparently free from taint.
"Case 56. An infant, aged seven and a half months, of good
habit of body. After the subsidence of the vaccination, the ves- icles degenerated into ulcers, surrounded by erythema. When seen, there were erythematous blotches of a copper color on the chest and neck, eczema auris, arthritis of the left elbow joint, and syphilitic pallor. Father said to be healthy; mother ap- parently healthy." In Dr. Hutchinson's communication to the Royal Medical
and Chirurgical Society, April 25, 1871, among the numerous cases he cites, I select the following:— "A mother and her two children, one an infant and the
other a child of two, were found to be suffering from secondary syphilis. The children were vaccinated in September, 1875, and their vaccination sores had re-opened and for a long time re- mained unhealed. The mother had contracted a sore on her nipple from the younger child, and her symptoms were two months behind those of the children. The husband subse- quently contracted syphilis from his wife." Scott Tebb writes—"A Century of Vaccination," page 310:
"The disease that cow-pox most resembles is not small-pox,
but syphilis. This view of the analogy of cow-pox with syphilis was held by Auzias-Turenne, and in this country it has been ad- vocated by Dr. Creighton. Auzias-Turenne says: 'Between syphilis and cow-pox the analogy may be a long way followed up. The inoculation of cow-pox—a malady with a fixed virus sufficiently well-named pox of the cow (verole de vache)—may, for example, give rise to polymorphic vaccinides, and sometimes to disseminated pathognomonic vesico-pustules, just as the con- tagion of the mucous patch, symptom of a malady with an equally fixed virus, gives rise to various secondary eruptions, and sometimes to the appearance of disseminated mucous patches. But, happily for the vaccinated, cow-pox passes through a rapid evolution, and does not leave virulent remains for so long a time or so frequently as syphilis. "The difficulty of distinguishing some cases of cow-pox
from syphilis has been recognized by the best authorities. Mr. George Berry, ophthalmic surgeon to the Royal Infirmary, |
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228 VACCINATION A CURSE.
Edinburgh, in a communication on cow-pox of the eye-lids, says
that the main interest in these cases consists in the possibility of the inoculation taking place at all, and in the differential diag- nosis between vaccinia and a primary syphilitic sore." "Emily Maud, a child, was vaccinated on March 26, 1889,
and died at the Leeds Infirmary on July 1 of the same year. At the inquest on July 10, four members of the Infirmary staff, Messrs. McGill, Ward, Littlewood, and Dr. Barrs, gave evi- dence that the child died from vaccino-syphilis, and the verdict of the jury was that she 'died from syphilis acquired at or from vaccination.' "—Ibid. "If it be a fact, as maintained by Dr. Creighton, that the
phenomena of vaccino-syphilis so-called, are due to the inherent, though mostly dormant natural history characters of cow-pox itself, we should expect the same appearances to take place oc- casionally in cases of calf lymph; and in this connection the ex- perience recorded by Dr. Hutchinson in the 'Archives' for Jan- uary, 1891, (pp. 213-215), is of interest. He particularises a case of vaccination with calf-lymph presenting certain symptoms simulating syphilis. "The child was born of healthy parents in July, 1890; was
perfectly healthy at birth; was vaccinated at three months of age with Jenner's calf-lymph, at the same time as several others who did well; on the eighth day, only one place seemed to have taken, but later on all three looked satisfactory; at the end of three weeks, the arm was inflamed, and there were large black scabs with pus at their edges; a week later a large slough com- prised all the vaccination sores and passed deeply almost to the bone, and there was also a pustule on the nose, and three nodes on the skull. "Dr. Hutchinson compares this case with another he had
described in an earlier number of the 'Archives' (October, 1889, page no.) These two cases resembled one another, in that in both the infant was perfectly healthy up to the time of vaccina- tion; the lymph used was not taken from the human subject, the skin around the vaccination sores passed into gangrene, with at the time a large granular swelling in the arm-pit. There were also periosteal swellings of considerable size in the skull bones, suspicious sores on the skin; and both patients appeared |
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SYPHILIS AND LEPROSY. 229
to be much benefitted by mercurial treatment."—Ibid., page 317.
"Before concluding the evidence under the heading of
'Syphilis,' I wish to allude to the disastrous consequences of vaccination in the American Civil War (1861-65), in which some hundreds of men were affected with a disease presenting all the characteristics of syphilis. The facts are related by Dr. Joseph Jones, and the conditions described were truly frightful. "The symptoms included phagedenic ulcers, with indurated
and everted edges, secondary skin affections, ulcerated throats, loss of hair, and other phenomena distinctive of syphilis. In some cases the gangrenous ulcers caused extensive destruction of tissue, exposing arteries, nerves, and bones, in many cases necessitating amputations. "Dr. J. T. Gilmore, in a letter to Professor F. Eve, refer-
ring to three hundred cases in the Georgia brigades, remarked: 'The cases presented the appearances that are familiar to those of us who were connected with the Confederate army—large rupia-looking sores, sometimes only one; generally several on the arm in which the virus was inserted. In a number of cases these sores extended, or rather appeared on the forearm, and in two cases that I saw, they appeared on the lower extreme- ties. The men suffered severely from nocturnal rheumatism. Several cases had, to all appearances, syphilitic roseola. I saw enough of the trouble to convince me thoroughly that the virus owed its impurity to a syphilitic contamination. "Dr. James Bolton testified that 'on careful inspection the
ulcers presented the various appearances of genuine chancre. In some instances there was the elevated, cartilaginous, well- cut edge surrounding the indolent, greenish ulcer; in others there was a burrowing ulcer, with ragged edge; in others there was the terrible destructive sloughing process devastating the integuments of the arm. Many of the cases were so situated that their history could be preserved, and in these secondary symptoms appeared, followed in due time by tertiary symptoms. The chancre was followed successively by axillary bubo,, sore throat, and various forms of eruption (syphilis dermata), while the system fell into a state of cachexia.' "Dr. E. A. Flewellen testified that 'while the army of Gen.
eral Bragg was at Tullahoma, I was medical director, and I |
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230 . VACCINATION A CURSE.
know that very great complaint was made to me as to the char-
acter of the vaccination practiced in the army. A large num- ber of men were represented as unfit for duty. I think that one division represented nearly a thousand men as unfit for duty on account of spurious vaccination. I saw a number of cases in the early progress of the vaccination, but they presented noth- ing abnormal that I could detect. But, as it advanced, the cases seemed to have the appearance very nearly of syphilitic rupia. It diffused itself more or less over the whole surface. A large number of surgeons regarded it as a complication of vaccinia and syphilis."—Dr. Scott Tebb, pp. 320-321. In April, 1866, Dr. Percival was called to Graniteville, a
manufacturing town in South Carolina, to examine and treat 150 cases of syphilis from vaccination. The cases comprised men, women, and children of all ages, from fifty down to one year of age. They all broke out about the same time, and in all the disease was well advanced. The individual first vaccinated was with virus obtained from a man whom it was later learned was suffering from primary syphilis, and one was vaccinated from the other, and so it spread. In every case excoriated ulcers were formed; in some cases abscesses formed on the inside of the arms; in several cases the hair dropped off. The usual treatment for veneral ulcers effected a cure in from three to six weeks. The account from which this is a brief summary, is contained in Dr. Jone's work, "Med. and Surg. Memoirs," vol. iii., p. 478. Now, with the overwhelming mass of evidence which has
been put on record, and notwithstanding the repeated testimo- nies of the most conscientious and competent medical practi- tioners, connecting vaccinating and syphilis—yet a majority of the medical profession and medical press affect to treat with contempt this entire mass of evidence. Their day of reckoning is at hand. The people are reading, rising, and the star of truth is already in the ascendency. So far as possible every mishap resulting from vaccina-
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tion is discreetly hidden from public view. The average M. D.
of the elder school is secretive and mysterious in medical mat- ters. A medical priesthood has grown up which is ineffective, crafty, selfish, persecuting and intolerant toward recent schools of medical reform; implacably savage towards psychic treat- ment—towards the divine gifts of healing—such as Schlatter displayed—giving a superlative position to drastic drug poi- sons, and a mean, unimportant and obscure place to sanitation, hygienic laws and habits; and lastly, guarding and defending the most destructive, poisonous, outlawed, and infamous fea- ture in the whole range of medical practice with a jealousy and craftiness which would shame a ward politician or government contractor. All the authorities I have cited in the foregoing pages
stand high, both in their professional practice and in the world of letters; and they have recorded their opinions, and detailed the cases that came under their observation with a most con- scientious candor, and certainly without selfish ends in view, inasmuch as their testimony goes to discredit the main pillar of old time medical practice. Nineteen-twentieths of our witnesses that have testified, belong to what is denominated the "Regular Professions," and the majority of them stand at the head of the profession. Seventeen school girls syphilized at Lebus, near Frankfort,
by pure, official, "sterilized" calf-lymph; yet the vaccinator con- tinues to repeat: "Not the slightest danger." * * * "Our lymph is from a well-known source, absolutely pure, glycerin- ated, sterilized, all germs but the 'vaccine sporule' destroyed, hermetically 'sealed until used,' " and as often as repeated, even so often does the daily press report cases of vaccinal disaster, exposing these hungry second-class-doctor vaccinators. Again, ponder well the indictment by Dr. Carter, of St.
