CHAPTER V.
			LOCAL CONTESTS ON THE VACCINATION QUES- TION.
		"I can sympathize with, and even applaud a father who, with the presumed dread in his mind, is willing to submit to ju- dicial penalties rather than expose his child to the risk of an in- fection so ghastly as vaccination."—Sir Thomas Watson, M. D., London. Although the courts in many states have decided that boards of health or education cannot compel school children to be vaccinated, there is nevertheless a general and a vigorous move of late by these same boards to enforce compulsory legis- lation on the subject. These "boards" pretend to be acting in the interests of humanity and of the public health. Similar pub- lic interests were near and dear to the hearts of the Spanish In- quisitors, who drove the Huguenots out of France and burned scores of thousands at the stake on account of their "mischiev- ous" opinions. No, the intelligent portion of the American peo- ple have at last taken the true measure of such physicians as wield the lancet and the poisoning, putrifying calf pus. As doc- tors they are behind the age in their profession; as business men they will pocket fees, though their professional edicts turn every poor man's child out of the public school. I ask, how much longer are intelligent Americans going to submit to this

		124                                    VACCINATION A CURSE. infamy? How much longer will they permit an unscrupulous class to victimize their children and defraud them of their birth- right for the sake of putting shekels in their pockets? These health boards and examining boards be it remembered, have only in rare instances been asked for by the people. They are part and parcel of the vaccinating business firm, who instead of teaching sanitation and cleaning up centers of pollution where zymotics originate, enforce upon a long suffering populace a vile and discredited commercial commodity. As we always have the "poor'' with us, so likewise the body politic is weighted down with a surplus of doctors turned loose from the medical colleges every year to prey upon society, not one-half of whom have the slightest genius for physic, and ought by all means to have kept their place in the ranks of the "Man with the hoe." Not able to get a living in the field of legitimate medical prac- tice, they become "shysters" of the noble profession, secure ap- pointments on boards of health, corrupt legislatures, get up small-pox panics, and saddle the public with fees for services
		which are curses and nothin			else.
		Doctors must be supported, aye, right royally supported. Vaccination and compulsory laws are what they have found to be a superb thing. The public welfare—it is a hypocritical pre- tence ! Some of them would consign every child in the com- munity to an incurable disease, or slam the door of the school room in their faces, for the sake of the profit their lymph-poi- soning practice affords them. The public health is the least and last thing that concerns many of them. The compulsory law was not gotten up to make people more healthy, nor to pre- vent disease. If it had been, its promoters would manifest some solicitude regarding the real causes which every well informed person knows are the principal sources of all the zymotic dis- eases in this country, in the poor and crowded quarters of all large cities. These the vaccinators, like the Levite, pass by.

			LOCAL CONTESTS.
					125
		Read the fearful arraignment of the distinguished Dr. A. M. Ross, of Toronto:— "In March, 1885, my attention was aroused by a report that several cases of small-pox existed in the east end of Montreal. Knowing something of the filthy condition of certain localities, I made a careful sanitary survey of all that part of the city east of St. Lawrence street, and southwest of McGill and St. An- toine streets. What I saw I will attempt to describe—what I smelt cannot be described! I found ten thousand seven hun- dred cesspits reeking with rottenness and unmentionable filth; many of these pest-holes had not been emptied for years; the accumulated filth was left to poison the air of the city and make it the seed-bed of the germs of zymotic diseases. Further, I found the courts, alleys, and lanes in as bad a condition as they possibly could be—decaying animal and vegetable matter abounded on all sides. Everywhere unsightly and offensive ob- jects met the eye, and abominable smells proved the existence of disease-engendering matter, which supplied the very condition necessary for the incubation, nourishment and growth of small- pox. "Knowing well the fearful consequences that would result from the presence of such a mass of filth in such a densely popu- lated part of the city, I gave the widest publicity to the subject, hoping thereby to rouse the municipal authorities to a proper appreciation of the danger that menaced the health of the city. But I was an alarmist; my advice went unheeded and the filth remained as a nest for the nourishment of small-pox, which grew in strength and virulence rapidly, until it swept into un- timely graves, from the very localities I have mentioned, thirty- four hundred persons!—victims of municipal neglect. Instead of removing the filth and putting the city in a thoroughly clean, defensive condition by the enforcement of wise sanitary regula- tions and the adoption of a rigid system of isolation of small- pox patients, the authorities were led by the medical profession to set up the fetish of vaccination and proclaim its protective virtues, through the columns of an ignorant, tyrannical and time-serving press. Day after day the glaring, snaring head- lines of 'Vaccinate! vaccinate!' 'Alarm! alarm!' appeared in the morning and evening papers. A panic of cowardice and mad-

		126                                      VACCINATION A CURSE. ness followed, and tens of thousands of people were driven (like sheep to the shambles of the butcher), to the vaccinators, who reaped a rich but unholy harvest. Not less than 100,000 people were vaccinated while the panic lasted, yielding an unrighteous revenue to the vaccinators of at least $50,000. "Cleanliness, sanitation, and hygiene were 'nonsense,' un- worthy of notice or consideration by the board of health! Tens of thousands of beastly vaccine points were imported and dis- tributed among the vaccinators, who were sent forth to poison the life blood of their victims and kindle the flame of small-pox. "I did all in my power to convince the authorities and the people of the sad mistake they were making; but ignorance, vaccination, and love of money gained the ascendancy, and three thousand four hundred innocents were sent to untimely graves. "The truth of my prophetic warnings in March, 1885, was amply and sadly verified by the sickening and mournful fact that thirty-four hundred persons, mostly children under twelve years of age, died from small-pox in the very localities I pointed out as abounding in filth; while in the west end, west of Bleury and north of Dorchester streets, where cleanliness prevailed, there were only a few cases and these sporadics. I do not hesitate to declare it as my solemn opinion, founded upon experience ac- quired during the epidemic, that there would have been no small-pox epidemic in Montreal if the authorities had discarded vaccination and placed the city in a thoroughly clean and defen- sive condition when I called upon them to do their duty in March, 1885. The greatest incompetency, cowardice, indiffer- ence and fickleness prevailed among the health officials. When at last the dread disease carried off sixteen hundred victims in October (although 100,000 people had been vaccinated), they began to enforce a system of isolation, which I had repeatedly but vainly recommended during March, April and May. When vaccination ceased and isolation was enforced, the epidemic rapidly subsided. "The causes, then, which gives rise to and propagate small- pox are within our control and are preventable. They may be summed up briefly as follows :— "Overcrowding in unhealthy dwellings or workshops, where there is insufficient ventilation, and where animal or veg- etable matter, in a state of decomposition, is allowed to accu-

		LOCAL CONTESTS.                                          127 mulate; improper and insufficient diet, habits of intemperance, excess in eating, idleness, immorality, and unsanitary habits of life, such as the neglect of ablution and the free use of pure water, want of proper exercise, and other irregularities of a like nature." No money in that sort of thing for the third rate vaccinat- ing doctor! It may be conceded that the average physician is an honorable man personally, the same as the average priest or lawyer or merchant; but vaccination with him is not philan- thropy, but business; it is one of his modes of making a living and getting on in the world. Dr. Ross, above quoted, and most of the truly great physi- cians whom I have quoted in these pages, belong to the real no- bility of the profession. These are physicians who place the public health and welfare above merely commercial motives. These are physicians of the normal order, the true friends of the race, whom future generations will delight to honor. These not only see where the trouble is located, but do what they can to remove the active causes of disease. It is this class who are laboring to secure better sanitation, and who are trying to teach the people that the real preventives of sickness lie in the observance of the natural law. But it is small headway that a few noble reformers can make in the direction of thorough san- itation when they have to deal with corrupt and unscrupulous politicians and municipal boards who are continually plotting selfish schemes for place, pelf, and privileges for themselves. Now, if the citizens of each municipality will exhibit a little firmness and more conscientious enthusiasm they can make a dead letter of the "edicts" of local boards of health and educa- tion. In the highest courts these edicts are invariably set aside. To each parent I declare: if you submit to have your children vaccinated; if you allow this public enemy to enter your house- holds with his lancet and putrid pus to imperil the future of your children, you are morally responsible before high heaven!

			128                                  VACCINATION A CURSE. The legal authority by which the vaccinator assumes the right to perpetuate this outrage upon the innocent little ones commit- ted to your charge, is a base, infamous, and un-American usur- pation which your state constitution and your highest court do not sanction. You need not submit your children to this ac- cursed rite, nor need you submit to have them defrauded of school privileges which you have been taxed to provide. In many towns local boards have been chosen in accordance with an enlightened public sentiment; and these, knowing their con- stitutional rights, pay no attention to the Philipics and edicts of any state board. In other towns the sentiment is aroused, but the health and educational boards, being creatures of the political "ring," iSsue their mandates and then a hot contest is at once precipitated.
		A HOT CONTEST IN SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA. I spent the winter and early spring of 1898 in my sunny home in San Diego. Early in February—if I remember—the local board of health directed the school board to issue a per- emptory order that every child attending the public schools should be required to present a certificate of vaccination to their teacher, and on failing to do so should be excluded from further attendance. The battle was on. Among the papers in the city, the Union was conservative, rather siding with the vaccination doctors; but the Sun and Vidette freely opened their columns to my pen sketches of the situation. Only one doctor—P. J. Parker, M. D.—saw fit to publicly notice my arraignment of the vaccination practice, and he was extremely reserved and guarded. I opened the ball with the following letter to the Daily Sun:— "Editor Sun: At the close of my lecture Sunday evening in the hall, literally packed, the subject came up relative to vac-

		LOCAL CONTESTS.                                       129 cinating our school children. The consensus of opinion was de- cidedly against it—a majority of certainly nineteen-twentieths of those present. Further, it was a general expression that the doctors, lawyers, druggists, and merchants be vaccinated or re- vaccinated, and that the school children—our dear school child- ren—be spared. "When I began the practice of medicine over 50 years ago, bleeding was far more popular with doctors than vaccination is today. Times change. Vaccination 'wearing out,' as the theory is, in from about three to seven years, I was induced to be re- vaccinated in San Francisco just after the commencement of our late civil war, and came near losing my arm from the dire effects of the deadly poison. It put me in bed three weeks and impaired my health for several years. Personally, I should in- finitely prefer the small-pox, treating myself, than to undergo another such life-endangering siege of suffering from vaccina- tion. "While there is no epidemic of small-pox in our city, nor the likelihood of there being any, it seems not only presumptu- ous but absolutely appalling that health officers should order vaccination. It certainly cannot be for the picayune finances that will accrue to a few physicians. They surely are not so grasping and heartlessly greedy as that. Can it be from a lack of information? "It is well-known by the most eminent and erudite physi- cians of today that while vaccination is not even a common safe- guard against small-pox, it often conduces to blood-poisoning, erysipelas, eczema, and consumption. "Am I told, referring to 'tubes and points,' that calf-lymph- glycerinated vaccine, 'the pure,' will be used? Pure poison! Think of it, parents! Pure pus-rottenness—think of it! Pure calf-lymph from calves' filthy sores put into the arms of inno- cent babes and school children. 'Pure!' Why it is virtually beastly calf-brutality thrust into our children's budding hu- manity ! "The battle for compulsory vaccination was waged by spells most vigorously in the British house of parliament for nearly a dozen years, and finally a parliamentary commission,

