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Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1900 by
J. M. PEEBLES, M. D.,
In the office of the Librarian of Congress, Washington, D. C.


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J. M. PEEBLES, M.D., M.A., PH.D.


Vaccination a Curse
AND A MENACE
TO
Personal Liberty
WITH
Statistics Showing Its Dangers and Criminality
By
J. M. PEEBLES, M.D., M.A., PH.D.
AUTHOR OF
Five Journeys Around the World; The Seers of the Ages; Death Defeated,
or the Secret of How to Keep Young; Ninety Years Young and
Healthy—How and Why; etc., etc.
TENTH EDITION
1913
PEEBLES PUBLISHING COMPANY
5719 Fayette St., Los Angeles,
California, U. S. A.
Wholesale: Battle Creek, Michigan.


PREFACE.
No man, conscious of his moral integrity, intellectual abil-
ity and studied efforts to benefit humanity, will ever apologize
for speech or book; hence I make no apology for publishing
the following pages.
The vaccination practice, pushed to the front on all oc-
casions by the medical profession, and through political conni-
vance made compulsory by the state, has not only become the
chief menace and gravest danger to the health of the rising gen-
eration, but likewise the crowning outrage upon the personal
liberty of the American citizen.
The immediate occasion which induced me to take up the
pen against this great medical evil of the times, was the clos-
ing of the public schools in San Diego, Cal., (February, 1899),
against all children who failed to show a certificate of vaccina-
tion. Emerging from that heated contest, with my feelings and
convictions roused to their highest tension, these pages were
thrown off at welding heat; and if they are pervaded with sar-
casm and irony as well as sterling fact and solid argument, they
will serve all the better for popular appeal to the masses, who
need rousing to a realizing sense of the unmitigated scourge
that lurks on the point of the vaccinator's lancet. The general
public are not aware; the householders of the land have not
given this subject that attention which, as parents and guard-
ians of little children, it is their solemn duty to do. I send
forth this book to open their eyes, to rouse their conscience,
and to discover to them a cruel and insidious enemy where they
have been cajoled into the belief they have a friend.
For the last thirty years I have made a practical study of
the workings of vaccination in the various countries of the
globe. I have personally investigated it in Trebizonde, Asiatic


6                                                       PREFACE.
Turkey, while there holding a Consular appointment under
General Grant; in South Africa; in New Zealand and Aus-
tralia; in British India and Ceylon; in Egypt, China and the
countries of Europe; in Mexico and the Islands of the Pacific,
not omitting our own United States. I have for many years
been familiar with the heroic struggle of reformers in England
for the repeal of the compulsory enforcement of vaccination,
for resistance to which thousands among the laboring poor
have been fined and imprisoned. In all hot countries the princi-
pal mode is from "Arm to Arm" vaccination, on account of the
unruly, uncertain behaviour of the ordinary putrid calf pus.
This mode has spread syphilis and leprosy among the native
inhabitants until the indigenous populations of the Sandwich
Islands and the British West Indies are threatened with extinc-
tion. Yet the fee-hunting doctors are incessantly hounding the
legislatures for more stringent compulsory enactments, by
which they will be enabled to inflict and repeat this degrading
rite upon the defenceless natives for the enhancement of their
revenues.
Moreover, vaccination is a "civilized" practice. English,
French, German, and American physicians, by means of com-
pulsory vaccination laws which they have lobbied through the
various governments and legislatures, have the masses of the
people, and especially the native populations of the countries
which their respective governments rule, at their mercy. The
native Hindoo and the tropical islanders know full well the ca-
lamitous results of arm to arm vaccination, but are powerless to
protect themselves. In the United States and Great Britain,
the evil assumes other and equally portentious forms which are
fully set forth in the following chapters.
Compulsory vaccination, poisoning the crimson currents
of the human system with brute-extracted lymph under the
strange infatuation that it would prevent small-pox, was one of
the darkest blots that disfigured the last century. Its pall,