George's Hospital, London, who expresses his firm conviction |
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that a "large proportion of the cases of apparently inherited
syphilis are in reality vaccinal." Multitudes of little children under one year of age cursed with syphilis at the hands of the public vaccinator! You fathers and mothers, take this home to your own hearthstones. Think of it—ponder it. It may be your children whose lives will next be blighted; and I know if you realized the full purport of the danger which threatens your home and posterity, you would be calling mass meetings; you would memorialize the legislature; you would raise heaven and earth but that you would get this compulsory curse off the statute books—this unholy compact between the medical-po- litico priesthood and the state dissolved—forever dissolved. In the foot-hills of the California mountains, mothers are
extremely cautious lest a rattlesnake creeps out from a rock crevice and fangs their little ones; but I warn these mothers that the vaccinator carries something concealed in his vest pocket which menaces the life and welfare of their children and children's children a hundred fold more than all the rattlesnakes along the Coast range of the Sunset State. Rattlesnake venom never reaches more than an infmtesimal fraction of one per cent. of the population; but children are poisoned by the hundred thousand at the instance of that unholy conspiracy between the state and old time medicine—compulsory vaccination. "But we don't vaccinate any longer from arm to arm; we
use calf-lymph, glycerinated and sterilized." Very well, gentle- men, but your "calf-lymph" has been tried and convicted in the highest courts of medical opinion. Read Dr. Hutchinson in the "Archives," pages 213-215, for 1891 : A child three months old, perfectly healthy, vaccinated October, 1890. with Jenner's calf- lymph, resulted in three weeks with distinct syphilitic ulcers. Dr. H. also describes other well marked cases which were di- rectly traceable to the much vaunted calf-lymph. Moreover, they do continue to vaccinate whole populations by the old pro- |
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SYPHILIS AND LEPROSY. 233
cess of arm to arm, with humanized virus. This is notably the
case in Hindustan, South Africa, West India Islands, and the Sandwich Islands, and that too, by English and United States officials; and to this fact, I shall presently find the cause for the alarming increase of leprosy in recent years. Humanity is one, all are units of the great whole. There
are many races, yet but one human species. The Occident and the Orient are hand-clasping brothers. The Hindoos and our- selves are of Ayran descent. When in India I feel that I am so- journing among my elder and venerable Brahmanic brothers. If torrid suns have darkened their faces it has illumined their minds. They are thinkers, mystical, metaphysical, yet on the higher planes of life profoundly practical. Already they seek our shores—and all are threads in the web and warp of human life. Vaccination and leprosy, in India, are becoming almost synonomous terms. Leprosy from vaccination has already got a foothold in this country. In tropical countries animalized and glycerinated lymph has
been found to be too irritating, and attended with so much fever and inflammation, that the earlier method has been re- vived,—revived through vaccinators knowing the awful dangers attending arm to arm vaccination,—revived and made brutally compulsory over those native populations, because mammon takes precedence of humanity, and accustomed revenues must be conserved though this involve the extinction of a race. |
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LEPROSY AND VACCINATION.
"Leprosy is, perhaps, the most terrible disease that afflicts
the human race. It is hideously disfiguring, destructive to the tissues and organs in an unusual degree, and is hopelessly incur- able, the fate of its victims being, indeed, the most deplorable that the strongest imagination can conceive, and many years |
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often passing before death rids the unhappy sufferer from a life
of misery, to which there is scarcely any alleviation. It is not to be wondered at, then, that the question is one which philanthro- pists in these enlightened days are taking up actively."—British Medical Journal, Nov. 19, 1887. Leprosy has claimed the serious attention of a large num-
ber of thoughtful minds of late years and a considerable amount of literature has accumulated on the subject. One could easily collect fifty volumes which have appeared in the last twenty years, besides voluminous reports from hospitals and boards of health and discussions in the medical journals. But the most candid, thorough and exhaustive work which I have read was published by Mr. Tebb, of London, "The Recrudescence of Leprosy," 412 pages. I made the acquaintance of the author in London nearly a generation ago, and esteem him not only as a gentleman and scholar of wide attainments, but as a phil- anthropist and reformer of the most conscientious and persist- ent type. To him more than to any single reformer in England is due the passage of the Vaccination Act of 1898, into which the "Conscience Clause" was inserted. Mr. Tebb has traveled into every quarter of the globe to make a personal investigation of leprosy and to study the question in all its aspects,—India, Ceylon, British Guiana, Venezuela, West Indies, Norway, United States, Sandwich Islands, Egypt, New Zealand, Aus- tralia, South Africa, South America, Greek Archipelago, Syria, Asia Minor, etc. Upon his thorough researches I shall mainly depend for the facts presented in this section. The chief claims which leprosy has on public attention at
the present time, are the dangers which confront the civilized world by its rapid spread among all classes of society. It threatens civilization today in a far greater ratio than small-pox, and is ten-fold more to be dreaded, for upon each and every victim it sets the seal of an inevitable doom! New germ centers of leprosy are springing up and the old centers are steadily wid- |
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ening. Sir Morell Mackensie said in a lecture in 1889; "It is
impossible to estimate even approximately the total number of lepers throughout the world, but it is certain they must be counted by millions." Lepers are becoming numerous in all the countries of Europe and there are some in several states of our own commonwealth, but as far as possible these cases are con- cealed from public observation and scrutiny. The patient and his friends, knowing with what horror the public regard the dis- ease, naturally shun publicity, no one outside save the physician is acquainted with his malady, and he humanely guards the secret. Nor will the leper submit to isolation until his last re- source for remaining in touch with his friends is exhausted, since he knows that when isolated he will henceforth be con- demned to dwell amidst the most repulsive and saddening sur- roundings. Mr. Tebb informs us that leper hunting in Hawaii is a dangerous business, as many unfortunate lepers do not hes- itate to shoot their pursuers. They would prefer a public exe- cution to confinement in the lazaretto. This statement with similar ones I can personally verify (to say nothing of the lepers I had previously seen in India, Ceylon, Syria, and Egypt), for on my third tour around the world, exchanging steamers per ar- rangement at Honolulu, I remained over a month in this city and other places in the Sandwich Islands, studying leprosy in all its hideous forms. One or two physicians accompanied me during my investigations. The sights seen were not merely sad: they were sickening. Some from utter hoplessness com- mit suicide. That the reader may appreciate the serious gravity of this
complaint, I will subjoin a description, from a few eminent au- thors and practitioners who have had wide experience with lepers. Wm. Tebb observes in the preface to his last painstak- ing work:— "Lerosy is one of the most loathsome as it is one of the
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236 VACCINATION A CURSE.