					VACCINATION A CURSE.
			130
		after a long and most rigid investigation, virtually reported that vaccination should be 'optional,' rather than compulsory. "A personal friend of mine, William Tebb, of London, one of God's noblemen, was arrested, if I rightly remember, four- teen times for refusing to have his children vaccinated. He paid his fines—and now wears a victor's wreath. And I, too, would be arrested—aye, I would rot in jail before I would again have that damnable vaccine poison thrust into my arm or into my children's arms. "Prof. Kanichfield, of Berlin, said in an elaborate report: 'I, too, vaccinated my children at a time when I did not know how injurious it was. Today I would resist if necessary the au- thorities and the police law.' "Dr. Greogory in the Medical Times, June I, 1852, (and then medical director of the London Small-pox hospital) said: 'The idea of extinguishing the small-pox by vaccination is as absurd as it is chimerical, and is as irrational as it is presumptu- ous.' "Dr. Stowell, after twenty year's experience as a vaccine physician in England, said: 'The general declaration of my pa- tients enables me to proclaim that the vaccine notion is not only an illusion, but a curse to humanity.' "In a house to house census of a number of cities, towns, and villages in the north of England to furnish an average test of the dangers of vaccination, there were reported '3,135 cases of injury and 750 deaths, alleged to be due to vaccination.' This report was sent to the members of Parliament and to the prime minister. "P. A. Taylor, a member of Parliament, said in a Com- mon's speech: 'I have seen scores of parents who tell me that they honestly believe that their children had died from vacci- nation. I am opposed to making it compulsory.' "Alfred Russell Wallace, LL. D., F. R. S., the compeer of the great Charles Darwin, says: 'that vaccination is the probable cause of about 10,000 deaths annually, by five inoculable dis- eases of the most terrible and disgusting character.' "William Tebb on July, 2, 1892, gave evidence before the Parliamentary Royal Commission as to 2,138 cases of injury and 540 deaths alleged by the proper medical signatures to be due to vaccination up to the end of 1889. * * * In the

		LOCAL CONTESTS.                                        131 third report, (page 172), the number of injuries is increased to 10,309—think of it—and this in solid, conservative old Eng- land. "If necessary I can furnish the testimony of many eminent American physicians, college professors, in confirmation of the danger, and of the deaths resulting from compulsory vacination. "Upon the grounds, therefore, of continuous good health to our children; upon the grounds of absolute right; upon the grounds of personal liberty vouchsafed by the constitution of the United States, and upon the grounds of regard to the ma- ture judgment and cultured consciences of many educated parents and prominent San Diego citizens, I hope—earnestly hope—that this vaccination order will not be pressed. J. M. PEEBLES, M. D." The moral indignation of the community was aroused, and the local press teemed daily with articles from indignant citizens and with spirited editorials on the all-absorbing controversy— the two papers named siding with the people; but the Union editorials abounded in expressions of "good Lord and good Devil," yet leaning perceptibly toward the latter. Among the protests from citizens, the following is a sample:— "Editor Sun: I consider that I have a grievance that it is my duty to put before the people of this city. "My son tells that he is excluded from the schools be- cause he can not show a certificate of vaccination. I sent a note by him this morning to Professor Freeman in which I desired the following information: If Jamie, my son, is not allowed to continue in the school, please, in justice to me, give me a writ- ten notice of his expulsion. I added also: I have been a tax- payer for many years, and if I am not to have any of its ben- efits, unless I bow down before one of the most un-American laws that was ever lobbied' through a legislative body, I should have notice of it. "He wrote on the back of the note with a pencil, as fol- lows :— " 'Mr. Nulton: You appear to be aware of the law. We simply do our duty under it when we forcibly exclude children who have not been vaccinated.' "What conclusion can I arrive at from his answer? I have

		132                                     VACCINATION A CURSE. never brought his devotion to duty in question, neither do I doubt that he may have excluded pupils from his school during his past life. But I would like to know whether the boy is play- ing 'hookey,' or whether it is the professor himself? "Is there anything in his answer that would show to a court of justice that the boy has been excluded from the schools? "I have been required several times to write notes to teach- ers why the boy was absent from school on certain days, and when I want information they seem to be as silent as a grave- yard. "In regard to vaccination, I have this to say. I have heard of many that have died from vaccination and a great deal of suf- fering resulting from it. Now, the question is, shall I offer up my child to this vaccine god with the hope that a ram will be caught in the bushes and his life spared ? or shall I stand on my feet like a true American and say to this Moloch, whose taste for children is proverbial, 'Stand out of the way and let the car of progress move on.' "If a parent forces his child to be vaccinated and he die from its effect, who murders him? Is it the parent, the vacci- nator, or the law, or should we wag our long ears and exclaim: 'Mysterious Providence.' "A good thing can never be over-multiplied; inflate it as much as you please, there will be no bad results. If vaccination is a good thing you cannot overdraw at this bank either. Com- mence with the doctors, then the old men and women, and some of us have nothing but an old shell left, and it would not take much vaccine matter to fix us; then the middle-aged, then the youth, babes, cats, and dogs.                     S. D. NULTON." It is but justice to say, that Dr. Remendido, the leading physician and surgeon of the city, came out through the press and definitely condemned compulsory vaccination. The other physicians, with one exception, were as dumb as the dens of frozen adders. About this time—early in February, 1899—258 children had been sent home by the teachers for not presenting certifi- cates of vaccination, and many more were kept home by their

		LOCAL CONTESTS.                                        133 parents who wished to spare their feelings, knowing what the result would be if they appeared without the official vaccinator's "tag." Parents were calling at my residence every day for ad- vice about what they could do; so accordingly I published the following letter in the Daily Vidette: — "Editor Vidette: Honoring your moral bravery and ad- miring the breadth of thought and freedom of expression that characterize your daily columns, allow me to say that the heads of twenty-three families have called upon me at my residence during the past week, saying, 'What shall we do, doctor, about having our children vaccinated? We think vaccination danger- bus. We do not believe in it, and yet we want our children to attend school and be educated. What shall we do?' "My invariable reply has been, I am not 'my brother's keeper.' You must exercise your own judgment. I am frank, however, to tell you what I should do. "First: I should send my children to school unvaccinated, unpoisoned with pox-lymph virus, and put the responsibility upon the official authorities for refusing to educate them in the schools, for the support of which I had been taxed. I should then, as they have in Philadelphia, commence legal proceed- ings. It should not be forgotten that before the adjournment of our recent legislature, Senator Simmons introduced a bill pro- viding that if any injury or detriment to health was produced by vaccination, both the school authorities and the vaccinators might be sued for damages. This was right. The bill did not come to a vote. How could it, in a legislature charged and counter-charged with bribery—a legislature neither intellect- ually nor morally competent to elect a United States senator? "Second: Or, I should teach my children in my own home, inviting some of my neighbors' more advanced scholars to come in and teach them the higher branches. "Third: Or, I should unite with the citizens of my ward and organize a private school, employing competent and cul- tured teachers. For such a purpose I will contribute liberally in the eighth ward. "Fourth: Or, I should emigrate from slow, lag-behind San Diego, to some one of the states east where compulsory vacci- nation is not enforced; or, perhaps what would be more prefer- able still, bidding adieu to the American flag (the presumed

		134                                    VACCINATION A CURSE. symbol of freedom and personal liberty), I would settle in some country, decent enough, civilized enough not to enact a monstrous compulsory vaccination law, and enlightened enough not to enforce if there was such a law. "Queensland, Australia, has no compulsory vaccination law; and grand, conservative old England, after a dozen years' fight of the people, assisted by the ablest members of Parlia- ment, against a majority of the doctors (who evidently had an eye to business), passed what has been termed the 'conscience clause,' as an addendum to the vaccination bill. This was signed by the queen, August 12, last year. Therefore, any person, now going before the registrar of the district, and making declara- tion before the justice of the peace that he conscientiously be- lieves vaccination to be detrimental to the health of the child, is exempt from arrest or penalty. All honor to England! "Accordingly, in the single city of Oldham, Lancashire, England, 43,000 certificates of exemption under the 'conscience clause' had been issued up to the first of March. Other cities and towns are doing nearly as well. Shame, shame, to San Diego to thus snail-like drag—drag along in great reforms be- hind England, Australia, and some of the isles of the ocean. "There are not only thousands of our citizens, but there are members of the health and school board, just as strenuously opposed to compulsory vaccination as I am. I speak by the book. 'But it is the law.' Granted. 'It has been sustained by the supreme court.' Then, in the name of law and order, why was it not enforced by the previous health and school board au- thorities? Did they not know their duty? Why were they not dismissed from office or fined $500? Who was responsible for that gross, official neglect? and why has this vaccination law been virtually a dead letter throughout California these past ten years ? and what has caused this present health-spasm ? There is no small-pox in our city—and it is the general opinion that there has been none. Why do not doctors post themselves? Why are they such consummate cowards ? "Finally, this so-called compulsory law, now the terror of so many parents, is not law. That only is law which is based upon the principle of justice, of right and of personal liberty. Enactments are not necessarily laws. Enactments made by one legislature are very often repealed by the next. The 'fugitive