PREFACE.
though partially lifted, still rests like a deadly nightmare upon
the body politic, and, sad to state, the medical profession—save
a few of the most broad-minded and enlightened—have been
the chief instigators. They encouraged it just as they en-
couraged and practiced in the past profuse bleeding—just as
they encouraged catharsis, with the inflamed gums, loosened
teeth and the mercurial sore-mouth. And there are medical
Bourbons today that will salivate. Thirty years ago physicians
would not allow their fever patients a drop of cold water to cool
their parched tongues. Many died pleading—begging for
water, water!
The majority of doctors are behind the times. They may
have diplomas, but they are laggards. They are not students.
Many of them prefer the billiard-room to the post-graduate
course. They prefer the club-room to the medical laboratory,
the cigar to the clinic. They are fossils and away behind in the
researches that gladden this brilliant era.
While copious bleeding with much of the old "shot-gun"
practice has been relegated to the dreamless shades of the past,
they still compulsorily poison with cow-pox lymph; and then
piteously complain that "medical practice does not pay"—that
multitudes prefer psychic physicians, hypnotic practitioners, os-
teopathists, mental healers and sanitarium treatment to theirs.
Of course they do. This is natural; for just in the ratio that
the latter increase do graveyards grow lean and coffin-makers'
occupations are in less demand.
It is admitted that prevention is preferable to cure. And
there is not an intelligent medical practitioner in the land who
will unqualifiedly risk his reputation upon the statement that
vaccination is a positive preventative of small-pox. Volumes
of statistics as well as the highest medical science of this coun-
try, Canada, England, and the Continent would be directly
against him. The most that any physician of good standing
now contends for is that vaccination modifies the disease. This


8                                                               PREFACE.
is stoutly denied. On the contrary it rather aggravates the dis-
ease as there are two poisons now in the system instead of one
for nature to contend against. It is sanitation, diet, pure air,
calmness of mind, confidence, and cleanliness that modify the
small-pox; all of which modifiers are infinitely cheaper, safer,
and in every way preferable to cow-pox poison, which, if it does
not kill, often marks, maims, and sows the seeds of future ec-
zema, tumors, ulcers, carbuncles, cancers, and leprosy.
We have at our command testimonies—scores of testi-
monies—proving beyond any possible doubt that men unvacci-
nated have nursed small-pox patients in hospitals at different
times, for years, and never took the disease, while on the other
hand we have, with the dates and figures, the most positive
proof that those who had been vaccinated—vaccinated two and
three times—took the disease when exposed, and died there-
from. These facts are undeniable.
Time, at my age, is too precious to parry words with mere
ordinary physicians; hence, will only add that when laymen or
medical practitioners tell me that calf-lymph vaccination, how-
ever manipulated, prevents or modifies the small-pox, they most
severely, painfully, try my patience. I do not tell them they are
falsifiers, but do state emphatically that if I should say that cow-
pox vaccination invariably prevented or modified small-pox I
should consider myself either a most pitiable ignoramus or a
most infamous falsifier of facts! Such is my position, and med-
ical men, considering it, can pose upon just which horn of this
dilemma—this downy couch—they find most comfortable
The time has come for schorlarly men, for cultured, inde-
pendent physicians to speak out plainly against this baleful
scourge—to take a brave stand for the right and defend it
though the bigot's fire be kindled, or the crimson cross again be
built.
Compulsory vaccination and class legislation of all kinds in
the interests of any profession, are opposed to the genius of


PREFACE.                                                       9
unfoldment, the spirit of the age, and to the Constitution of the
United States. They are smitten with dry rot and stamped with
the black seal of death. They are going graveward, and fee-
hungering physicians are the principal mourners. This is em-
phatically an age of research and progress. Nature, afire with
the indwelling Divinity, and voiced by the law of evolution,
says, grow—grow or die, giving place to something better. The
good and the true, only, are immortal.
Previous to the Reformation the state stood behind the
priest and enforced his edicts, from whence thousands of vic-
tims fell before the steel and the flame of a merciless persecu-
tion. Today the state stands behind the commercialized, fee-
hunting doctor, to enforce his vaccination fraud against the
lives and health of millions of little children. It is especially for
the removal of this disgraceful compulsory curse that I speak-
as with a tongue of flame, that I make my earnest, impassioned
plea. Restore the American citizen to his liberty in matters
medical as we have guaranteed his liberty in matters religious,
and then if the medical profession have any specific of value to
offer, the common sense of the people will come to know and
adopt it.
J. M. PEEBLES, M. D.
Our quotations from distinguished American physicians
and laymen: Dr. Alexander Wilder, Dr. Leveson, Dr. Foote,
Dr. Winterburn, Dr. E. M. Ripley, Dr. T. V. Gifford, Frank D.
Blue, Esq., Hon. A. B. Gaston, W. H. Burr, Esq., Washington,
D. C, the Rev. I. L. Peebles, Methodist Episcopal Conference,
Mississippi, and others. From such English authorities as Wil-
liam Tebb F. R. G. S., W. Scott Tebb M. A., M. D., (Cantab)
D. P. H., Dr. Alfred R. Wallace, Dr. Creighton, Dr. Crook-
shank, Dr. Ross, Dr. Hitchman, Dr. Sir J. W. Pease, Dr. Wil-
liam Rowley, F. R. C. P., John Pickering, F. R. G. S., E. S. S..
F. S. A. etc., Dr. T. Mackensie, F. R. C. P. From members of