most tissue-destructive diseases known, and when going
through the wards of leper hospitals I have frequently noticed with pain the poor afflicted creatures bending their heads and covering their hands to conceal from strangers the sight of their distorted features and mutilated limbs. It is hardly possible to conceive, much less describe, the depth of human misery caused by the spread of this hideous and destructive disease; but some idea of its nature may be gathered from the follow- ing description of leprosy, which may well excite the sympathy of the philanthropist. It will be found in a recent work on leprosy by Dr. Thin, pp. 99-100. It is translated from Leloir, an eminent French authority on leprosy, and refers to the tubercular variety of the disease. 'If the patient,' he remarks, 'does not die of some internal disorder or special complication, the unhappy leper becomes a terrible object to look on. The deformed leonine face is covered with tubercles, ulcers, cica- trices, and crusts. His sunken, disfigured nose is reduced to a stump. His respiration is wheezing and difficult; a sanious, stinking fluid, which thickens into crusts, pours from his nos- trils. The nasal mucous membrane is completely covered with ulcerations. A part of the cartilaginous and bony framework is carious. The mouth, throat, and larynx are mutilated, de- formed, and covered with ulcerated tubercles. The patient breathes with the greatest difficulty. He is threatened with fre- quent fits of suffocation, which interrupt his sleep. He has lost his voice, his eyes are destroyed, and not only his sight but his sense of smell and taste have completely gone. Of the five senses hearing alone is usually preserved. In consequence of the great alterations in the skin of the limbs, which are coverd with ulcerated tubercles, crusts, and cicatrices, the pachydermic state of skin which gives the limbs the appearance of elephant- iasis, and of the lesions of the peripheral nerves which are pres- ent at this time, and by which occasionally the symptoms of nerve leprosy are combined with those of tubercular leprosy, the sense of touch is abolished. The patient suffers excruciat- ing pains in the limbs and even in the face, whilst the ravages of the disease in his legs render walking difficult and even im- possible. From the hypertrophied inguinal and cervical glands pus flows abundantly from fistulous openings. In certain cases |
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the abdomen is increased in size on account of the liver, spleen
and mesenteric glands being involved. With these viscerial lesions the appetite is irregular or lost. There are pains in the stomach, diarrhoea, bronchial pulmonary lesions, intermittent febrile attacks and a hectic state. The peculiar smell, recalling that of the dissecting room, mixed with the odor of goose's feathers, or of a fresh corpse, is indicated but poorly described, by the authors of the Middle Ages who compared it to that of a male goat." Dr. John Hillis, who spent a number of years in British
Guiana, says of the anaesthetic variety:— "It is known as lenke of the Greeks, baras of the Arabians,
jointevil of the West Indies, sunbahiru of the East Indies, and dry leprosy in contradistinction to the other form known as humid leprosy; and is characterized by a diseased condition of the nerves, and a peculiar eruption the primary characteristic of which is the loss of sensation, or anaesthesia; hence its name. After a time ulcerations form, a sort of dry gangrene of the limbs sets in, and joints drop off, and finally there is more or less paralysis. It would take a large volume to describe the signs or symptoms of leprosy, but the preceding account is suf- ficient to show what an alarming affection we have to deal with." Surgeon Major G. G. Maclaren, who established Dehra
Dun Asylum, writes a chapter in Mrs. Hay's "My Leper Friends," in which he observes:— "In the many examinations I have made, post-mortem, I can
testify that not a single organ in the whole body is exempt from the inroads of this dire and loathsome malady. It invades the brain, spinal nerves, the eyes, tongue, and throat, the lungs, the liver, and other digestive organs. In addition, as is generally known, it maims and deforms the external parts of the body in a manner too revolting to describe. It is painful to witness the amount of deplorable suffering some of these creatures en- dure !" The following paragraph from Wm. Tebb will sufficiently
indicate my reason for making the discussion of leprosy a lead- ing feature in the present chapter; namely, its close connection |
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238 VACCINATION A CURSE.
with the vaccination outrage which doctors in league with the
government, are perpetrating on the victimized and defenceless populations of India and the tropical isles, and which also threatens the very citadel of civilization itself:— "In the West Indies, in British Guiana, in the Sandwich
Islands, and in South Africa, when cases of unvaccinated dis- eases were related to me, I was urged by the sufferers and by their friends to make known their grievances to English people and to the Imperial Parliament, and, if possible, to bring public opinion to bear upon a mistaken and mischievous system which, without doing the least good, has been the cause of such terri- ble and far-reaching consequences. Acting upon these entrea- ties, and upon others contained in communications from various leprous countries, I have presented to the public through the press, and to members of Parliament, such facts on this subject as came before my personal notice up to July, 1890. I now offer to the public further evidence and testimonies, on behalf es- pecially of the afflicted population of our Crown Colonies and Dependencies, whose grievances have been so long and so fla- grantly disregarded. Every attempt to introduce compulsory vaccination in the populous Island of Barbados, British West Indies, has been thwarted, owing to the widespread belief that leprosy and syphilis are communicated by the vaccine virus. In St. Thomas, Danish West Indies, and in Georgetown and other parts of British Guiana, it has, for similar reasons, been found practically impossible to enforce the vaccination law, and, in spite of several compulsory enactments, entire districts remain unvaccinated by reason of this special danger; while, in the Sandwich Islands, a bill for the repeal of the vaccination law was introducted in the legislative assembly, July, 1890, by J. Kalua Kahookano, a scholarly representative from North Ko- hala, Island of Hawaii."—"Leprosy and Vaccination," Wm. Tebb, p. 15. In every civilized community may be found two classes with
distinct and opposite interests relating to the public health— two medical schools I may call them. One holds to tradition and dogma, with two cardinal tenets in their medical creed; a drastic drug for the stomach to cure disease and a putrid de- |
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SYPHILIS AND LEPROSY. 239
coction of decayed animal tissue for inoculation into the blood
to prevent disease. The second class—the new higher school— the hard students—places only a secondary reliance upon anti- dotes and drastic specifics, the main article of their creed being: Sanitary regulation, hygiene, and obedience to the immutable laws of nature. The members of the old style school are like our bankers, who urge that the issuance of money should be rel- egated exclusively to them. In like manner vaccinators and the conservative class of doctors generally, would like to have all matters affecting the public health left exclusively to them. They want the health conditions of the community under their control, so they can manipulate them as a financier manipulates the stock market. They make no earnest effort to instruct the people how to preserve health and prevent disease. No—no! They have no interests identified with a general and thorough system of public sanitation. They have "de-monetised" air, water and general hygiene, and set up a sort of "gold standard" of their mysterious drugs, latin-named, and still more mysteri- ous vaccine pus, and secured a law that compels everybody to buy; and if any "divine healer"—like Schlatter, or a psychic like the late Dr. Newton, comes along, even certain of the Homoeopaths and Eclectics would arrest and fine him. Ah, more! If Jesus Christ, the Great Physician, should appear in. our midst as of old, long-haired, sandal-footed and Syrian- clad, curing the leper, making the deaf to hear, the blind to see, the lame to walk, and the dumb to speak, Allopaths, Homeo- paths, Osteopaths, and Eclectics of the "baser sort," would quite likely unite, arraign, try, condemn, and jail him! The hydra-headed monster of persecution is not dead. There is if possible more medical than theological idolatry and bigotry in the land. Schools and pathies aside, only the educated, cul- tured, conscientious, and inspired man or woman that treats and restores the sick—teaching them in the meantime how to keep well—is worthy the name physician! |
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240 VACCINATION A CURSE.