		LOCAL CONTESTS.                                        135 slave law' was once pronounced 'law' by politicians influencing even the supreme court; and yet a band of Quakers, with my- self and many others deliberately violated that law—defied it, in fact, as often as possible, by helping such frightened, fleeing negroes as Fred Douglas, on their way toward the freedom of the British flag in Canada. The framers of that law are now remembered only in pity, or deserved infamy. And so history will brand the mark of Cain upon the legislature that ten years ago passed that infamous, unconstitutional, compulsory vacci- nation enactment. I would not—will not, obey it! I defy it! Arrest me, jail me, imprison me behind iron bars. I would stay there and rot in prison before I would obey it. And further, in the future I will vote for no member of the legislature till I know—positively know, how he stands upon this vaccination question. We must organize for the battle as they did for years in England; we must call meetings and distribute literature. "Only recently a judge of the circuit court in Milwaukee, Wis., decided that 'the compulsory vaccination of children by order of the board of education as a prerequisite to their admis- sion to the public schools of that state, was unconstitutional.' Another compulsory vaccination tumble! And yet, San Diego, sitting under the shadow of Old Mexico, and brooded by the skeleton of a dead-letter legislative enactment, forbids her child- ren to enter the public schools—compels them to remain in ig- norance because, forsooth, their intelligent parents refuse to have brutality—cow-pox virus, calf-lymph cussedness, or any- thing of this nature thrust into their system, believing it to be unconstitutional, a violation of personal freedom, and danger- ous to health. Is this America—proud, progressive America, or old sixteenth century Spain? J. M. PEEBLES, M. D." Next came what may be designated the Peebles-Parker discussion which appeared in the columns of the Daily Sun. The following is Dr. Parker's first letter:— "Editor Sun: In a recent issue of your paper you say you are opposed to vaccination of school children, as required by law, and you give as your reasons that physicians are divided among themselves as to the utility and advisability of vaccina- tion, and also that you do not like the idea of sticking scabs onto

		I36                                   VACCINATION A CURSE. people. Permit me to reply that we do not use scabs for such a purpose. We use lymph taken from healthy young cattle steril- ized, put up in glass tubes and hermetically sealed up until used. The greatest care is used in vaccination. The arm or leg where the little wounds are made is thoroughly disinfected and cleansed before the work is begun, and the instrument used is boiled be- fore using, and then a light dressing of sterilized gause placed over the wound to prevent the entrance of any poisonous germs. Done in this way there is no danger. Some years ago when scabs were used at times as well as lymphs, and no great care used to sterilize or keep the vaccine pure, and surgeons were careless in breaking of the skin without sterilizing or boiling in- struments, we had trouble with infection and blood poisoning. Also sometimes diseases were conveyed by using humanized virus. But with the old methods vaccination was a God-send to the human race. Before the days of vaccination the annual death rate from small-pox was about 3,000 per million of the population in England. At that rate, the death rate in the United States per annum would be over 200,000. Deprive the people of this country of the privileges of vaccination for twenty- five years and we would have about the same result. Modern treatment and care would lessen mortality some, but modern facilities of travel would spread it more than in former times. "One great danger in the spread of small-pox is the long incubation period, for it is about twelve days after exposure be- fore a person becomes sick. Anyone could be exposed to small- pox in Cuba or Porta Rica and travel to San Diego before he would get sick. "In reference to the division of opinion among physicians, there is in reality very few who oppose it. It is about as near unanimous as it is possible for any question to be. Only about one physician in this city speaks against it, and he says pus is used for vaccinating. I would expose vaccination if we had to use pus Sor such a purpose. This Dr. Peebles also stated in a public address before the Mother's Club that he had treated hundreds of cases of small-pox without losing a case. Any comment on such statements are unnecessary. "In the year 1889, Queen Victoria appointed a commission composed of eight of the most noted medical men of England and quite a number of eminent men in other professions, to in-

		LOCAL CONTESTS.                                          137 vestigate the question of the effect of vaccination. The com- mission spent seven or more years in their investigations, held one hundred and thirty-six meetings, examined about two hun- dred witnesses and investigated six epidemics, which has oc- curred in recent years at Gloucester, Sheffield, Warrington, Devosberry, Leicester, and London. In Gloucester the prac- tice of vaccination had been greatly neglected for some years prior to the outbreak of small-pox. At Gloucester 26 vaccinated children under ten years of age were attacked, of whom one died; of unvaccinated children of like age 680 were attacked, of whom 279 died. The report of the commission was unani- mous in favor of vaccination as the only effective means for the protection against the ravages of small-pox. In Germany where vaccination has been compulsory for years, small-pox is almost unknown in recent years. Hoping I have not made this too long, I am,                   Yours very truly, P. J. PARKER, M. D." Peebles replies:— "Editor Sun: In-as-much as Dr. P. J. Parker, of our city, brought my name before the public in your issue of the 11th, touching the question of compulsory vaccination, you will cer- tainly grant me equal space in your ably conducted journal. "In expressing an opinion adverse to compulsory vaccina- tion, you doubtless reflected the convictions of a large majority of the parents of San Diego. That the eighty-nine doctors, or the most of them, favor it, counts but little. Doctors without an exception once favored bleeding in fevers. Both Washing- ton and Byron, it is believed, died from blood-letting. Doc- tors do not bleed men now-a-days; nor will they vaccinate in the near future. Much less will they dare, however ignorant they may be of Jennerism and the dangers attendant upon calf- poison, to compel vaccination. I recommend medical incompe- tents to weigh well these candid words (published Sunday) by the leading physician and surgeon of our city: " 'I am not in favor of anything that interferes in any way with the personal liberty or action of any individual. If a per- son seriously objects to being vaccinated or to having any mem-

		138                                    VACCINATION A CURSE. ber of his family vaccinated, the feelings of such a party are en- titled to respect, etc.'-—Dr. Remendido. "Certainly every man's 'feelings,' every man's conscientious convictions, are entitled to 'respect.' Every man's house is his castle, and upon the constitutional grounds of personal liberty, no vaccination doctor, lancet in one hand and calf-pox poison in the other, has a legal or moral right to enter the sacred pre- cincts of a healthy home and scar a child's body for life. " 'This' Dr. Parker informs the public that 'scabs' from cow and calf-pox sores are not used now. That is true—doctors have advanced from arm-to-arm 'scabs' to a more refined filth— a more delicate form of the poison pox-lymph. It is taken from 'healthy young cattle,' we are told. How is it known that these cattle were 'healthy?' They were dumb. That they were 'healthy' could only be proven by vivisection and dissection. Physicians know that tuberculosis is common among cows in some parts of the country. To say that these cattle are 'healthy' is an assertion—nothing more! All technical terms and pedan- tic jargon aside—would a man be considered healthy if any por- tion of his body was spotted and dotted with pustules, with in- flamed bases—'running sores?' 'Only about one' doctor, we are gravely told (there are some eighty-five or ninety in San Diego) speaks against vaccination—so much the worse for the doctors! 'Only about one.' Well, I am proud to be that one! for in fact one with the right, is a majority. Truth is never in minority— and laggards often find it out to their sore disadvantage. "Yes, 'Dr. Peebles stated in a public address that he had treated many cases of small-pox and never lost a case.' How many did 'this' Dr. Parker ever treat? and how many of them lived? I shall be pleased to hear the doctor's 'comments.' I pledge you my word he will be dumb. "On my journey around the world, while in the Godavari district, India, with a population of between two and three mil- lions, not a day passed after the first week there that I did not treat or assist in treating from twelve to twenty small-pox pa- tients lying in bungalows, outside tents, and bamboo huts. "In July, 1869, appointed by General Grant, the United States consul to Trebizonde, Asiatic Turkey, I was in this old city, crowded with Turks, Circassians, Georgians, Armenians, and other races—a city of filth—during its small-pox epidemic

			LOCAL CONTESTS.
					139
		—and here again I treated or assisted other physicians in treat- ing for weeks and months small-pox patients. Small-pox is closely allied to filth, and sanitation, hygiene, pure air, healthy diet, sunshine, and bathing are much more efficacious preventa- tives than vaccine virus, in whatever way manipulated, and whether called scabs, pus, lymph, serum, or calf-virus—words do not render poisons any the less malignant. "Speaking of 'humanized virus,' Dr. Parker says: 'The old method of vaccination was a God-send to the human race.' On the contrary I pronounce it emphatically a death-send, a scourge, and a most damnable curse. Here are a few of my au- thorities proving it: "In the English 'Digest of Parliamentary Returns,' No. 488, session of 1878, entitled, "Vaccination Mortality,' we find the startling statement that: 'Twenty-five thousand children are annually slaughtered by disease inoculated into the system by vaccination, and a far greater number are injured and maimed for life by the same unwholesome rite.' "Prof. Trousseau, of Paris, France, wrote in the 'Clinique Medicale,' 1874, a medical journal published in France: 'The transmission of syphilis by vaccination appears now to be an established fact.' "Prof. German, in 1878, in an address to the Diet of the German empire, said: 'Above all, the direful fatality which lately occurred at Lebus, would alone warrant the abolition of the vaccination laws. Eighteen school girls, averaging 12 years of age, were re-vaccinated and thereby syphilized, and some of them died.' "The report of the German vaccination commission of 1884, contains the following: 'Up to 1880, fifty cases have be- come known in which syphilis, inoculated with vaccine virus, caused severe illness to about seven hundred and fifty persons.' A strange 'God-send!' "The report of the British commission, appointed by the queen in 1889, was not unanimous in favor of compulsory vac- cination which fact ought to know it. By this report, anti-vac- cinationists 'obtained a great measure of parental freedom,' writes Dr. Winthrop from London to the New York Sun. Dr. Parker's statement concerning Gloucester and its vac- cination, is not only misleading but false. If figures do not lie

		140                                    VACCINATION A CURSE. those that make them can, and often do. The Gloucester Of- ficial Reports are decidedly against the benefit of vaccination. I have them at my command. Dr. Parker is no authority. His Ipse Dixit neither counts nor carries weight with either students of science or medicine. The report oS the British commission so influenced Parliament that it pronounced against compulsory vaccination—and made the matter optional with the people. And so the matter still stands. "In Rhode Island, after a committee of the senate had heard evidence on both sides of the question, it repealed the vaccination law by a majority of 16 to 9. Petitions should be hurried on to Sacramento demanding that this disease-breeding law be promptly repealed. "A late press dispatch informs us that Wm. Nagengast, of Cleveland, O., aged 11 years, was vaccinated in the free dispen- sary on January 4th. His arm soon became terribly swollen. The same night he exhibited symptoms of lockjaw, and the next evening he died, suffering intense agonies. In London, from 1859 to 1896, there were one thousand and two hundred and seventeen admitted deaths from vaccination. There were doubt- less five times this number, say the minority reports, but they were 'hushed up to prevent vaccination from further reproach.' "Engaged wholly in literary pursuits and depending upon a livelihood from neither the vaccination business nor local med- ical practice of any kind, I can find leisure to ventilate the vic- iousness and villainous consequences of compulsory vaccina- tion, and I shall do it with ungloved hands, and will therefore say that if Dr. Parker desires a journalistic controversy with me upon the merits and demerits of compulsory vaccination he will find me girded for the conflict; and I promise him a "foeman worthy his steel."                           J. M. PEEBLES, M. D. San Diego, Cal., Feb. 13." I will now extend my above reply and notice the following statements contained in Dr. Parker's letter: (1). "The instrument used is boiled before using." (2). "England before the days of vacination had a death rate from small-pox of 3,000 per million of the population." (3). "Deprive the people of this country of the privilege of vaccination for twenty-five years * * * and we should have the same result."