10                                                    PREFACE.
the Parliamentary Commission, and the brainiest men of
Europe, are not only copious, but convincing to demonstration.
The statistics in this volume, gathered from official reports and
tabulated with the greatest care,—are strictly, positively relia-
ble.
The whole trend of the higher thought and study is against
vaccination. To this end the learned Rev. I. L. Peebles, of the
Mississippi M. E. Conference, says (page 28) in his crisp and
stirring booklet, entitled, "Opposition to Vaccination:" "If I
had ever suggested to a legislator to enact a law enforcing vac-
cination, I should repent of it as long as I lived, either for being
so cruel or so ignorant. Physicians and legislators who are par-
ties to this filthy, poisonous butchery, and who practice it with-
out having studied it most thoroughly and prayed over it most
earnestly, should be ashamed of themselves. Let us remember
that it is cruel enough to maim, scar, or butcher a person when
he wants us to, but how much more cruel to butcher him by
force!"


CHAPTER I.
A BRIEF SKETCH OF VACCINATION FROM JEN-
NER TO THE PRESENT.—PRELIMINARY.
Since the dawn of history the most dreaded scourge of
mankind has been the prevalence of Zymotic diseases—small-
pox, plague, yellow fever, typhus, scarlatina, diphtheria, etc. In
certain years, at particular recurring periods, these diseases
contribute a very large percentage to the total death rate, es-
pecially among urban populations. They are contemplated in
the popular mind as being so swift and merciless, that whole
communities stand in helpless terror at their approach! The
desolation which has sometimes been reported from distant
cities is apprehended to be as complete as that left in the path
of a cyclone, or like the cindered remains of a great conflagra-
tion. The most dreaded among these zymotic diseases is small-
pox, because it is equally present and at home in all climates.
But the popular notion that small-pox was a veritable plague
until inoculation and vaccination provided a "sure and infalli-
ble defence" against it, is altogether erroneous. It is certainly
taken far greater account of since the days of Jenner than dur-
ing the eighteenth century, and there are strong reasons for
concluding that the special prominence given to it of late years,
is due to the clamor of doctors who desire to have the state
guarantee an unfailing resource for fees by making vaccina-
tion compulsory.
The people cannot be too often reminded that the native


12                                      VACCINATION A CURSE.
soil wherein small-pox most thrives and fattens, is "filth." It
ever follows close upon flagrant violations of the law of cleanli-
ness. Where large populations are crowded in the midst of
wretched surroundings, reeking with filth and vicious in their
dietetic and drinking habits, there expect a fearful fatality when
once the small-pox has entered their foetid precincts. The in-
dividual or the community that has a wholesome diet, pure
blood, sanitary surroundings, immunity from poverty and free-
dom from blood poisoning incident to vaccination, need have
no more fear of small-pox than from a mild attack of measles.
Until scientific sanitation began to engage the attention of state
and municipal authorities, the plague returned as punctually to
the cities of Europe as small-pox has during the last century.
Now the percentage of fatality, not only in small-pox but in all
zymotic diseases, is steadily declining, as sanitation becomes
more rigidly enforced in crowded districts, in spite of vaccina-
tion and other silly and reactionary devices which the doctors
from time to time, aided by legislation, continue to inflict on
mankind. Alfred Milnes, M. D., M. A., of London, well re-
marks—"What About Vaccination?" page 17:
"Small-pox is one of a group of allied diseases, called the
Zymotics. The name means that the disease is due to a process
of fermentation. But for common-sense purposes, it is better
to call these diseases by the plain English name of filth diseases.
They are diseases which take their rise in filth, which are na-
ture's punishment for filth, which are both frequent and virulent
where filth prevails, and which can be cleared away by the clear-
ing away of filth. Now, in the eighteenth century, in the latter
part of which Jenner lived, it must be confessed that the English
people had not yet awoke to the beauty and the necessity of
cleanliness. Filth was universal, and small-pox was terrible.
Not so terrible as many persons want to make out, but still a
formidable danger."
A. M. Ross, M. D., in his vigorous pamphlet, "Vaccination