The second class, or better school of physicians, thoroughly
educated, has a real interest in the public health, and a rational and scientific mode of promoting it. They are foremost in urg- ing measures for thorough public sanitation. Where centers of filth and pollution abound they would cleanse and purify. They have a fellow feeling for the race. They are sympathetic. They are self-sacrificing and they have a keen sense of identity with the common welfare. In Honolulu, both schools are represented. The vacci-
nators are continually lobbying for more stringent compulsory laws by which they may be able to compel every unit in the so- cial organism to pay them tribute. A sanitary organization is also laboring for the repeal of those laws, and for the adoption of measures which will prevent zymotic diseases without wreck- ing the health in other regards, They insist that vaccination shall be left optional with the people. But the vaccinators know full well if they are not permitted to vaccinate with compulsion they cannot vaccinate at all, and their occupation would be gone, for the native population are a unit against the practice, believing the prevalence of syphilis and leprosy in the islands to be mainly due to vaccination. Vaccinating officers, too, are charged with reckless carelessness, operating upon hundreds of persons in succession with no pretence to cleaning the instru- ments; also that the virus used is a common source of serious inflammation, and illness. A determined resistance to vaccina- tion therefore, is spreading throughout the islands, and officials encounter increasing trouble in enforcing the law. A condensed and much abridged summary of the conclu-
sions to which Mr. Tebb arrives concerning the relation of lep- rosy to vaccination, in the following:— 1. Leprosy is an inoculable disease, in which the leprous
virus usually finds its way to the blood through a punctured or abrazed skin-surface. 2. The most frequent opportunities of inoculating this
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SYPHILIS AND LEPROSY. 241
virus is afforded in the practice of vaccination, which is the only
inoculation that is habitually imposed by law. Note also in this connection that where leprosy most abounds, the mode of vac- cination is from arm to arm 3. That the increase of leprosy in the Sandwich Islands,
West Indies, Colombia, British Guiana, South Africa, and New Caledonia, has been parallel with the introduction and extension of vaccination in these countries. This fact is neither ques- tioned nor denied. In some of these—as the Sandwich Islands—there was no
leprosy until the natives came in contact with civilization. In these countries, moreover, arm to arm vaccination is all the more dangerous because leprosy is of very slow incubation, and often exists incipiently in apparently healthy persons through whom vaccine virus often passes. Leprosy is found to be rapidly increasing all over the world,
but more especially along the channels of commercial activity. Mr. Tebb devotes 60 pages of his large work with evidence on this point alone. In parts of Russia, particularly the Baltic and Caspian provinces, the disease is spreading. In 1887 Dr. Berg- man discovered 37 cases in Riga and 21 cases in its environs. In 1893 the number had increased to 100. In and around Dor- pat the disease has reached alarming proportions. In Bokhara and provinces east of the Caspian it is reported as spreading rap- idly. Throughout the West India Islands lepers are multiply- ing altogether beyond the hospital accommodations provided. In 1889 Mr. Tebb visited the lazaretto at Barbados, where from 300 to 400 lepers were congregated from a single parish of 30,000 population. While the population increases at the rate of six per cent. lepers are increasing at the rate of 25 per cent. The report on leprosy in Trinidad in 1891, as given by Dr. Koch, says: "The new infirmary ward, which was finished at the end of 1889, and occupied early in 1890, has been full all the year round. There was a rush of patients to fill it." In 1805 but three lepers were known in Trinidad; eight years later there |
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was 73, out of a population of 32,000. In 1878 there were 860
out of a population of 120,000; and in 1892, the increase was es- timated to be four times more rapid than that of population. |
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THE SANDWICH ISLANDS.
In the Sandwich Islands leprosy is allowed to be the chief
of the destructive forces which are gradually depopulating the native race of this beautiful archipelago. Its rapid increase is by for the most urgent and anxious question of the hour, and suc- cessive medical officers of health seem powerless to cope with it. This was fully confirmed when on my third journey around the world studying chronic diseases and their remedies. Leaving my Australian bound steamer by previous ar-
rangement at Honolulu, I spent much time in Hawaii in the leprosy-receiving hospitals, and at the homes of isolated lepers accompanied by an attending physician. It is admitted here that in many cases the leprous taint is directly traced to vaccina- tion. This is the chief reason why the natives oppose it. " In a leading article on 'The Nature of Leprosy,' 'The Lan-
cet,' July 30, 1881, p. 186, says: 'The great importance of the subject of the nature and mode of extension of leprosy is evi- dent from the steady increase in certain countries into which it has been introduced. In the Sandwich Islands, for instance, the disease was unknown forty years ago, and now a tenth part of the inhabitants are lepers. In Honolulu at one time quite free, there are not less than two hundred and fifty cases; and in the United States the number is steadily increasing. "According to the latest returns handed to me (October,
1890) by Mr. Potter, the secretary to the board of health, Hon- olulu, 1154 lepers were segregated in Molokai to which must be added thirty, sent from the Hospital of Suspects at Kalihi to Molokai on the 30th of the same month, while there are prob- ably several hundred secreted by relatives in the various islands. On March 31, 1888, the number officially reported to be at large |
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243
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in the various islands amounted to 644, but efforts have been
made during the past three years to capture these afflicted crea- tures and segregate them at Molokai."—Wm. Tebb, p. 40. It is estimated by Dr. White, surgeon to the United States
Navy, who visited the islands in 1882, that the concealed cases amounted to at least three per cent. of the population. On the origin and spread of leprosy in Hawaii Wm. Tebb writes, pp. 42-43 :—
"According to Mr. Dayton, president of the health board,
Honolulu, leprosy was discovered in the island in 1840, but Mr. D. W. Meyer, agent for the Honolulu board of health, in the appendix to the report presented to the legislative assembly of Honolulu in 1886, says it was in 1859 or 1860 that he saw the first case of the disease. That 1840 was the date of its introduc- tion is the opinion of Dr. W. B. Emerson, ex-president of the board of health, Honolulu, who, in his report published in 'The Practitioner' of April, 1890, attributes the introduction of the disease to a case reported by the Rev. D. D. Baldwin, M. D., to the Minister of the Interior, May 26, 1864. In 1863 Dr. Bald- win received reports from the deacons of his church at Lahaina with the names of 60 people who were believed to be affected with this disease. In a very few years leprosy increased to an enormous extent, and in 1868 Dr. Hutchinson reported 274 cases. ******* "To account for the appalling spread of this terrible
scourge of humanity within such a short period of time, the evidence points conclusively to one prominent cause—vacci- nation. There is no evidence to show that leprosy increased in Hawaii until after the introduction and dissemination of the vaccine virus. "Small-pox was introduced from San Francisco in the year
1868. In that year a general vaccination took place, spring lan- cets being used, which the president of the board of health (Mr. David Dayton) informed me were difficult, if not impossible, to disinfect—the operation causing irreparable mischief. The synchronicity of the spread of leprosy with general vaccination is actually a matter beyond discussion, and this terrible disease soon afterwards obtained such a foothold amongst the Ha- |
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244 VACCINATION A CURSE.
waiians that the government made a first attempt to control it
by means of segregation. Another outbreak of small-pox oc- curred in 1873, and yet another in 1881, both followed by gen- eral arm to arm vaccination and a rapid and alarming develop- ment of leprosy, as may be seen in successive reports of the board of health. In 1886 the then president of the board of health recorded his conviction, in an official report, to the ef- fect that that 'to judge by the number of cases in proportion to the population, the disease (leprosy) appears to be more virulent and malignant in the Hawaiian Archipelago than elsewhere on the globe.' Leprosy became then, and is now, the most press- ing question in these islands." In New Caledonia (South Pacific) leprosy was unknown
until 1853, when the French formally annexed and converted it into a penal colony. In 1890, 500 cases were reported among the natives and seven of European parentage. Vaccination had been practiced with rigor, and to this a large percentage of the cases are indirectly attributable. But once introduced, it has also spread by means of a peculiar habit the natives have of tattooing and scarifying the skin, making a free channel through which the leprous virus or bacillus can reach the blood. This practice has been with them from time immemorial, and yet no leprosy was known there until they were brought in con- tact with the vaccination of European civilization. In India leprosy is estimated to be increasing at the rate of
1,000 per year (British Med. Jour. Sept. 13, 1890.) The Prince of Wales stated in a speech in Marlborough House, June 17, 1889, that there were in India at least 250,000 lepers. In some districts 22 per cent. of the population are afflicted. The leper asylums are totally inadequate to their accomodation. In the city of Bombay, where at least 1,000 lepers are found, they col- lect In 'dark corners, in gullies where rats and bandicoats have taken their abode, thrown out by their families, neglected and indiscribably wretched." Whether leprosy is contagious, the greatest diversity of
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SYPHILIS AND LEPROSY. 245
opinion exists among medical men. As no one has studied this
question more carefully and extensively than Mr. Tebb, I con- sider his opinion entitled to much weight. He does not believe it to be contagious in the ordinary sense in which that term is used; but that the principle mode by which it is communicated is through puncture or abrasion of the skin, that is, by inoculat- ing the blood through the skin with the leprous virus. A sew- ing needle or pin from the garments of a leper is sufficient, if these penetrate through the skin. Mr. Tebb writes, pp. 80-81: "In the pursuit of my investigation, I have been confronted
on every hand by the most conflicting theories with regard to the causation of leprosy, and particularly with regard to this question of contagion. The contagionists, when pressed, I found invariably included virus inoculation, and interpreted the word in that sense. They admitted that the leprous discharge might be touched with impunity, when the integument is intact, but not otherwise. Every nurse, doctor, attendant, or laun- dress, in the hospital, is bound to come in repeated contact with pus from ulcerated tubercles. It is only by the insertion of the leprous virus into the blood, through a sore, prick, or abraded surface, that the disease is communicable. This view is now held by the highest authorities in all parts of the world. At the same time, there are others who hold that the disease is trans- ferable in a lesser degree by inhalation, heredity, and cohabi- nation." "From personal inquiries made at asylums and lazarettos
in various countries where leprosy is endemic, I am convinced that, apart from the risk of inoculation, there is little or no dan- ger of contagion, using the word to mean Simple contact be- tween unbroken surfaces of the body. So far as my investiga- tions have extended, the only country where the belief in com- munication by simple contact prevails to a certain extent is Hawaii; but here also I found much diversity of opinion, not a few using the word contagion to include cow-pox inoculation, both accidental, as in a cut or a sore, and by design, as in vac- cination." The first serious hint from a high medical authority that
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246 VACCINATION A CURSE.