		LOCAL CONTESTS.                                       141 (4). "At Gloucester 26 vacinated children under ten years were attacked with small-pox—one died. Of un-vaccinated children of like age 680 were attacked, of whom 279 died." (1). This statement by Dr. Parker is very careless, for in many noted instances it is conspicuously untrue, in fact. I will give one instance where a United States official vaccinator uses the lance on scores of immigrants without once cleansing it. Our laws require that every immigrant arriving at Castle Gar- den shall be vaccinated before they land, unless they can show a vaccine mark or a certificate. "The surgeon sat on a box in the storeroom, lancet in hand, and around him huddled as many as could be crowded into the confined space, old and young, children screaming, women crying; each with an arm bare and a woe-begone face. * * * No pretense of cleaning the lan- cet was made; it drew blood in very many instances, and it was used upon as many as 276 during the first day. I inquired of the surgeon if he had no fear of inoculating disease, or whether he examined as to health or disease before vaccinating. He replied that he could not stop for that, besides no choice in the matter was left with him. The law demanded the vaccination of each and every one, and he must comply with it or be sub- jected to a fine."—G. H. Merkel, M. D., in Mass. Ec. Med. Jour. November, 1882. Here is a fact which I offset against Dr. Parker's statement —"the instrument used is boiled before using." When we con- sider that the point of a cambric needle, dipped in the blood of a leprous or syphilitic patient is sufficient to communicate the disease, if this is punctured through the skin, what a fear- ful indictment we have against the practice of vaccination! Two hundred and seventy-six victims vaccinated without the lancet once being cleaned! In this way it is possible for the "calf- lymph" to pick up on its way about all the curses which human flesh is heir to. (2). "Small-pox deaths in England before vaccination were 3,000 per million of the population." In the connection in which it is used this statement as before said is entirely misleading. There is no hint here that other zymotic diseases in England have declined in a similar ratio with small-pox during the cen- tury just closing; and we are entitled to claim that the same causes that diminished scarlet fever also diminished small-pox.

		142                                        VACCINATION A CURSE. But the decline in small-pox has really been far less than in other zymotics, from which it may be fairly claimed that vacci- nation instead of mitigating it has kept it alive notwithstanding the presence of other really mitigating causes. By implication Dr. Parker assumes that such investigation of the disease as we have been able to secure, is to be set down to the credit of vaccination. No other mitigating factor is hinted at. In dis- cussing the causes of small-pox vaccinators stick to vaccination as Mr. Gladstone stuck to "Mitcheltown." They never pollute their lips by speaking aloud the word filth—having plenty of that article in their antidote. They are silent about sanitation. They do not tell us that small-pox is a filth-disease; that it thrives on filth; that it is chiefly confined to the dirty and crowded quarters in our cities. Had the doctors vaccinated for the plague, black-death, and the sweating sickness, they would now be claiming the credit for vaccination as the sole agent that was efficient in practically stamping these three zymotics out of Eu- rope. Since they cannot set up that claim, pray what has been the cause of their decline? I answer, sanitation and improved habits of living. Prof. Wallace, taking the Reports of the Reg- istrar General from 1838 to 1896, makes a thorough statistical analysis and presents the result in diagramatic form—"Wonder- ful Century," page 305. Then he writes:— "The main teaching of this diagram—a teaching which the commissioners have altogether missed by never referring to diagrams showing comparative mortalities—is the striking cor- respondence in average rise and fall of the death-rates of small- pox, of zymotics, and of all diseases together. This corres- pondence is maintained throughout the whole of the first part, as well as through the whole of the second part, of the diagram; and it proves that small-pox obeys, and always has obeyed, the same law of subservience to general sanitary conditions as the other great groups of allied diseases and the general mortality. Looking at this most instructive diagram, we see at once the absurdity of the claim that the diminution of small-pox in the first quarter of our century was due to the partial and imperfect vaccination of that period. Equally absurd is the allegation that its stationary character from 1842 to 1872, culminating in a huge epidemic, was due to the vaccination then prevailing, though much larger than ever before, not being quite universal

		LOCAL CONTESTS.                                        143 —an allegation completely disproved by the fact that the other zymotics as a whole, as well as the general mortality, exhibited strikingly similar decreases followed by equally marked periods of average uniformity or slight increase, to be again followed by a marked decrease. There is here no indication whatever of vaccination having produced the slightest effect on small-pox mortality." How utterly misleading and untrue therefore is the state- ment of Dr. Parker which I am here commenting upon. Noth- ing but his vaccination hobby is permitted to come in sight when he would explain the causes which effect the periodical acceleration and decline of small-pox mortality. Vaccination is paraded as the sole cause of small-pox decline; neglect of vaccination the sole cause when small-pox waxes strong and rages like a conflagration. Dr. Parker must be aware that during the period he re- fers to, before Jenner's discovery (?) when he says small-pox waxed stronger; that the doctors then had a "sure thing," con- gener of vaccination, inoculation,—which they had "boomed," as they now boom vaccination. Inoculation was just as rational as vaccination; yet by the same act in 1840 England made in- oculation a penal offence and vaccination compulsory. But finally, I utterly deny Dr. Parker's allegation that small-pox deaths in England before vaccination was "3,000 per million of the population." This monstrous statement was taken from Dr. Lettsom's evidence before the Parliamentary Committee in 1802. How did Mr. Lettsom arrive at this fig- ure? He first assumed that the small-pox mortality of London before vaccination was 3,000 per million of population—which, in a future chapter I shall prove was only 2,000 per million— and then takes that as basis for the entire population of the kingdom, town, village, and country, making not the slightest allowance for the cleanliness and general wholesomness of the country in comparison with over-crowded, filth-accumulated and poverty-stricken districts in the city of London. The popula-

		144                                    VACCINATION A CURSE. tion of the kingdom was estimated to be twelve times as large as that of London, so London population was multiplied by twelve to yield the 36,000 annual small-pox fatality for the king- dom. Difference in sanitary conditions never was taken the slightest account of by advocates of vaccination. It is such glaringly false statistics as these that Dr. Parker, and vaccina- tors generally, are in the habit of quoting. (3). "Deprive the people of the country of the privileges, etc." Here again has Dr. Parker by implication raised an ir- revelant issue. Who has said anything about depriving the people of this country of the privilege of vaccination? I would not deprive one American citizen of the "privilege" of taking a half gill of calf-pus daily—either through the skin or into the stomach if he is inclined that way. That is not the present is- sue. What I am contending for, doctor, is that you have taken the state in with you in this vaccination disgrace; and that you two have agreed between you, that I shall be compelled—or my children shall be compelled—to take your medicine! Hence I say—and I speak it in stentorian tones—take your unholy hands off from me and mine! Leave me to my liberty regarding the practice of superstitions and degrading calf-lymph-poisoning rites, and be assured , I shall leave you to yours. (4). The statements of Doctor Parker relative to small- pox fatalities in Gloucester are still more misleading and un- true than any of the above. He is silent regarding the quarter of the town in which nine-tenths of the small-pox 'cases oc- curred ; silent too, regarding the unmistakable causes that made the epidemic so fatal. I have space here to merely summarize results; and I shall state nothing but what I stand ready to sup- port by the annual reports of the medical officers of health. Those for the years 1875 to 1888 are the work of Mr. John P. Wilton; those for 1889 to 1895 of Dr. John Campbell. At the time of the Gloucester epidemic—1895-6—the urban population was 40,000; the rural population 11,000. In the southeast quarter—the poor, filthy and crowded quarter—the drainage was the worst possible. The new system of drains was con- nected with the old, crooked and much dilapidated brick cul- verts. The water supplied for domestic use was totally unfit to drink, charged as it was with sewage pollution. Into an exten-

		LOCAL CONTESTS.                                        145 sive bed of gravel—from which this portion of the city was sup- plied with water, the drainage from cesspools and sewers had free access. In the language of the medical officer: ''The drainage of houses either empties into cesspools constructed close to them, and leaking into the bed of gravel, or is carried away in brick culverts, which, whenever they are uncovered, are found to be faulty, thus allowing their contents to ooze into the gravel. It is thus absolutely impossible that there can be any pure water in the district." In 1889 a flood choked these sewers and caused a back flow, mixing vast quantities of sewage with the water on the surface. The medical officer reports: "This water became so charged with sewage that I feared serious consequences in the houses that became flooded." In this pestilence-breeding and foul quarter the epidemic started late in 1895. At the end of the year 25 cases had been reported, 24 of which we confined to this southeast end. Here, my dear doctor, was the breeding ground and source of the Gloucester epidemic of 1896. You did not think these facts worthy of mention! Just so, that is a common fault with vacci- nating doctors. You should have also stated, that out of the 2.036 cases of small-pox reported during the epidemic, 1,822 were confined to this same God-forsaken South Hamlet while only 214 cases were reported north of St. Michael's Square, where the city possessed a tolerable sanitary aspect. Another fact: The great scarlet fever epidemic of 1892 was likewise practically confined to this South Hamlet. Every- body with a grain of common sense knows that this epidemic was caused by the wretched unsanitary condition at the south- east end of Gloucester. They know, too, that the small-pox epidemic originated in the same causes and was fed from the same source. Yet we are assured that the "un-vaccinated" were the occasion of the whole trouble. Get vaccinated and re- vaccinated, and then if the sewage comes up to your window- sills and you have no other fluid to drink, still you need not fear the small-pox! These little matters are unworthy of men-