A BRIEF SKETCH FROM JENNER TO THE PRESENT.            13
a Medical Delusion," writes:—
"Wherever the streets are narrow, the lanes and courts
filthy; where cesspits abound and filth is allowed to accumulate
and ferment; where the weak, intemperate and unclean congre-
gate together, and where the children are ill-fed and badly
clothed—there small-pox makes its home and riots in filth and
death."
The modes of treatment which have from time to time been
invented to combat small-pox, have been for the most part em-
pirical experiments and make-shifts, without any rational found-
ation in science, which have been abandoned, one after another,
but not until thousands of lives were destroyed and hundreds
of thousands were cursed with grievous and incurable ailments;
not until self-sacrificing reformers had spent valuable lives in
assailing the petrified superstitions of doctors and politicians.
Once committed to an error, it is amazing with what conserva-
tive persistence public bodies will continue to defend it. To re-
peal a measure once adopted would seem to be a tacit confes-
sion of falibility, and fallibility is a human defect which legis-
lativo bodies are slow to admit.
The earliest form of treating small-pox in Europe seems to
have been imported from the same region the disease came
from, namely, from the far East, which reached England by
way of the Saracens at the time of the Crusades, or by way of
the Moors who reached Spain. This earlier mode of dealing
with small-pox was styled "the red cloth treatment." A priest
and physician of the fourteenth century, John of Goddesden,
England, wrote a treatise on this form of cure. The patient
was wrapped in red cloth, while window curtatins and drapery
of red were also provided for the sick room. It was thought
this treatment conduced to throw the morbid symptoms out
to the surface; and as matter of fact, it was sinless and harmless
in comparison to the thrice accursed practice of vaccination.


14                                      VACCINATION A CURSE.
SMALL-POX INOCULATION.
About eighty years before Jenner's discovery—1721—a
practice was introduced in England, called Inoculation, which
was accomplished by taking pus matter direct from small-pox
patients and introducing it into the blood of healthy individ-
uals. Sometimes the virus was introduced into deep incisions,
but more often from the point of the lancet just under the skin.
The milder method was introduced by Gatti, a French physician,
and adopted by Sutton and Dimsdale in England about 1763.
Small-pox inoculation, the forerunner and parent of vac-
cination, like its successor, was derived from a superstition
practiced by the common people, which has come to be styled
"the tradition of the dairy maids." Jenner derived his earliest
idea of vaccination—while yet a student of medicine—from a
young country woman who had contracted cow-pox. Small-
pox inoculation was derived, not from scientific experimenta-
tion, but from a superstition practiced by the common people
in India since the sixth century. The fad having once become
the fashion, the doctors adopted and bowed to it as a fetish
which must not be questioned; and after the people had thor-
oughly learned by sad experience that it was a public curse and
not a blessing, rose in revolt against it, still the doctors—who
were now reaping a fat revenue from the practice—continued
in the vigorous defence of the superstition, and in the persecu-
tion and misrepresentation of the reformers who had arisen to
overthrow it. Mr. Porter, who was English ambassador at
Constantinople in 1755, informs us, (Gentleman's Magazine, for
October of that year): "It is the tradition and opinion of the
inhabitants of the country that a certain angel presides over
this disease. That it is to bespeak his favor and evince their
confidence that the Georgians take a small portion of variolous
matter, and, by means of scarification, introduce it between the
thumb and the forefinger of a sound person. The operation is


A BRIEF SKETCH FROM JENNER TO THE PRESENT.            15
supposed to never miss its effect. To secure beyond all uncer-
tainty the good will of the angel, they hang up scarlet cloths
about the bed, that being the favorite colour of the Celestial in-
habitants they wish to propitiate."
We may well inquire: how did this superstition reach
England, obtain royal patronage, receive sanction by the Royal
College of Physicians, and dominate all classes of society for
more than half a century before it was finally overthrown and
superceded by another superstition that has not discounted one
whit the mischief which the earlier superstition had accom-
plished? The story may be briefly told. One Timoni, a Greek
physician in Constantinople, in a letter addressed to Dr. Wood-
ward, professor of physic, first brought the subject to English
notice. This letter was printed in the Philosophical Transac-
tions for 1714. But the real credit—or discredit—of the intro-
duction of the practice into England, was due to Lady Mary
Wortley Montagu, whose husband was ambassador to the
Porte in 1716. Lady Montagu wrote a friend in England, de-
tailing the process of "ingrafting" as a preventative against
small-pox. This famous letter was written in 1717, but the in-
oculation craze was not fairly inaugurated in England until
1721. In 1724 Steele congratulated Lady Mary for having
"saved the lives of thousands of British subjects every year."
Voltaire was in England about this time, and became an ardent
worshipper of the newly imported fetish. He knew well how
to reach the feminine portion of the population of his native
France. He assured them that the charms of the ladies of Cir-
cassia were due to this ingrafting practice, and that thousands
of English girls had adopted this method of preserving their
health and beauty. So it was not long before inoculation also
became the rage in the kingdom of Louis XV.
In the same year that inoculation reached England (1721),
244 persons were inoculated in Boston, Mass., by Dr. Boylston,
of whom six died. Numerous deaths also followed the practice