leprosy is a frequent result of vaccination, was by Dr. R. Hall
Bakewell in 1870. He was vaccinator general of Trinidad and visiting physician of leprosy hospital. He writes:— "The question is not as simple as it appears. It is not a
question of half a dozen minute punctures in an infant's arm versus an attack of small-pox. It is a question of performing on every child that is born into the world, and that lives to be three months old, an operation sometimes, though very rarely, fatal; sometimes, but not frequently, attended with severe illness, always accompanied by considerable constitutional dis- turbance in the form of fever; sometimes, in an unknown pro- portion of cases, introducing into the system of a healthy child constitutional syphilis, but suspected in the West Indies of in- troducing a poison even more dreaded than that of syphilis— leprosy. And the parent is required compulsorily by law to subject his child to these evils, most of which are only possible, but one of which is certain (the fever), for the purpose of avoid- ing the chance of an epidemic of small-pox, which, when it does occur may or may not attack the child. "It may be taken as proved that the syphilitic poison may
be, and has been, introduced into the system of a previously healthy child by means of vaccination. But we know that lep- rosy is a constitutional disease, in many respects singularly re- sembling constitutional syphilis; like it, attended by stainings and diseases of the skin; like it, attacking the mucous mem- brane of the nose, throat and mouth; like it, producing falling off of the hair, diseases of the nails and bones; and, like it, hereditary." Why should not the blood of a leprous child, whether the leprosy be developed or not, contaminate a healthy one? "It seems to me not merely a popular opinion, but a medi-
cal one also. In returning to Europe in the spring of this year, I met several medical men from Demerara and other tropical countries, and they all considered that leprosy might be, and is, propagated by vaccination." Dr. Bakewell was summoned on behalf of the government
to give evidence before the Select Vaccination Parliamentary |
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SYPHILIS AND LEPROSY. 247
committee in 1871, and testified as follows (Answer 3563, p. 207,
Official Report): — "There is a very strong opinion prevalent in Trinidad, and
in the West Indies generally, that leprosy has been introduced into the system by vaccination; and I may say that as vacci- nator general of Trinidad, I found that all the medical men, when they had occasion to vaccinate either their own children or those of patients in whom they were specially interested, ap- plied to me for English lymph; and that was so marked that in one instance a man, who had never spoken to me before, wrote me quite a friendly letter, in order to get lymph from England when he had to vaccinate his own child. It is quite evident that the only reason for wanting lymph from England must be that they consider it free or measurably free, from contaminating the system by leprosy; because, of course, there is an equal chance, and probably a greater chance in England, of the lymph being contaminated by syphilis. " Queston 3564 and Dr. Bakewell's answer (pp. 207-8) are as
follows: — "Q. —Have you had experience of any case in which leprosy
has been introduced by vaccination? "A. —I have seen several cases in which it seemed to be the
only explanation. I have a case, now under treatment, of the son of a gentleman from India who has contracted leprosy, both the parents being of English origin. I saw the case of a child last year, who, though a Creole of the Island of Trinidad, is born of English parents, and is a leper, and there is no other cause to which it is attributable. Sir Ranald Martin, who is a great authority on these points, agreed with me that the leprosy arose from vaccination. "—"Leprosy and Vaccination, " pp. 134- 135. In the "British Medical Journal, " June 11, 1887, Dr. W. T.
Gairdner, professor of medicine in the university, Glasgow, gives a lengthy and sadly interesting account of a case of lep- rosy which came under his observation in England. As this case resulted from vaccination, I will make an abridged state- ment of it. The case was a confidential one and hence names |
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and localities are omitted except that the island referred to is
one of the group in the British East Indies. A sea captain and his wife had a little boy with a peculiar
eruption on the skin, and took him to Dr. Gairdner who made a thorough diagnosis of the case and pronounced it to be incipient leprosy. The parents had just brought the child from a British tropical island; they were Scotch and were horrified. As the child continued to grow worse the mother did not accompany the husband on his voyages, but settled down in England where their unfortunate child might have the advantage of good med- ical advice. Three years subsequently Dr. G. was lecturing in the town
where the lady was stopping and so went to see how the mal- ady was progressing in the little boy, whom he found in the most advanced stage of the disease, proceeding to mutilation of the extremeties and in the last degree of emaciation. It was on the occasion of this visit that Dr. Gairdner learned the his- tory of the case. On the island where the parents temporarily sojourned, the child was vaccinated by a Scotch physician who had been a pupil in Dr. Gairdner's university. This physician took lymph from the arm of his own son, whom a short time previously he had vaccinated with lymph from the arm of a na- tive child which he afterwards learned was from a leprous family and leprosy later devloped itself in this child, and as a matter of course the two children—the physician's child and the child of the sea captain—developed it also. The latter died soon after. Dr. Gairdner saw him the second time. In 1887 the physician's son was still alive, sequestered in an English town, but hope- lessly afflicted with the terrible and incurable disease. This was an undoubted case of vaccinal leprosy. It is a
fearful indictment against the practice of vaccination, and re- veals how grave a danger confronts every parent who submits their children to the perilous ordeal. This case is likewise an |
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SYPHILIS AND LEPROSY. 249
other link in that long chain of evidence which confirms the
popular belief among the native populations that vaccination is the direct cause of the alarming spread of leprosy. Still, with all these facts before him, the vaccinating doctor—literally the medical lilliputian—not only has no thoughts of quitting his murderous practice, but is continually plotting to make com- pulsory vaccination more complete and its enforcement more rigorous! Referring to the cases above detailed, the acting sur- geon general of Trinidad, Dr. C. B. Pasley, observes: "The fact remains, that an unlucky boy, of undoubted English parent- age, acquired a most loathsome disease, and died a miserable death as the result of vaccination. " A sad case of leprosy occurred in the island of St. Kitts,
British West Indies, in 1890. The little daughter of a Wesleyan missionary was taken sick and on examination it was found the child had contracted leprosy. Fearing the small-pox, which oc- casionally visited the isle, the parents in order to save their lit- tle girl from a remote and possible danger, inoculated her with the terrible poison that made her existence a living death and source of unfailing sorrow to her parents. The missionary re- signed his charge and decided to return to England, hoping he might find some adequate medical skill for his unfortunate child; but a new trouble was encountered in securing passage to England, as the Royal Mail company steamers would not take a leper passenger. The family finally took passage on a sailing craft, but before the vessel got fairly away from the island, it struck a reef, and they barely escaped with their lives. So they remained on the island where their misfortunes began, and where they will perform the offices of love for their stricken one until the authorities tear her asunder from her parents and consign her to the lazaretto, from whence no traveler ever re- turns. The vaccinator meantime remains abroad, and is not only permitted to pursue his nefarious business, but assisted by the state to hunt down his victims and inflict upon them the |
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250 VACCINATION A CURSE.