		146                                      VACCINATION A CURSE. tion when a vaccinator is handling small-pox statistics. "Vac- cination had been greatly neglected in Gloucester before the epidemic," from which the reader is supposed to infer that this species of neglect was the real occasion of the fearful outbreak. What was neglected before the other epidemic broke out—the scourge of scarlet fever? Vaccination cannot be made to do duty here. Now I place these facts by the side of Dr. Parker's statements, and leave the decision to the common sense of my readers as to what occasioned the small-pox epidemic in Glou- cester. Dr. Parker also refers to Leicester as one of the stricken cities, due to vaccinal neglect. He had better have remained silent regarding Leicester, for it has a thunderbolt in reserve for the vaccinators. After their small-pox epidemic of 1892-4, the citizens rose to the dignity of the occasion and turned the vaccinators out of office; then elected boards of guardians who were pledged not to enforce the compulsory law. At present the vaccinations are only one per cent. of the births. Did they stop there? No, but they set about real prevention by putting the city under more thorough sanitary regulations. Now Lei- cester is not only the freest city in England from the small-pox scourge, but the freest from scarlet fever and other zymotics as well. It is just as silly and illogical to refer small-pox fatality to neglect of vaccination, as it would be to refer fatalities from cyclones in the middle west to this same neglect. I will now resume account of the struggle in San Diego. The next step in the program was the organization of the Anti- Vaccination League—Dr. J. M. Peebles, president; E. P. Brooks and Col. J. L. Dryden, vice presidents, and F. M. Gregg, secretary. A little later—some time in April—a rousing mass meeting was held in the M. E. church. The following are ex- tracts from my address on that occasion, published in the Daily Sun:—

		LOCAL CONTESTS.                                        147 "We have assembled tonight from the different city wards to take into consideration the compulsory vaccination law of California—a law that has thrown nearly four hundred of our children out of the public schools, that we have been taxed to support. This compulsory cow-pox enactment, so at variance with the higher medical science and personal liberty; so repulsive to cultured manhood, the finer instincts of womanhood, and the God-implanted intuitions of childhood has remained like other unconstitutional laws passed by politicians and lobbied legisla- tures for the past ten years, a dead letter. Why—why, if this law was just and right, has it not been executed? Why is it now raised? Who rolled the stone away from its mouldy and moss- shingled tomb ? Who were the instigators ? There is no small- pox in the city, and in the opinion of Mr. Hedges and the gen- eral public, there has been none. Who was responsible then, for the "scare," and who have been the financial gainers by it? Why are children with certificates in their hands from Dr. Stockton, the health officer, stating that, owing to their physical condition, they were not fit subjects for vaccination, turned away from the schools? Why this merciless blow to education and personal freedom? Why are the conscientious convictions of hundreds of intelligent San Diego parents violated or ridi- culed by vacincating officials ? Why are the public school doors slammed in the faces of innocent children—children who, turned into the streets, wend their way home weeping for a lack of the privilege of gaining an education? Do these health and school boards feel justified in making and enforcing a compulsory igno- rance law? Need I say that not only thousands of San Diego students, thinkers, and tax-paying parents, but thousands upon thousands are indignant at this state of things. It is currently reported that one of our city doctors said that nobody but 'Mexicans, niggers, and ignoramuses' were opposed to compul- sory vaccination. This is the compliment that superstition, big- otry, and infamy pays to the intelligence of San Diego's cultured citizens. It is as certain as the stars are abiding, that thousands in this city will never—NEVER submit to thrusting a blood- poisoning virus into their children's systems. They will do as two families have done today, move over to Coronado, or they will move into the country townships to educate their children,

		148                                     VACCINATION A CURSE. or they will establish private schools—and I honor them for their decisions. Some families have already loft the city to ed- ucate their children. "This meeting has been called to consider—to devise ways and means concerning this very serious subject, and I counsel calmness and dignity of deportment. No matter how intense ihe indignation that may thrill you to your soul's depths, con- rrol the temper and be guided by the dictates of moderation and reason. You are in the right. And in the end you are sure, each to wear a victor's wreath. This meeting is but the prelude to a series of similar gatherings. These will be educational, and thrillingly interesting, and, further, they will probably con- tinue here and in other portions of the state until the assem- bling of the next legislature, when our votes will count. There is nothing that a wiley, unprincipled politician so much fears as an honest vote. "The battle touching this compulsory vaccination law is fully on. The people are aroused. They are organizing. They are thoroughly in earnest. There is no lack of finances to conduct the campaign. And like the immortal Wm. Lloyd Garrison, these anti-vaccinationists 'will not equivocate, will not excuse, and they will be heard.' And I may add, they will politically 'mark' every man at future elections who favors compulsory blood-poisoning. "Anti-vaccinationists, anti-compulsionists, you are a power. You have culture, finance, influence, conscience, energy, and I charge you to mark such doctors as seek to enforce this dead- letter compulsory vaccination law; mark such doctors as tell you privately that they are opposed to compulsory vaccination, yet are too sneakingly cowardly to openly express their honest convictions; mark such school officials and members of health and school boards as make themselves unnecessarily offensive to those who conscientiously differ from them on the vaccina- tion question; mark such public men, especially politicians as hunt with the hounds and run with the hares, and all to catch votes to get into offices; mark such daily newspapers (NEWS- papers), as are owned, or edited by hunting poltroons, shaped like men, rather than by brave, fair-minded, royal-souled men, the worthy sons of this magnificent century!

		LOCAL CONTESTS.                                        149 "This cow-pox poison put into innocent children's arms is often from diseased calves or heifers, and can resultant disease prevent disease or produce health? Do men gather grapes of thorns? I say diseased heifers. You take supposed healthy heifers from the fields, confine them in 'sterilized stables' (a phrase used by a San Diego doctor), rope them, throw them, shave their abdomens, puncture this portion of the hairless body with 'small-pox pustular poison;' and then watch the irri- tation, watch the animal's thirst, the increasing inflammation up to the point of pus-rottening—and now call this brute healthy do you? Would you consider your own body healthy if half- covered with inflamed pustules and discharging sores? Then watch the applied clamps as they squeeze out the putrid mucus- like pus mingled with a little of the animal's inflamed blood, to be manipulated into 'pus-lymph' for your children's arms! Is not the thought, the sight disgustingly infamous? * "How would it do to take catarrh mucus from the nose of some otherwise healthy young lady and manipulating up to the point of pure catarrh lymph, introduce it compulsorily into the school children's arms as a preventive say, against the grippe, erysipelas, or some kind of eczema? Some doctors advanced the theory awhile since, that traced back through the complex laws of heredity far enough, it might be shown that there is a close genetic relation existing between pure catarrh lymph, pure syphilitic lymph and pure cow-pox lymph. Be the rela- tion near or afar, I would stoutly resist any compulsory vacci- nation law that insisted upon introducing any such lymphs— 'PURE LYMPHS'—into the human system. "During this conflict we shall demonstrate beyond any pos- sible question that: *NOTE—In gathering the materials for this volume I failed to secure one of Dr. Parker's letters in defense of compulsory vaccination, appearing in the "Daily Sun." Writing him for his full correspondence and forward- ing the same by special messenger, he informed me later that he did not wish his correspondence to appear in the volume. Considering its diluted contents in connection with that bad cause, calf-lymph poisoning, none can seriously blame him. Nevertheless his published letters in the "Daily Sun" became public property. And as such I am justified in using them. Only one however appears. His last letter was an indirect plea to be let down off from his "compulsory" stilts, gently as possible. This I did with my accustomed grace and gentleness.

		150                                    VACCINATION A CURSE. "I. Vaccination docs not prevent smallpox. This every well-read, intelligent physician already admits. "II. Vaccination, by reducing the vitality through trans- mitting poisonous pus-brutality into the human system, not only tends to, but actually invites the epidemic termed small- pox. "III. That our soldiers vaccinated in the San Francisco camps previous to sailing for the Philippines, and told that they were immune from small-pox, a number of them had the small- pox over there and several died from the disease. "IV. That, as vaccination weakens the constitution, affects deleteriously the red blood corpuscles, it necessarily deteri- orates the public health and is a danger, a menace, to the same. The death rate was greatly diminished both in Switzerland and in Leicester, England, after compulsion was abandoned. "V. That vaccination lays the foundation for erysipelas, eczema, carbuncles, abscesses, nervousness, pimpled faces, con- sumption, and cancers. "VI. We shall show that there is no such thing as pure calf lymph. To talk of pure lymph is equivalent to talking of pure poison originating from a putrified pustular sore, which, according to the distinguished Dr. Creighton, bears a striking resemblance symptomatically to syphilitic poison. The Hon. J. A. Bright, M. P., and member of the London Royal Vaccina- tion commission, testified that 'there are no means of determin- ing the purity of lymph or limiting the certainty of its inflamma- tory effects.' (The Lancet, Oct. 20, 1892.) "VII. We shall show that compulsory vaccination, while it does not prevent small-pox, has maimed thousands for life and caused the death of hundreds upon hundreds. In the third report of the minutes of the vaccination evidence commission, 1890, testimony was given before the Royal Commission of six thousand two hundred and thirty-three cases of serious injury and eight hundred and forty-two deaths from vaccination. Can parents afford to run the fearful risks of vaccination poisoning? "VIII. Finally, as a registered physician in the state of California, as a professor for several years in a medical college, as a United States consul in Asiatic Turkey, during a portion of General Grant's administration, counseling with an English physician, or personally treating small-pox, which, by the way,

		LOCAL CONTESTS.                                             151 I should prefer to have, under proper sanitary conditions to Jenner's cow-pox, I protest against the compulsory vaccina- tion law of this state that turns many of our children out of the public schools. I denounce it as a menace to good health, as a violation of personal freedom, and opposed to all those fraternal interests that constitute us the parts of one great brotherhood, clearly conscious that what affects one affects all through the laws of thought, of sympathy, of heredity, and the amenities of social life." Previous to sending the manuscripts for this volume to the press, I forwarded a communication to Dr. Parker by a special messenger, asking him for all his letters appearing in the daily press in defence of vaccination, for publication in this volume. He but briefly noticed my request. Evidently he was not very anxious to be booked and read in public libraries. This, on his part, was a shrewd stroke of discretion. Compulsory vaccinationists dare not meet in open manly debate anti-vaccinationists. They lack the courage of their convictions. Statistics and yawning graves face them. During this struggle in San Diego with the doctors, the health and school boards, with my didactic energies, saying nothing of an innate Scotch grit, I challenged the vaccinating-believing doc- tors to meet me in open discussion upon this subject in the opera house, the proceeds above the expenses to go to some benevolent institution. These were to be the questions or prop- ositions for consideration. 1.   Resolved, That the Jenner inoculation and the later calf- lymph-virus vaccination, while not a preventative of small-pox, endangers health, by poisoning the blood and promoting various zymotic diseases. 2.    Resolved, That compulsory vaccination laws are uncon- stitutional, un-American in genius, a barrier to education, and a menace to personal liberty. And believe me, readers,—not a doctor entered the arena. Such dastardly cowardice required no comment! * * * * Now, in the face of California's compulsory vaccination laws,