l6                                               VACCINATION A CURSE.
in England, and by 1728 it became quite generally discredited;
but in 1740 it again revived, and for thirty years held full sway.
This revival was largely due to the luck of two doctors, Robert
and Daniel Sutton, who gave minute attention to hygiene, by
which their inoculated patients generally went through with a
very mild form of small-pox, which all would invariably do un-
der a thorough system of sanitation. But this simple secret
was not generally understood in those days, and so the brothers
Sutton not only received great credit, but reaped a very hand-
some profit through their device of cleanliness. Their practice
became very popular, receiving patronage from the nobility
who paid them immense sums for their services. As small-pox
induced by inoculation was infectious, the same as when taken
in the natural way, enterprising inoculators persuaded whole
parishes to submit to it, so that all having it at once, none would
be expected to catch it by subsequent exposure. {The rich har-
vest of money accruing from the practice, therefore, became
a powerful motive in the defence and perpetuation of the sys-
tem, precisely as vaccination today, enforced by legislators and
boards of health, gives lucrative employment to a class whose
self interest prompts them to every specie of subterfuge and
special pleading to perpetuate the compulsory clause in vacci-
nation legislation.)
                         
After the fruitless trial of nearly a century, it was discov-
ered that in occulation was sowing the seeds of a long train of
diseases, in their most fatal form, communicating infectious
complaints from one person to another—cancer, scrofula, con-
sumption, and other more loathsome diseases were spreading
to an alarming extent. It was seen and confessed by hundreds
of physicians that the net result of this practice was a multipli-
cation of ailments and an enormous increase in the total mor-
tality. Dr. Winterburn, of Philadelphia, writes,—"The Value
of Vaccination," page 18:—
"From the most trustworthy sources, however, it is evi-


A BRIEF SKETCH FROM JENNER TO THE PRESENT.            17
dent that just as now we have epidemics of measles, and other
of the zymoses, varying greatly in intensity and fatality, so in
the pre-inoculation period there were epidemics of small-pox
of great fatality and others of very moderate intensity. But
after the introduction of inoculation, the ravages of small-pox
increased, not only directly as the result of inoculation, but each
new case became, as it were, a centre of disease, from it spread-
ing in every direction, often with great virulence. It spread
small-pox just as the natural disease did. It could be propa-
gated anywhere by sending in a letter a bit of cotton thread
dipped in the variolous lymph. In this way, not only the num-
ber of cases, but, also, the general mortality was very greatly
increased. But so hard is it to alter the ideas of a people after
they have crystallized into habit, that although it was evident
that epidemics of small-pox often started from an inoculated
case; and although the most strenuous efforts were made to
supersede it by vaccination, inoculation continued to flourish
for nearly a century and a half. It was found necessary in 1840
to make inoculation in England, a penal offense, in order to put
an end to its use. Even that has not prevented its secret prac-
tice by the lower orders, where ideas die hardest, and the rite
is even now probably more than occasionally performed."
SMALL-POX INOCULATION.
Some knowledge of the history of small-pox inoculation
is important at this time, since it furnished so many exact par-
allels to the history of vaccination. With few exceptions medi-
cal men defended it, made light of its multiform dangers, and
held it up to public attention as the great desideratum of the
common security and welfare. They juggled with statistics
the same as vaccinators do today to defend their practice, point-
ing out that 18 per cent. of small-pox patients died who took
the disease in the natural way, while only one in ninety-one of
the inoculated died. But at last the real facts—tragic and un-
welcome though they were—confronted both doctor and lay-
man in such a signal and alarming manner, that Parliament was
invoked to put an end once and forever to the inoculating rite.