curse of all curses—a disease which savages never saw or heard
of until the civilized man found him a convenient subject with which to increase his revenues; then he compassionately (?) began to "protect" him. "While in Trinidad, I made inquiries of a highly intelligent
merchant, who has resided forty-three years in the West Indies, and has always been much interested in the public health. He says the belief is general in the islands that leprosy is being ex- tensively disseminated by vaccination, and he furnished me with particulars of a number of healthy families where leprosy and other diseases have broken out after vaccination, of others who, in spite of a law enforcing vaccination, have preferred to undergo the worry and penalties of prosecution to the terrible risks of this hideous and incurable malady. In some instances the children infected with leprosy have been sent by their par- ents to France and England, where, after treatment by some of the most distinguished physicians, they have either suc- cumbed to the disease or returned to die at home; and in one case the mother died of a broken heart on seeing her eldest son come back a complete wreck, loathsome to the sight. All the victims described by my informant were in good circumstances and none were even sent to the leper hospital, where only the poor are entered. He says that had he kept a record he would have been in a position to have given details of very many cases, with all the attending circumstances, and adds, 'I have come to the conclusion that we are indebted to vaccination for not only this (leprosy) but many other diseases, especially those of a scrofulous nature, as well as syphilis. ' "—Wm. Tebb, p. 146. "Mr Alexander Henry, vice-chairman of the Council of the
British and West Indian Alliance, and formerly editor of the St. Kitts Gazette, who has resided some years in the West Indies, and has devoted much attention to the spread and causation of leprosy, writing June 12, 1890, says: 'A medical officer of health cautiously admitted to me that leprosy was contracted by means of careless vaccination. Now, careless vaccination means vac- cination from arm to arm, which is almost universal in these islands. I do not believe there is a doctor of any standing in the West Indies who would deny that leprosy can be inoculated. It is admitted that owing to the slow incubation of the disease |
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it is difficult to distinguish a leper; and when you take into ac-
count that medical officers are constantly complaining to the government 'that they cannot get a supply of calf-lymph, ' and add to this the indiscriminate and careless yet vigorous man- ner in which they carry out the vaccination laws upon an igno- rant and simple people, who have no means of "asserting them- selves, I think we may safely conclude there is a high prob- ability that leprosy is spread by vaccination. "—Ibed. p. 151. "My own experiences have been confirmed by Dr. Bech-
rosy has on numerous occasions been propagated by the vacci- nator's lancet in these islands. Children have been brought to me a year or two after vaccination who have shown unmistak- able signs of leprosy, and whose parents assured me that such had never been in their family before. On the other hand, in- quiry into the antecedents of the child from whom the lymph had been selected revealed the existence of leprous taint either on the paternal or maternal side. "My own experiences have been confirmed by Dr. Bech-
tinger, formerly a resident and practising physician here, whose extensive researches entitle his opinion to great weight amongst pathologists. "The belief, also, in the British West Indies as to the con-
veyance of leprosy in this way is widespread, and forms one of the strongest grounds against compulsory vaccination that I know of. "In view of such a fact, and in face of such a terrible dan-
ger, it is my conscientious opionion that every physician should hesitate before subscribing to such a doctrine, as compulsory vaccination. "—Extract from a letter from Dr. Chas. E. Taylor, of St. Thomas, Danish West Indies, read before Vaccination Commission, Jan. 2, 1890. Now, the chief secretary of state for the colonies—Lord
Kimberly—sent out a circular of inquiry, as to whether there were any grounds for the belief that leprosy was spread by vac- cination in the West Indies. A dozen or more of physicians in these islands, who were practically familiar with leprosy, re- sponded to this circular and gave their emphatic testimony that vaccination was causing a vast amount of leprosy. Their evi- |
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252 VACCINATION A CURSE.
dence was before the College of Physicians. What did this
learned body do with these facts in their possession? Did they advise Lord Kimberly to relax the rigor of compulsory vacci- nation in the islands ? Did they express sorrow at the leprous havoc that had already been wrought by the adoption of a mis- taken policy? Did they suggest measures whereby a modicum of justice might be returned to a wronged people for the bar- barous practice that had already been wantonly imposed upon them ? Nothing of the kind; but in their answer and advice to Lord Kimberly they said: "The College of Physicians feel they can not press too strongly on your lordship the importance of enforcing the practice of vaccination for the protection of those who are too ignorant to protect themselves. " It is difficult to say which is the most pronounced in the above passage—bald hypocrisy, or cold-blooded traffic in the blood of human beings at one dollar per head! May the day soon dawn when the peo- ple—the thinking, toiling people—will be wise enough—en- thusiastic enough—to protect themselves from the tender mer- cies of Colleges of Physicians! Between the members of that brotherhood of thieves—the commercial agent, the supersti- tious priest, the scheming lawyer, and the doctor, —the native populations of all countries, lying near the tropics, are having a most unequal struggle. Each class manipulates these natives in a different way, but all have the same purpose—the money value they make them instrumental in returning to them. All profess philanthropic motives. The commercial sharper wants to advance the native's material interests; the priest wants to rescue their soul from endless hell torments; the lawyer is as painfully, as self-sacrificingly anxious to assist all the others in "protecting" him; the doctor, with a heart all tenderness is so alarmed lest he catch the small-pox! that he invokes the mighty power of the state and all the resources of the surgical art to "protect" the poor creature, seeing he is "too ignorant to pro- tect himself. " So between the various "privileged classes" the |
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SYPHILIS AND LEPROSY. 253
civilize, the tropical populations, are being ground to powder.
Gold is today's god. It was Rome's before her fall. Civili-
zation, sad to say, worships it however ill-gotten. For it the syn- dicate is formed—for it the treasure-safe is blown to atoms—for it the highway robber, revolver in hand, boards the railway train—and for it the hungrier, leaner class of doctors will fight —persistently and politically—fight for compulsory vaccination. When, oh when, will the world come to understand that God is just, that all, here or hereafter, will reap what they have sown— that compensation is as certain as the needle to the pole—that sin brings suffering in all worlds, and that heaven is attained only by being right and doing right—only by living the upright, Christlike life. Dr. Edward Arning made a thorough bacteriological study
of leprosy in the Sandwich Islands; and in a letter to Wm. Tebb dated Sept. 6, 1889, he says: — "During my stay on the Hawaiian Islands for the bacterio-
logical study of leprosy, I was naturally drawn to a scrutiny of the question whether leprosy is transmissible, and had been there transmitted by vaccination; all the more so as there is a general opinion prevailing on these islands that the unusually rapid spread of the disease about thirty years ago may probably be attributed to the great amount of indiscriminate vaccination there carried on about that period. And there is no mistake about the actual synchronicity of the spread of vaccination and of leprosy in the Hawaiian Islands; but many a mistake is pos- sible as to the real casual relation between the two. "I could trace the first authenticated cases of leprosy back
to about 1830, but the terrible spread all over the islands did not take place until very nearly thirty years later, at a time when an epidemic of small-pox had given rise to very general and very careless vaccinations throughout the group. ***** I attach far more importance to an instance of an increase of leprosy soon after vaccination on a much smaller scale, and dur- ing a much more recent period than the above. I have it on good authority that a very remarkable new crop of leprosy cases |
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sprang up at Lahaina, on the island of Maui, about a year after
vaccination had been practiced there. "The impossibility of detecting leprosy in its early stages
is a matter of common notoriety amongst physicians, so that many who believe in the prophylaxis of vaccination refuse to incur the terrible risks involved by its practice in leprous coun- tries. "—"Leprosy and Vaccination, " p. 157. Dr. F. B. Sutliff, of Sacramento, Cal. who has studied the
disease as government physician on the Island of Maui, says: — "I very seldom visited a school without excluding some
(children), while the spots just beginning to show in others made it only too probable that they would not long be doubt- ful cases. It did not seem to me a difficult task to read the fate of Hawaii in the little dark faces that looked up from their books. "—"Occidental Medical Times, " April, 1889. It is the general opinion of all residents in Honolulu, that
the remarkable spread of leprosy subsequent to 1853 was due to indiscriminate and general vaccination in that year. Alarmed by an invasion of small-pox, a vaccination of the whole popula- tion was ordered, and as physicians were few, non-professionals aided in the work. This heterogeneous and indiscriminate arm to arm vaccination, soon sowed a bountiful crop of both leprosy and syphilis. But Mr. Walter M. Gibson, president board of health in Honolulu, has exppressed the opinion that the chief cause of leprosy and secondary syphilis, was the indiscriminate and careless practise of vaccination in 1868. After this general vaccination, numerous leprous centers sprang up in various parts of the islands where the disease had previously been un- known. A remarkable outbreak of fresh leprous cases occured at