			152                                    VACCINATION A CURSE. the un-vaccinated children of the city attend the public schools side by side with their cow-pox scarred playmates.. Such re- sults can be secured in any town or city of the commonwealth if the people will arouse themselves, distribute literature, get up public meetings and air this terrible delusion—calf-lymph vac- cination. In the midst of this local controversy I sent the following communication to the R. P. Journal, San Francisco, which was published in its issue of Feb. 16, 1899:—
		CALIFORNIA VACCINATION LAW. For over fifty years I have been battling in such movements as anti-slavery, temperance, prohibition, the reform health- dress, woman suffrage, class legislation, "doctors' trusts," and now I am fighting on the vaccination battlefield. And the mad battle is fully on, here in San Diego. A vaccination law, passed some ten years ago by the Cali- fornia legislature, has remained nearly a dead letter; but now, without a case of small-pox in our midst, the board of health, afflicted with a sort of health-spasm, has proposed that all the school children of this city, whose population is 22,000, be vac- cinated. And the threat is thrown out that unless parents com- ply and have that putrid calf-lymph put into their children's arms, their children will be denied the privilege of attending the schools. I repeat, the battle is on. My whole nature is aroused and I have written articles in every San Diego newspaper except one against the enforcement of this unjust law. Of the eight- five resident doctors in San Diego, only three or four are op- posed to vaccination, and these, with one exception, are too cowardly to stand up and say so, or to even sign a legislative pe- tition to repeal the law or so amend as to make it optional with the parents. The school board has not yet issued the order, though the health board is urging them to do so.

		LOCAL CONTESTS.                                       I53 The public is thoroughly awake. At the Mothers' Club meeting in our city lately the lower room in the school house was literally packed to hear the vaccination question discussed. Though many doctors were invited to come and defend vacci- nation, only two made their appearance. These spoke in its de- fense. I was present, clad in medical war paint, with my left hand full of anti-vaccination documents, sent me by Wm. Tebb, of London, Prof. Alexander Wilder, of Newark, and others. The discussion was keenly, critically hot. Thank the gods, a large portion of the mothers present were opposed to vaccinat- ing the children. My opposition was vehement, if not violent. I defied the law. I pronounced it unconstitutional; and, treas- onable or not, I advised the mothers present to positively re- fuse to have that diabolical poison put into their children's arms —a poison that upon the highest medical authority does not prevent small-pox—but does kill thousands every years. Fool- ishly vaccinated a second time myself when in San Francisco in 1861, I was in bed three weeks from the poison. I came near losing my arm, and I felt the effects of the villainous virus for several years. What the doctors call pure virus—"tubes and points"—I publicly pronounced filthy, vile, impure, calf-lymph "cussed- ness." During the discussion I advised that instead of vacci- nating and poisoning the blood of our clean, sweet-faced chil- dren, that the doctors, druggists, lawyers, and preachers of San Diego—all be vaccinated and the dear, innocent children be spared. This was not a popular presentation to the vaccina- tionists present, and yet, two-thirds of the ladies cheered me roundly. Oh, that our mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters could vote, as they do in New Zealand, Wyoming, and some other states! Heaven hasten woman-suffrage.
			IS THIS VACCINATION LAW CONSTITUTIONAL? Assuredly not. The law of God, written in the moral na-

		154                                    VACCINATION A CURSE. ture, is above any law enacted by political legislatures. Many of their pronounced laws, though having the signatures of govern- ors, are not laws. They are often repealed during the very next session of the legislature. Law to be law, must be based upon the eternal principle of right—the absolute principle of right and justice. I will not obey an unconstitutional law—a law that entails disease and death—a law that infringes upon my personal liberty. And be it treason or not,—I will urge in the faces of popes, priests, and politicians, others not to do it. This vaccination law is undoubtedly unconstitutional—and is in per- fect keeping with "medical trusts" and these nefarious "doc- tors' laws" that seek to compel patients to employ only physi- cians of their own school. This vaccination law is so odious, so dangerous to Health', that it has never been enforced to any considerable extent in our noble state, California. It never will be. The people are too progressive. Petitions are now being circulated in this city for its speedy repeal. The English Parliament has recently, be it said to the glory of England, made vaccination optional with the parents. The old fugitive-slave law was once the law of this coun- try, North and South. And this law was compulsory; Northern men were required to hunt, catch, hold, and return the negro (nine-tenths white, perhaps) back into slavery, who were run- ning for the freedom of Canada, and for safety under the British flag. I would not, did not obey this law. Though compara- tively much younger then than now, I defied it, and I am proud to say that with a family of good Quakers in Cayuga county, New York, I helped several runaway negroes to make their way by the "underground railroad," as it was called, into the Cana- dian dominion. Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, the Quakers, and thousands of reformers, were charged with trea- son for criticising a government that enacted such a congres- sional law (the Fugitive Slave Law), in the interests of per-

			LOCAL CONTESTS.                                       155 petual slavery. They refused to obey it. Garrison was mobbed in Boston, Foster was egged in Worcester, Foss was stoned, others were vindictively persecuted by unprincipled politicians and conservative bigots. But the law was finally repealed— and slavery itself abolished. Now Phillips, Garrison, Foss, Ab- bie Kelley, Parker Pillsbury, Henry C. Wright, and many of those brave old soldiers of freedom,—scarred soldiers, fighting for personal liberty and equality before the law,—are honored, and their very tomb-stones are wreathed in unfading laurel; while the congressional and political manufacturers of that old fugitive-slave law, are either forgotten, or their names have half-rotted-away into the silence of merited infamy. Such will be the fate of this California vaccination law, and its doctor-in- spired makers. Let the eighty-five doctors of San Diego, and the board of health—one or more of which are doctors—take due notice. Justice is sure to come! J. M. PEEBLES, M. D.
		A SMALL-POX SCARE! During February (1899), as the controversy was waxing warmer, the doctors of San Diego made a sortie to get up a small-pox scare! The wife of J. Q. Hedges came to San Diego from Los Angeles, and died Feb. 19th. Before leaving Los An- geles she received a severe strain from lifting a heavy box. This caused back-ache, headache, vomiting and hemorrhage. The doctors pronounced it a case of small-pox and further reported the woman knew she had been exposed to small-pox, and con- fessed to this. But the husband denied that she had been ex- posed or that she had made any such confession; as he was in the room during the consultation and heard all that was said. Nine different persons had been in the sick-room before the woman died, and everyone of these was quarantined for twenty- one days, not one of whom took small-pox. One doctor ad-

		156                                    VACCINATION A CURSE. mitted the woman died from hemorrhage—so the husband stated —and not from small-pox. But the doctors succeeded just the same in working up a panic, in moving the local board to en- force the compulsory law on vaccination—and withal, in enrich- ing their purses. There was not the shadow of a small-pox case in the city. The sequelae as the doctors would say, or after effects of this scare, may be in part gleaned from a Sun editorial, March 17:— "The finance committee of the common council will meet tonight at 7:30 o'clock and some interesting bills will come up for approval or rejection. Among the number will be one from Dr. Jones, who was quarantined for 21 days by order of the board of health. Dr. Jones wants $210 for the twenty-one days' service." How modest the fee! "Then there are claims of $2.50 per day each for three ex- tra policemen for twenty-one days necessitated by this same sus- pected small-pox case. The pest house, too, has been repaired at an expense of some $350 to date and small claims for medi- cine, disinfectants, etc., amounting to $50 will also be presented, making a total of $767, chargeable to the small-pox scare to date. The bill of Nurse Lowe, who escaped quarantine has not yet been settled nor that of the undertakers, who buried Mrs. Hedges, but both bills will doubtless bring the amount up to over $1,000. " 'A few more small-pox cases and we're a busted com- munity, rain or no rain,' said a city official this morning, and really it does seem expensive to have these little luxuries. "By virtue of sec. 17 of article 13, of the city charter, the board of health has power to appoint additional health inspect- ors and at a conference held yesterday it was decided to appoint a committee to inspect all passengers coming on trains from Los Angeles. This will cost a few hundred dollars, but the health board feels the precaution is necessary." This small-pox scare—when there was no small-pox—made San Diego's doctors the laughing stock of all the regions 'round about. Only one, Dr. Jones, however, was quarantined! * * * It can now be stated that the labors of our Anti-Vaccina-

		LOCAL CONTESTS.                                        157 lion league have been largely crowned with success. True, we have not as yet secured a repeal of the detestable compulsory law, but we have compelled a truce on the part of the local boards and opened wide once more the doors of the public schools. Complete victory is in sight. The municipal boards of Los Angeles are still enforcing the compulsory law, and so in my October "Temple of Health," I thus warned northern tourists who were expecting to spend the winter in Southern California to shun Los Angeles:— "Persons with families, proposing to spend the winter in Southern California, sending their children to the public schools, should avoid Los Angeles as they would a den of vipers, and go on down to San Diego, where parents are not (now) com- pelled by school boards to have their children's blood poisoned with cow-pox virus, before they can enter the public schools." This, the editor of a Los Angeles paper, Dr. A. P. Miller of the East Side News, copied, and then added:— "Let us add, that it was Dr. Peebles' efficient work which rescued the children of San Diego from the tyrant's clutch. Live another hundred years, doctor, and sweep all such mon- strous usurpation of power from off the earth." The Boston Daily Globe—Nov. 24, 1899,—says: "Four children of one family at Highland Falls, N. Y., are dangerously ill as the result of vaccination. All are badly poisoned, and the results will probably prove fatal. The school trustees ordered the vaccination. The father of the little ones is an inmate of the Soldiers' Home, and the mother is a poor washer-woman." A "poor washer-woman!" No redress for that stricken family, for that disrupted and ruined home; and the next time the con- servative M. D. comes down from his professional stilts to no- tice an anti-vaccinator, he will repeat the stale declaration: "We use lymph taken from healthy young cattle, sterilized, put up in glass tubes and hermetically sealed up until used." Hence, how could the lymph be to blame ? It must have been an "act of Providence." The school trustees ordered it. Who takes the risk in this business ? Why, the American people of course, among whom there is only a small per cent. of such characters