l8                                      VACCINATION A CURSE.
Nevertheless, as we shall presently see, no sooner was this su-
perstition abandoned, than the medical profession adopted an-
other which was destined to curse the world in a ten-fold
greater ratio, and while they petitioned Parliament to make the
earlier practice a penal offence, they likewise made their new
fad obligatory and compulsory. Hence the last estate of the
people was made far worse than their first, for now the liberty
of the citizen to defend the health of his family was cancelled.
The first Compulsory Vaccination Act passed by Parlia-
ment also contained this clause, retiring inoculation to the
limbs:
"Any person who shall after the passing of this Act pro-
duce in any person by inoculation with variolous matter, or any
matter, potency, or thing impregnated with variolous matter, or
wilfully by any other means whatsoever produce the disease
of small-pox in any person shall be guilty of an offence, and
shall be liable to be proceeded against summarily, and be con-
victed to be imprisoned for any term not exceeding one month."
Arthur Wallaston Hutton, M. A., makes the following sig-
nificant observation,—"The Vaccination Question," page 14:—
"In the early years of the present century, when medical
men, with almost complete unanimity, were seeking to replace
the variolous inoculation by the vaccine inoculation, they con-
fessed, or rather urged, that the earlier practice had destroyed
more lives than it had saved. And this was undoubtedly true.
For not only did the practice inflict the disease on the person
inoculated, but that person became a new center of infection,
from which small-pox could be and was occasionally 'caught'
in the natural way. * * * * * * * We talk of small-
pox inoculation, as if it were an uniform practice; whereas it
really varied as much as vaccination does now. It might com-
municate the disease in its most deadly form, or it might do
just nothing at all, beyond making a slight sore, which proved,
if tested, no defence against subsequent exposure to the infec-
tion of small-pox. Disastrous, however, as the practice was—
and so clearly is that now recognized that for the last fifty
years the practice has been penal—it may be admitted that there
was 'something in it,' and that, in the special cases of medical


A BRIEF SKETCH FROM JENNER TO THE PRESENT.                     19,
men and of nurses, it might still be resorted to with advantage,
if performed in isolation hospitals. For although some consti-
tutions are so susceptible of small-pox (as others are of other
fevers) that one attack does not afford security against a second
or even a third, the general rule is that one attack does confer
subsequent immunity; and a person inoculated when in good
health, and when there is no severe epidemic about, might con-
ceivably pass through the ordeal with less risk than if a natural
attack of the disease had been waited for and incurred."
JENNER AND VACCINATION.
As we have seen, the inoculation superstition was the chief
medical curse of the eighteenth century. It sent multitudes to
untimely graves, and permanently impaired the health of other
multitudes, since the septic poisoning from within reached the
very fountains of life and laid the foundations for a long train
of incurable diseases. In the final summing up its pledges
were broken and its flattering promises were unfulfilled. Yet
vicious as it proved, it was superseded at the hands of Jenner
by a fallacy still more monstrous, until the nineteenth century,
which, notwithstanding its boasted civilization, has been more
cursed by the doctors than was the eighteenth.
Edward Jenner, born in 1749, at Berkley, introduced vacci-
nation in England in 1798. He is credited with the fanciful dis-
covery that by poisoning the blood with cow-pox, a future at-
tack of small-pox would be prevented. This delusion has been
so completely disposed of by Dr. Creighton and Prof. Crook-
shank that I need devote but little space to the Jenner episode.
In the first place, Jenner was far from being a learned man. In
the department of exact research he was a blunderer, yet his
personal qualities were amiable and attractive. He was in the
habit of writing verses and had a faculty of making fast friends.
His medical degree was conferred with the simple preliminary,
not of an examination, but the payment of a fee of fifteen
guineas to the University of St. Andrews. And his Fellowship