Lahaima in 1871-72, Island of Maui. This was one year after a general vaccination. Sixty cases occured suddenly in a local- ity which up to that time had been almost entirely free from the disease. When Capt. Cook visited the islands their population was
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SYPHILIS AND LEPROSY. 255
estimated at 400,000; and in 1900 a population of 35, 000 would
be a very liberal estimate, —a race literally swept off the face of the earth, that the business of the vaccinator may continue to yield an unfailing annual revenue. A race "protected" by the murderous practice of professedly civilized men on the pretence that they are "too ignorant to protect themselves. " Notwith- standing these appalling facts confronting them in their midst and on every side, what do they do? What redress or mitiga- tion of wrongs already committed do the doctors propose? Just what the College of Physicians proposed on another occa- sion. They heap insult upon injury! In the biennial report of the president of the board of
health to the Hawaii legislature of 1888, the said legislature was informed and advised, "that the work of vaccination had been pushed with vigor," and that "the board would recommend the passage of a more stringent law, imposing heavier penalties and giving vaccinating authorities all necessary authority." If this is not deliberate, cold-blooded, and demoniac cruelty, perpe- trated against a defenceless native race, some of which promi- nent white men have married, it would be difficult to find an example. And who is it behind the board and largely constitut- ing it? Who is it urging on this infamous work? They are the doctors who run vaccination on "business principles," doctors who seemingly place no higher value on the "Kanucks" than their vaccination fee will yield them,—on a West India native, or Afrikander, or Hindoo. How the legislature must be "im- pressed" with the vaccinator's philanthropy when he is so per- sistently lobbying their body for a more "stringent law." Nor can we suppose that the legislature is quite so "verdant" when passing vaccination acts that they are simply aiding these self- sacrificing, kind-hearted ( ?) doctors in the "protection of those who are too ignorant to protect themselves." In Cape Colony vaccination was made compulsory in 1882.
A large number of cases of vaccinal injury soon followed, which |
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256 VACCINATION A CURSE.
the London "Daily News" attributed to "impure lymph." But
a most vigorous vaccination of the natives was prosecuted; and on Sept. 6, 1883, an additional act was passed by the local legis- lature, in which Section 60 reads:—-"No person who has not been vaccinated shall be appointed, or if appointed prior to the taking effect of this act, promoted to any office in the public service." A penalty of £2 was provided for non-vaccination of children. Nothing was either said or done to remove the real cause that was breeding the pestilence—the "long continued filth, neglect, and scarcity of water, foul, unkempt streets, seas of mud in the winter, of dust in the summer, and a population ignorant of the commonest instincts of decency." What did the vaccinators care for sanitation? They had not invested in that direction. As a natural consequence, in 1884, after the wholesale vaccination of 1882-3, there was an epidemic of small- pox, and leprosy was increasing at a fearful rate. In 1885 the medical officer for Herbert reported:—"During the year small- pox, syphilis of a particular type, and leprosy, have been the prevailing epidemics. The last two named are still prevailing to an alarming extent." In summing up the evidence for Cape Colony, Mr. Tebb
observes:— "One experienced district surgeon told me that he had,
again and again, year after year, called the attention of the board of health to proofs of this terrible havoc wrought by arm to arm vaccination, and had advocated its suppression in the in- terests of public health. A careful examination of the official documents would show that the facts incriminating vaccination have not been allowed to appear."—Tebb, p. 245. "When making inquiries regarding etiology and spread of
leprosy in South Africa, I was generally referred to the Rev. Canon Baker, of Kalk Bay, Cape Colony, as a high authority on the subject, and one who had probably devoted more atten- tion to it than any other resident in the colony. Canon Baker had in 1883 given evidence before the select committee of the |
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SYPHILIS AND LEPROSY. 257
House of Assembly, Cape Town, and presented a statement of
his views, which appeared in Appendix A, pp. 1-9. Since then he has continued his investigations and accumulated a consid- erable body of facts bearing on the subject. Vaccination, he says, is carried out in the colonies in a most careless and per- functory manner. He has seen the operator pass his lancet from one arm to another without the smallest attempt to disin- fect the instrument or discriminate between the diseased and the healthy, in districts where both leprosy and syphilis are endemic. From other reliable sources I am satisfied that this is the rule rather than the exception. Canon Baker believes that leprosy is chiefly communicated by means of inoculation, and that arm to arm vaccination is a prolific cause of the spread of this fearful plague in South Africa. "The Colony of Natal passed Vaccination Law No. 3 in
1882, and Law No. 10 in 1885. Penalties for non-vaccination £5. In a communication from Archdeacon Colley, (I have the honor of personally knowing Archdeacon Colley, meeting him not only in Natal and Cape Town, South Africa, but later, fre- quently in London. The Archdeacon is not only a most re- liable witness, but personally a most scholarly, broad-minded English clergyman,) dated Natal, August 25, 1885, I learn that hundreds of summonses were issued in vain upon the colonists, but the natives were vaccinated by thousands; one operator would get through two hundred a day. "While the vaccination laws for several years have not been
enforced against the white population in Natal, all the natives are vaccinated either under persuasion or threats, the operation being carried out in the usual careless manner, with arm to arm virus taken from native children without previous examination, and not the slightest attempt is made to clean or disinfect the lancets after each operation. Hundreds of natives, as I am in- formed on unimpeachable authority, have died of blood-poison- ing and of inoculated diseases. "A member of the Legislative Council, Sir John Bisset, re-
ported, in Parliament that many were 'blood-poisoned, present- ing a horrible sight, and dying masses of corruption.' In Janu- ary, 1891, leprosy disseminated in this way was discovered in fifty kraals in one electoral division alone. The natives in their |
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258 VACCINATION A CURSE.
simplicity submit to vaccination, being told that it was the 'In-
cosi' (King) that ordered it, and this was the way the white man secured himself against the plague of small-pox. "As the government of Natal does not publish reports from
the district surgeons, and appears to be indifferent as to the suffering and mischief caused by the vaccinators, I found it dif- ficult to obtain further details."—"Leprosy and Vaccination," pp. 273-75.
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CHAPTER VIII.
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MISCELLANEOUS FEATURES OF VACCINATION.
"Science is in the main most useful, but is sometimes
proud, wild and erratic, and has lately proposed a desperate de- vice for the prevention of infectious perils. She proposes to prevent one peril by setting up another. She would inoculate new diseases into our old stock, in the anticipation that the new will put out the old. I pray you be not led away by this conceit. This manufacture of spick and span new diseases in our human, bovine, equine, ovine, canine, and perhaps feline species is too much to endure the thought of, especially when we know that purity of life is all-sufficient to remove what exists, without invoking what is not."—Sir. B. W. Richardson, M. D., LL. D., F. R. S. In the foregoing pages I have frequently coupled a large
percentage of the medical profession—and especially the vac- cinating fraternity—with a species of commercialism whose ma- jor purpose of pecuniary gain is in direct antagonism with the public health and welfare. And as I propose to continue the dis- cussion somewhat along similar lines, I will here offer a word of qualification. I do not arraign the profession for violation of the higher
ethical law in any different sense than I arraign all professions and occupations embraced in our modern politico-selfish and competitive life. The entire structure of existing society—so- cial, religious, professional, political, and commercial—is one in which all the parts are in mutual antagonism. Every form of social movement is an inversion of the higher normal order. The normal order finds its expression in love and reciprocity. The inversive order, in which we live, is one whose actuating |
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260 VACCINATION A CURSE.
force is self-interest, and hence one in which jealousy, rivalry,
competitive strife, fraud, deceit, hypocrisy, injustice, oppres- sion,, murder, war, conquest, etc., are abundantly interwoven with the social movement. The root out of which these hydra- headed antagonisms spring is the intense "love of money." This is the prime motive which impulses nearly every detail of human activity. The age is culminating; all lines are converg- ing toward the "golden calf," wherein the specialties of the "Devil's" form of order will be bound in an apocalyptic "bun- dle" preliminary to its final destruction. Error is mortal and must die; truth alone is immortal, eternal. The general system by which each individual and each class
are able to promote their apparent welfare is one of competi- tion and strife, not the best but the worst motives arc accord- ingly brought to the front and kept there. This inversive sys- tem, general menstrum, or social environment prompts the gro- ccryman to water his syrup, the manufacturer to put shoddy in his goods and to undersell his rival by a species of deception.