		158                                    VACCINATION A CURSE. as Wm. Tebb and Dr. Ross. The rank and file of our American citizens are today tamely and supinely submitting to this form of legal criminality, contented with a passing record of facts as a matter of daily news, and only rarely proving themselves equal to the supreme occasion, as Mr. Lawbraugh did in Gen- eseo, Ill., fighting the vaccinators until he reached the steps of the state supreme court, where he got his rights. Here is another case reported in a Boston paper. I clip the following from "The Banner of Light," of Dec. 9, 1899:— "The supporters of that divinely-inspired barbarism known as vaccination are no doubt rejoicing with exceeding great joy over the beneficent effects of its application in Maiden, Mass. Percy Tanner, a boy of thirteen years, is the latest victim to this wicked practice. He was vaccinated on Friday, Dec. 1, and his arm began to swell shortly afterward. On Saturday he went into convulsions, and passed away on Sunday. Medical aid was summoned, but the doctor could do nothing to save the boy. If the boy had been stabbed, or killed by a blow, his assailant would have been arrested for murder. As it is, the vaccinating doctor is still at large, ready and even anxious to treat other healthy patients by similar methods. Wherein does murder by assault differ from murder by vaccination? Only in one respect —the latter is enforced by law, and those who commit it are protected from punishment. Other kinds of homicide are deemed crimes, but this one seems to be a special privilege of a few men called doctors, to whom the state gives a license to kill ad libitum. Young Tanner's death is the third caused by vaccination in Maiden alone. "N. B.—There are no cases of small-pox in Maiden, nor is there any special danger from that disease. When will the people assert themselves and secure the repeal of this most odi- ous law?" This winter (1900) there is a movement all along the line to enforce the compulsory law. In almost every state school boards have issued peremptory orders to vaccinate, or other- wise to exclude the children from the public schools. The taxes paid by the parents for public school service are not considered. The law, the boards and the vaccinators have the power of life

		LOCAL CONTESTS.                                        159 and death, the same as was arrogated by the ancient kings. Lobbies and corrupt politicians make the laws. "Damn the people," say these impious usurpers; "their province is to obey the laws and pay taxes." And half the people seem willing to pay this price for the privilege to live. The millionaire classes dear rule in America today. The idea of the sovereignty of the citizen, has come to be regarded by the privileged classes as a form of silly twaddle which orators may affirm and re-affirm on the Fourth of July; but it has become obsolete as a working principle for business men. Aye, business men, including the vaccinating syndicate, who "stand in" with the politicians and get the kind of legislation they want, and then proceed to dic- tate terms to the protesting citizen with impunity. I admit that the coined phrase—-"damn the people"—stands for a certain fact, since only a minority in the mass are sturdy and self-sacrificing defenders of both general and personal lib- erty. A very considerable contingent among our voting popu- lation do not appreciate or care for any stake they may have in the government, and therefore hold their vote as a com- mercial commodity which they are ready to sell in the market and which political parties are just as ready to buy. This class of people, too, will generally turn their children over to the vac- cinator rather than be subject to any expense or inconvenience in protecting them. Civilization breeds curses unknown to barbarism. A prim- itive and childlike people are sure to fade and die out by con- tact with a civilization like the mercenary Anglo-Saxon. Our sectarists and schools do not compensate for the evil effects of our vaccination-virus syphilis and "rotgut" whiskey. In a later chapter I shall show that vaccination imposed by the countries of Europe and the United States upon the West Indies, Sand- wich Islands, South Africa and Hindustan, outweigh all the other curses we have imposed upon those unfortunate peoples. Japan, though civilized, is departing from her ancient traditions

		160                                   VACCINATION A CURSE. and borrowing her models from the West. She is now being taken in hand by the commercial sharks and has recently adopted our vaccination practice and issued a decree making it compulsory. In the Philippines, too, the irrepressible vacci- nator is plying his unholy calling. There, as here, it is finan- cially profitable. Down in Georgia the vaccinators are likewise busy. I clip the following from the New York World, Nov. 17, 1899:— "Americus, Ga., Nov. 16.—Two cases of small-pox exist here and the local authorities have passed an ordinance making vaccination compulsory. Half a hundred members of the First Church of Christ (Scientists) oppose vaccination as against the doctrines of Christian Science, and the affair will be settled in the courts. "Where citizens have refused to obey the new ordinance charges of disorderly conduct have been made against them in the Mayor's court. 'Yesterday Mrs. C. B. Raines, wife of a prominent physi- cian, was summoned to court for refusing to be vaccinated. She is a Christian Scientist. Upon her refusal to be vaccinated or leave the city, Mrs. Raines was sentenced to thirty days in the police barracks. At the request of friends sentence was sus- pended until today, when the entire Christian Science church congregation was summoned to court upon the same charge. Among the number were many young girls, business men, matrons, and mothers with their babies. "Attorneys for the Christian Scientists secured a continu- ance until tomorrow. The Christian Science church is an incor- porated body and holds a charter from the state of Georgia guaranteeing religious liberty. The members will steadfastly refuse to be vaccinated contrary to their religious creed, and the entire membership will doubtless be sent to prison tomor- row for contempt of court." This appears in the daily press merely as an item of news; no comments; no protest against this flagrant injustice and vio- lation of individual rights. Here is a religious body who have normal and conscientious scruples as well as rational and scien-

		LOCAL CONTESTS.                                          161 tific objections, against vaccination. The vaccinated are safe anyhow—according to the oft-repeated assertion of the vacci- nators—from all danger of taking small-pox from the unvacci- nated. Then why not leave the unvaccinated to their own lib- erty? Answer: because the aggregate fees from the whole pop- ulation being vaccinated would be greater than those accruing from only a part being vaccinated. As long as the state has guaranteed this business, why not run it on "business princi- ples?" In the tithing days of the compulsory priest-tax, if we didn't pay up promptly, we were threatened with future damna- tion. Now, having transferred the privilege of compulsion from the priest to the doctor, he brings calf-lymph-virus-hell right into our households, here and now;—brings it to stay and blos- som out into eczema, sores, tumors, and various skin diseases. I clip the following editorial from the Los Angeles "Med- ium," Sept. 21:— "The foulest blow that could possibly be struck at liberty of conscience has been dealt out this morning, (Monday, Sept. 18,) when the doors of the public schools (by decree of school directors backed by the board of health and an infamous state law,) closed against our children because we cannot consent to have their young bodies poisoned and enfeebled by the injection of vaccine rottenness into their healthy veins. "This invasion by the doctors of the most sacred right of home, (the protection of our children's welfare,) is the most hu- miliating subjugation to another's will in a matter where intelli- gent conviction of duty points in the opposite direction, which parents can endure. Humiliating as it is for the fathers to bare their backs to the lash of these diplomatized tyrants, these ras- cally whippers-in, it is ten thousand times more so for the mothers. Fathers have the one noble and unquestioned right remaining, viz. legislative protest and appeal. Woman has no such able weapon as the ballot with which to defend the objects of her supremest love from desecration by these M. D.'s in their unholy work. Is it possible that woman needed this last and most audacious heart-thrust to goad her on to demand and secure the noblest right of citizenship,—a voice in making the

		162                                       VACCINATION A CURSE. laws by which she shall be governed in the fulfilment of her duty to her children? "Mother love is the highest expression of the human soul, and must yet command every resource for the carrying out its sacred impulses. "We especially ask our brother voters, to meet with us and tell us whether they intend to pay their school taxes while their children are robbed of the benefits so precious to every Ameri- can heart;—to consider what steps to take toward the repeal of the infamous law;—to take counsel with the mothers as to the surest and most speedy way to secure an honorable representa- tion in the legislative halls of the state. "Since our children cannot be allowed to run in the streets deprived of the advantages of school, while we carry forward measures for the repeal of this unrighteous law, we must devise means for assuming the unjustly imposed burden, of private schools for them. Come one, come all, to the meeting an- nounced on opposite page.              MRS. O. F. SHEPARD." I clip another protest from the Chicago "Times-Herald," Nov. 20, 1899:— "Chicago, Nov. 20.—To the Editor: The article bearing the title 'Vaccination for Chidren' should be read by the parents of all school pupils. I had just such a case of vicious vaccinat- ing and my little boy died from the poison introduced into his system by the vaccination. When the entire city becomes aroused against the crime of vaccination then will every attempt to carry out the outrage of vaccinating healthy children be sup- pressed. There is no law to compel pupils to suffer any person to tamper with the health of school children, and the doctors know it, yet they threaten the parents with keeping out of school the children who are told to leave the school if vaccination is at- tempted to be enforced. Let no rest be given the agitation of anti-vaccination. It is a crime, and no mistake, to infect a healthy babe with poison of any kind. HENRY C. STRONG, 778 North Rockwell Street." I will now go a little outside the local province and insert a letter from an able Italian physician—Charles Ruata, M. D.,

		LOCAL CONTESTS.                                               163 Professor of Hygiene and of Materia Medica in the University of Perugia, Italy. It was published in the New York Med. Jour., July 22, 1899:— VACCINATION IN ITALY PERUGIA, Italy, June 21, 1899. To the Editor of the New York Medical Journal: "Sir: In his presidential address to the American Medical Association Dr. Joseph M. Mathews had the goodness to call mad people, misguided people those who have not the good luck to be among the believers in the preventive power of vac- cination against small-pox. It is not surprising to hear such language from fanatics; in fact it is most common to see igno- rant men make use of similar vulgar expressions; but it seems to me almost incredible that the president of such a powerful as- sociation as the American Medical Association in his address showed himself so enthusiastic in his belief as to forget that re- spect which is due to his colleagues who do not have the same blind faith. "It may be that we anti-vaccinationists are "mad" and "mis- guided," as Dr. Joseph M. Mathews affirms in his late address, but I feel that we are far more correct in our expressions, al- though we do not believe, but are quite sure, that vaccination is one of the most wonderful and most harmful mistakes into which the medical profession has ever fallen. ' I can assure you that if I am a madman, my madness is very contagious, because all my pupils for several years have become as mad as I am, so that several thousands of the foremost medical men in Italy are suffering now with the same kind of madness. "One of the most prominent characteristics of madness is shown in illusions and hallucinations which are accepted as fun- damental truths. Now, let us see what are the main facts about vaccination and small-pox in Italy: "Italy is one of the best vaccinated countries in the world, if not the best of all. This we can prove mathematically. "All our young men, with few exceptions, at the age of twenty years must spend three years in the army, where a regu- lation prescribes that they must be directly vaccinated. The of- ficial statistics of our army, published yearly, say that from 1885 to 1897 the recruits who were found never to have been vacci-