20                                      VACCINATION A CURSE.
in the Royal Society—according to the admission of his latest
biographer, Dr. Norman Moor, by a procedure which amounted
to a fraud. In the field of natural history, where he made some
pretensions, his knowledge was scanty and empirical. His pub-
lished observations on the cuckoo,—Phi. Trans. Vol. LXXVIII
—read in 1788, called out a witty and critical tract entitled,
"The Bird that Laid the Vaccination Egg."
In strict truth, Jenner was not the discoverer of vaccina-
tion. Many of the common folk in his time, chiefly dairy maids,
had already noted the fact that those who took the cow-pox
were less susceptible to small-pox; and years before Jenner took
the matter up, a Dorsetshire farmer, named Jesty, inoculated
his wife and two sons with the cow-pox, in the conviction that
this would prove a preventive.
THE COW-POX.
This is a filth disease, a "bad disease" whose original source
is in the human degenerate; a disease communicated to the
cow's teats by stable boys who not only suffer from the "bad dis-
ease," but whose hands are soiled by grooming the greasy heels
of diseased and ill-kept horses. Bear in particular remem-
brance, that the cow-pox is not natural to the bovine species.
Bulls and steers are never troubled with it; neither are heifers
without the voluntary and conscious agency of man. It is only
milch cows that catch the disorder. Dr. George W. Winter-
burn, whom I have already quoted, writes:—
"This disease which is called cow-pox in cows, is known
as grease in the horse. Grease is a disorder
resulting from inflammation of the sebaceous glands of the
skin, about the heels of a horse, and is properly called eczema
pustulosum. The disease originating from a scrofulous condi-
tion, supervenes from exposure to wet, and from subsequent
lack of cleanliness, and is always the result of carelessness on
the part of the groom. The discharge from these vesicular pus-
tules is often profuse, very irritating to the surface over which


A BRIEF SKETCH FROM JENNER TO THE PRESENT.            21
it flows, and foetid. * * * * This purulent matter, car-
ried on the dirty hands of farm-laborers to the teats or other
sensitive parts of the cow, produced the disorder which has
been misnamed cow-pox."
And these are the vile forms of corruption, charged with a
deadly virus—sometimes horse-grease, sometimes small-poxed
cow virus, but more frequently syphilized cow-pox—which Jen-
ner pronounced "a sovereign remedy against small-pox," and
who declared to the British Parliament when he applied for his
£30,000 reward: "Whoever is once vaccinated with cow-pox
is forever afterward protected from small-pox." Yet in spite
of Jenner's promises, and notwithstanding the civilized world
has been vaccinated and re-vaccinated ad nauseum, the world
continues to suffer from small-pox epidemics, just as it did dur-
ing the inoculation times, while such mitigation as we really en-
joy is due—in spite of vaccination—to an increased sanitation ob-
servance of more rational habits of living. Following up Jen-
ner's observations, Arthur Wallaston Hutton remarks,—"The
Vaccination Question," page 19:—
"His theory was that the disease of the horse's hoof, known
as 'horse-grease,' was the source of human small-pox and also
of cow-pox; and in this way the relationship was established to
his own satisfaction. Neither proposition is true; nor indeed
did Jenner care to maintain the truth of either proposition when
the merits of vaccination had once become established in peo-
ple's minds; but the theory justified or seemed to justify him
in describing cow-pox as variolae vaccinae or 'small-pox of the
cow;' and it is really this theory which has mis-directed pretty
nearly all the observations that have been made on vaccination
right down to the present day. Sir John Simon, a living author-
ity on the subject, explains that persons vaccinated cannot take
the small-pox, because they have had it already; and this be-
lief is still shared by hundreds and thousands of people."
Again the same high authority says:—
"But what is in truth the nature of cow-pox? It is an ail-
ment, not of cattle, but of the cow, as its name implies, exclu-


22                                                VACCINATION A CURSE.
sively, and of the cow only when she is in milk; and it is fur-
ther a disease of civilization. It does occur when a cow
suckles her own calf; nor, for that matter, does it occur where
cow-stables are kept decently clean. Jenner observed that it did
not occur when the milkers were women only; and hence his
theory that the disease originated in 'horse-grease,' his asser-
tion being (first stated as an hypothesis, and then, a little lower
down, as a thing which 'commonly happens') that the disease
was communicated to the cow's teats by a man-milker who had
just dressed the diseased horse's heels. Other observers also
professed to have noted that the disease only occurred where
there were both men and women milkers; but they drew an-
other inference as to its origin, for which they found confirma-
tion in the disease's popular name. Apparently it is in some
way due to the friction of the teats by the milker's hands; it oc-
curs spontaneously (i. e. apart from inoculation) only where
cows are milked; and its name had reference not to small-pox
but to "great-pox," with which its analogy was popularly and cor-
rectly discerned. Presumably it is a consequence of its partly
human origin that it is so easily (and ordinarily without danger)
inoculable on man, which other diseases of animals are not.
That, however, is mere conjecture; what is now certainly estab-
lished beyond all reasonable doubt is that cow-pox bears no
pathological relation to small-pox. The similarity in name is
the only connection; for, though there is superficial resem-
blance between the vaccine vesicles and the variolous pox, the
two diseases are really quite distinct. The definite establish-
ment of this fact, which of course upsets the whole alleged
scientific basis of vaccination, is due to the labors in recent years
of Dr. Creighton and Professor Crookshank, though the real
character of cow-pox had long ago been suspected."
In an article communicated to the Academie de Medicine
in 1865, by Auzias-Turenne, I quote the following language:
"Between syphilis and cow-pox the analogy may be a long way
followed up, * * * but, happily, for the vaccinated, cow-
pox passes through a rapid evolution, and does not leave viru-
lent remains for so long a time or so frequently as syphilis."
In that thorough and carefully written work of Dr. Creigh-
ton, published in 1887, he was the first to demonstrate Jenner's