It prompts the vaccinator to puncture and poison with putrid pus, while he swear? it is the very "savor of life unto life;" prompts the lawyer to multiply contentions and quarrels, while to put an end to frauds and all quarrels would serve him poorly. Each individual and each class find their environment already provided when they arrive on the stage. The "rules of the game" are established, and they find it far easier to adopt these rules than to induce mankind to abandon them; so they take up the struggle and the strife where their fathers left it. It is beyond the power, I fear, of any class of reformers to
change the scheme by which society moves like a mighty ava- lanche toward the vortex of an impending revolution! While this system continues to remain it is absolutely certain that the majority will apply it in the prosecution of their daily business affairs. The old order is a broad highway which is crowded |
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MISCELLANEOUS FEATURES. 261
with "soldiers of fortune," the strong treading down the weak,
and each intent on gaining a vantage ground where they may compel the less fortunate to pay them tribute. The new and prospective order is as yet but a narrow lane, in which the tall grass is seldom trodden down by the weary feet of solitary pil- grims who keep their integrity. It is not my purpose therefore to unjustly condemn or crit-
icise the doctor, lawyer, priest, manufacturer or trader, who feels compelled to use the tools bequeathed them by their an- cestors. To each of these I am willing to concede they would practice the law of love under a more beneficent scheme of liv- ing—a scheme based upon justice and benevolence—a scheme in which self-interest would not antagonize the general welfare. It is the corporate greed, fraud and injustice I am aiming at, not the individual. While we are under the law of "struggle for existence and survival of the fittest" it must needs be that "offences come," yet nevertheless, "woe unto him through whom they come!" God is just. Nature knows no forgiveness. The "Good Law" holds each individual to account. You are hu- mane men whom I meet on the street or in the public assembly, being neither strangers to pity nor generosity. You are moved by the spectacle of suffering, and put your hands deep into your pockets to relieve individual cases of distress. But when you combine with other men in a corporate capacity; I know then that the system will take precedence of the man; I know that you will then scheme for money and place and power, wholly indifferent to the disease, poverty, suffering and wide- spread disaster you may occasion. Thus banded together, your only concern for the "goose" is that she shall continue to lay golden eggs. It is your corporate character I am trying to in- troduce to my readers. I want them to realize how crafty, hypo- critical, untruthful and utterly disregardful of the common good corporate bodies are in general, and the Vaccinating Syndi- |
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262 VACCINATION A CURSE.
cate in particular. It shall be with me a purpose—a persistent
endeavor to clip the claws of this medical monster and so di- minish its capacity for harm. Now, the heads of the medical profession having hastily
committed themselves to vaccination as an unquestioned pro- phylactic against small-pox, and having induced Parliament to award Jenner £30,000 from the public treasury, and also to en- dow a National Vaccine Establishment at £3,000 a year, hence- forth reputations and vested interests were at stake, and so the vaccination delusion soon petrified into a dogma which both the profession and the state had a powerful motive to defend. In this way vaccination became one of those time-honored in- stitutions, which courts and classes and professions conserva- tively guarded as a sort of heirloom of the race. It was there- fore as reprehensible to neglect vaccination as to neglect bap- tism ; far more so indeed, since to the former were attached fines and imprisonment in this world, while neglect of the latter was mercifully left to be adjudicated in the next world. To this giant evil the reformer stood like David before Goliah. The lit- tle handful of reformers who at first organized the London An- ti-Vaccination Society began their work with much the same appearance and prospects as the little band in Boston, headed by Garrison, when they commenced their assault on the great institution of American slavery in the United States. This lit- tle coterie in London, with the noble Wm. Tebb at their head, were regarded as insane fanatics, and handled by the profession much as a householder handles a polecat that has found its way into his cellar. For them contempt, misrepresentation and per- secution by the corrupt ring of feed and salaried professionals and officials who "stand in" with the state to reap their monthly and annual harvest at the expense and pain and protracted mis- ery of the poorly informed and crucified public. We know somewhat the kind of spirit that actuates a party
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machine which has long feasted on public spoils; how con-
scienceless and infamously corrupt they become; how they carry their measures by subsidizing the press, falsifying facts, and twisting statistics; hot, cruel, and unscrupulous they are, in crushing those, whom they cannot use or appropriate; with craft and cunning they pose before the people as guardians and defenders of the public safety. It is indeed high time the pub- lic should be made aware of the animus which is behind the whole vaccination business. Vaccination as a therapeutic is the pivotal form of inversion, the keystone in the arch which carries the full weight of old-time mercurial, blood-letting prac- tice. It is the barometer, the indicator, which shows the finan- cial outlook for medical practice from year to year. When boards of health can be spurred up to "enforce the law;" when the public schools are closed against those who refuse to sub- mit; and when a fresh "set-back" can be given to advanced practitioners, then business is good and old-school medical stock is at par. To attack vaccination, therefore, is to run up against the "Wall Street" interest and syndicate trusts of value in the medical profession. The medical profession, including the three more promi-
nent schools, with a few exceptions, individually and collectively are either tacitly or expressly pledged to resist all attacks; to stand by the vaccination rite as persistently as a hard-shell Bap- tist stands by immersion as the only door into the Kingdom, or as a Catholic stands by the Pope's infallibility. Not only will the profession carry the fight to the last ditch in defence of their vaccine dogma, but they will push their disgusting practice un- der our noses, in season and out of season, with a standing pros- pect of a small-pox cyclone just ahead! Health boards are the principle means for the enforcement of such legislation as the vaccinators have been able to secure. The vaccinating "trust" has a prominent place in the structure of that "Old Dragon" |
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264 VACCINATION A CURSE.
whose slimy trail marks a path of desolation over which the
victims of disease and poverty are hopelessly treading toward their untimely graves. A few reformers—fellow sufferers with the masses—conscientious royal-soulcd reformers—are trying to make the householders of this country—the parents and guardians of the rising generation—realize that the old vaccine virus monster, notwithstanding his flattering promises of salva- tion from disease, is really a disease-breeder-—a parasite fas- tened upon their vitals, poisoning their life-blood and slowly but surely undermining the integrity of their bodily structure. Be assured dear readers, vaccination is not your friend, but rather your insidious and implacable enemy, compared with which prosecutions, fines, and imprisonment are light penalties. Martyrs in the coming time wear crowns. It is far better that your children have the doors of the public school slammed in their faces than that you submit their bodies to be inoculated with the virus of detestable and incurable diseases. It is not flattering to the voting population of the United
States that they have permitted every state legislature to frame and pass a compulsory vaccination act. If the majority—or any less number—think vaccination a good thing, they are free to adopt it without any compulsory legislation, when, if the claim of the vaccinator were valid, they at least would be safe, whether their neighbor was vaccinated or not. It should concern the neighbor alone whether he choose to adopt vaccination, sani- tation or any other form of protection. Bushmen of Australia, may cat, as they do, mice if they
choose; the Basutos of Africa may cat spotted adders, as they do, if they choose; the Digger Indians of California, may eat dried and finely-powdered grasshoppers, as they do, if they choose, and gormandizing gluttons may eat market-hung fowls till they are bluing and purpling into rottenness if they choose— but I will not do it, and I insist that there will not be no such un- |
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