A BRIEF SKETCH FROM JENNER TO THE PRESENT.         23
mistake. He set out to find some explanation for the com-
plaints that were continually multiplying of the communication
of syphilis by vaccination. The results of his investigations
were embodied in the volume, "Cow-pox and Vaccinal Syphilis."
His early judgment was that the communication of two diseases
by one and the same act was improbable; but as the evidence
he accumulated became overwhelming, he at last gave up every
doubt that these syphilitic symptoms are part and parcel of the
cow-pox itself, which is sure to make its presence felt if inocu-
lated in the system through the ordinary process of vaccination.
In the same year that Creighton published his book, estab-
lishing the connection between syphilis and cow-pox, Prof.
Crookshank was pursuing independent investigations into the
micro-pathology of a cow-disease that had broken out in Wilk-
shire, which the Agricultural Department of the Privy Council
thought might bear some relation to scarlet fever in man. In
this investigation, Crookshank also critically examined the na-
ture and origin of cow-pox, with the result that his researches
fully bore out and confirmed Dr. Creighton's conclusions. "In
fact," says Hutton, "the syphilitic nature of cow-pox is the
theory which now holds the field; and it is hardly contested by
the advocates of vaccination, who are content to rely solely on
the evidence of statistics." How horrid to contemplate!
We are therefore face to face with the gravest, and at the
same time the most disgusting, aspect of the whole vaccination
problem. Note that the cow-pox is not a natural bovine dis-
ease; that only milch cows contract it, and this invariably
through human agency. Long before Creighton and Crook-
shank wrote, it had been suspected by high authorities, that
man is not only the medium of transmission of horse-grease to
the cow's udder, but that he communicates a loathsome virus
from his own person as well. Therefore the horse-grease dis-
ease in the cow, is a very different malady from the cow-pox,
which is derived from man and from man alone! Let us be


24                                       VACCINATION A CURSE.
frank. A large percentage of vaccination practice has inocu-
lated whole communities with the thrice accursed syphilitic
taint, according to the brand or stock of vaccine used; for be it
known, that vaccine corruption has now become an ordinary
article of commerce, the same as baking powders and "em-
balmed" beef. I shall hereafter show that the vaccinator can
rarely be certain of the quality of his stock, or of the extent of
harm that will result from his practice.
The identity of cow-pox and syphilis was first definitely
pointed out by Dr. Hubert Boens-Boissan in 1882; and Dr. J.
W. Collins in his "Sir Lyon Playfair" pamphlet gives 478 cases
of "vaccino-syphilis," details of which have been published by
various medical authorities, both in England and on the conti-
tinent.
When these facts shall be fully realized by a much crucified
and long suffering public, it will not take long to put a stop to
the compulsory feature of this infamous crime. We shall then
no longer submit the bodies of our defenceless children to the
assaults of salaried, place-hunting doctors, nor longer tolerate
the flagrant usurpations of parliaments and legislatures over our
personal liberties and the sacredness of the family circle.
Now, to return to Jenner. His first vaccination was on a
boy named James Phipps, who later died of pulmonary con-
sumption. This was in 1787. Two years later he vaccinated
his own son, then a year and a half old, with swine-pox, which at
that time was considered as protective as cow-pox; and had not
this mode been considered too disgusting for popular ap-
proval, it would in all likelihood have taken precedence over
cow-pox vaccination. Thereafter Jenner repeatedly inoculated
his child with small-pox. But being delicate in health he died
in his twenty-first year.
Dr. John Hunter, the noted physiologist in Jenner's time,
expressed a wise judgment on the de-merits of Jenner's system.
He wrote:—


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