		164                                    VACCINATION A CURSE. nated before were less than 1.5 per cent., the largest number be- ing 2.1 per cent. in 1893, and the smallest 0.9 per cent. in 1892. This means, in the clearest way, that our nation twenty years before 1885 was yet vaccinated in the proportion of 98.5 per cent. Notwithstanding, the epidemics that we have had of small-pox, have been something so frightful that nothing could equal them before the invention of vaccination. To say that during the year 1887 we had 16,249 deaths from small-pox, 18,110 in the year 1888, and 13,413 in 1889 (our population is 30,000,000) is too little to give a faint idea of the ravages produced by small- pox, as these 18,110 deaths in 1888, etc., did not happen in the best educated regions of our country, but only in the most igno- rant parts, where our population live just as they lived a century ago—that is, the mountainous parts of Sardinia, Sicily, Cala- bria, etc. Among the great number of little epidemics which produced the 18,110 deaths mentioned, I will only note the fol- lowing: Badolato, with a population of 3,800, had 1,200 cases of small-pox; Guardavalle had 2,300 cases with a population of 3,500; St. Caterina del Jonio had 1,200 cases (population, 2,700); Capistrano had 450 cases (population, 1,120) ; Mayerato had 1,500 cases (population, 2,500). All these villages are in Calabria. In Sardinia the little village of Laerru had 150 cases of small-pox in one month (population, 800); Perfugas, too, in one month had 541 cases (population, 1,400); Ottana had 79 deaths from small-pox (population, 1,000), and the deaths were 51 at Lei (population, 414). In Sicily 440 deaths were registered at Noto (population, 18,000), 200 at Ferla (population, 4,500), 570 at Sortino (population, 9,000), 135 at San Cono (population, 1,600), and 2,100 deaths at Vittoria (population, 2,600)! Can you cite anything worse before the invention of vaccination? And the population of these villages is perfectly vaccinated, as I have proved already, not only, but I obtained from the local authorities a declaration that vaccination has been performed twice a year in the most satisfactory manner for many years past. "Vaccinationists were not a little puzzled by these facts, and yet with the greatest certainty they asserted that this enor- mous number of deaths was due to want of revaccination. Hap- pily, in Italy we are able to prove that revaccination has not the

		LOCAL CONTESTS.                                        165 least preventive power. I only give a few figures: During the sixteen years 1882-'97, our army had 1,273 cases of small-pox, with 31 deaths; 692 cases, with 17 deaths, happened in soldiers vaccinated with good result, and 581 cases, with 14 deaths, hap- pened in soldiers vaccinated with bad result. This means that of a hundred cases of small-pox, fifty-four were in persons vac- cinated with good result, and only forty-six in those vaccinated with bad result, and that the death rate among those vaccinated with good result was 2.45 per cent. and only 2.40 per cent. in those vaccinated with bad result. "Vaccinationists say that when vaccination does not 'take' the operation must be repeated, because no result means no pro- tection given. Now, we see that soldiers not protected because vaccination did not 'take' were less attacked by small-pox than those duly protected by the good result of their revaccination ; and that the death rate in those vaccinated with good result was greater than among those in whom vaccination did not 'take.' "Our vaccinationists did not lose their extraordinary cour- age before these facts, and they objected that, they might be ac- counted for by considering that during the years before 1890 vaccination was not well performed. I can not understand this objection, but accepted it, and have limited my analysis to the last six years, during which the only lymph used in all our army has been animal lymph, exclusively furnished by the government institute for the production of animal lymph. The results are the following: The total number of our soldiers during these five years was 1,234,025, of which 783,605 were vaccinated with good result, and 450,420 with no result. In the first the cases of small-pox were 153—that is, 1.95 to every 10,000 soldiers, while in the others the number of cases was only 45—that is, 0.99 cases to every 10,000 soldiers. The 'duly protected' soldiers were at- tacked by small-pox in a proportion double that among the 'un- protected' soldiers. As you see, these are official statements, extremely trust- worthy, because the official statistics were made in a country where and at a time when no one thought that it was possible to raise a doubt against the dogma of vaccination. In our coun- try, we have no league against vacination, and every father

				166                                    VACCINATION A CURSE. thinks that vaccination is one of the first duties; for these rea- sons no bias could exist against vaccination in making these sta- tistics. I could continue for a long while to quote similar facts, but I wish to call your attention only to the two following ones: During the three most terrible years of epidemics that we have had in Italy lately (1887, 1888 and 1889) the death rate from small-pox among our people of the same age as the soldiers (twenty, twenty-one, and twenty-two years) has been 21 per 100,000, and it was 27.7 during the worst year (1888). In our army the same death rate during nine years (1867-75) has been 20 per 100,000, and it was 61.3 during the worst year (1871). "In consequence of our young men being obliged to spend three years in the army, it happens that after the age of twenty years, men are by far better vaccinated than women, and, if vac- cination did prevent, after the age of twenty small-pox should kill fewer men than women. But in fact just the reverse has happened. I give here the statistics of the three years 1887, 1888 and 1889 as the ones of greatest epidemics, but all the other years give the same results:
		Deaths before the age of 20.... After the age of 20 Man. 5.997 2.459 Woman. 5.983 1.810 Man. 7.349 1.990 Woman. 7.353 1.418 Man. 5.625 I.296 Woman. 5.63I 863 Man. 18.972 5.749 Woman. 18.968 4.091
			After these facts I would most respectfully ask Dr. Joseph M. Mathews if he can show that in considering them I have lost my mind. At any rate, I do not consider it correct for a medical man to make use of such language against other medical men, who have the only fault of considering facts as they are, and not as one wishes they should be. "The prSgress of knowledge has for its principle base, truth and freedom, and I hope that in the name of truth and freedom you will publish these observations, badly expressed in a lan- guage that is not my own, in your most esteemed journal. CHARLES RUATA, M. D."

			CHAPTER VI.
		VACCINAL INJURIES AND FATALITIES. "Small-pox, typhus, and other fevers, occur on common conditions of foul air, stagnant putrefaction, bad house drainage, sewers of deposit, excrement-sodden sites, filthy street surfaces, impure water, and over-crowding. The entire removal of such conditions is the effectual preventive of disease of these species, whether in ordinary or extraordinary visitations."—SIR ED- WIN CHADWICK, C. B. In the last century it was the intelligent poor who, with an unerring instinct in such matters, were the first to rise in open revolt against the practice of inoculation, a practice which the doctors assured the general public would modify and mitigate the severity of small-pox to the extent that would render it harmless. The inoculators had a pecuniary interest in the prac- tice then, the same as vaccinators have in the practice they are now, through legislation, pushing to the front for its compulsory enforcement. It was thoughts and votes—it was the popular dread and the persistent opposition of laymen which finally over- threw the old inoculation practice. So in this more modern practice, if the doctors were not supported by political legisla- tion, there would be little to complain of. The vaccinator would be but rarely consulted, and it would not be long before the gen- eral verdict would be pronounced against it.

		l68                                    VACCINATION A CURSE. There are very many painful facts associated with the prac- tice of vaccination which point toward a distinct vaccinal dia- thesis as having been engendered in the general population from the presence in the blood of the vaccinal virus as an active mor- bid agent. But few families in this country have escaped its baleful effects. This deadly virus works its way slowly, perhaps, into the weakest organs of each child, and there industriously sets up its inversive kingdom to wage an unrelenting war against the physiological integrity of the organism. The vaccine virus once introduced into the blood it extends its poisonous influ- ence, and later usurps permanent possession. It has come to stay, and henceforth make a hades of trouble for the possessor. This malignant spirit, intrenched in the very center of the life forces, will defy all the arts we may employ to exercise it. Some poisons are swift, instantaneous ; they speedily accomplish their destructive work and then depart; but the vaccine-poison is a composite fiend into which has entered the subtle germs or sporules of eczema, leprosy, consumption, cancer, erysipelas, scrofula, syphilis, and tetanus together with other diseases known and unknown, picked up on the way from Jenner to the present time. Once installed beneath the skin, they take their time to "develop their claim"—one year, ten years, this genera- tion or the next; no matter, death has a mortgage on the prem- ises and will claim his own and receive it on demand. If vaccina- tion were made a penal offence today, yet would the crop of dis- eases which the vaccinator has sowed continue to yield its terri- ble harvest of disease and death for generation to come. And the major portion of all this—like a bastard bundle of live flesh—is set down at the door of compulsory legislation—legislation which has been urged and manipulated and lobbied through by politic-members of the medical profession. In the present chapter I shall reproduce a small per cent. of the reports of vaccinal injuries and fatalities, as furnished by hos- pital surgeons, medical practitioners, and official reports of

		INJURIES AND FATALITIES.                                  l69 boards of health. And I may here premise that vaccinal injuries among the upper classes are far less frequent than those re- ported from the lower walks of life. The children of the upper class, particularly in England, have good resisting powers, the result of good feeding, plenty of exhilerating exercise, comfort- able clothing, abundant bathing, and a clean neighborhood where filth and infection do not abound. Nor is vaccination en- forced among the upper class as with the poor. Vaccinators are never troubled about filthy quarters in a crowded city. They never call a mass meeting of citizens to dis- cuss the menacing danger of cess-pools. Cess-pools have no terrors for them; but an unvaccinated person is a "focus of con- tagion" that threatens the very foundations of the public health. Even the vaccinated are not safe while a town is menaced by the presence of an unvaccinated person! How fortunate that we have among us a class of skilled experts (?) who thrill with dis- interested solicitude for our citizens of every class, lest they catch the small-pox! A small-pox epidemic is feared; the doctors fan the flames of public anxiety until a panic is on. The order then goes forth to vaccinate—to vaccinate everybody. A motley crowd of mothers with their-children from among the poor gather at the vaccination station. No mother is asked by the doctor in charge: "Have you any one at home down with a fever, or suf- fering from any disease, the virus of which floating about in the air may taint the blood of anyone who may have an abrased skin?" No, the business on hand is to vaccinate. The conse- quences may be considered later. The prospect of the fee is not to be lightly considered. The thing has to be done. It is law, and it is—it is—business. Bring forward the children. The first case I shall here present is a marked one; a most pathetic and distressing one. I reproduce it from Dr. John

						VACCINATION A CURSE.
				170
			Pickering's large work, "Which, Sanitation or Vaccination," page 159. Dr. Pickering is a prominent physician of Leeds, England:— "I proceeded to Colne to investigate the circumstances sur- rounding this impotent lad early in March, 1890. My visit at- tracted some attention, and on its reaching the ears of the editor of the 'Burnley Gazette,' one of the staff was sent to Colne to furnish a full report. I take the following particulars from the above-named periodical, dated March 26, 1890, and as it is from the pen of a strictly impartial observer it will have more weight with some people than one written by myself.
		FEARFUL CONDITION OF A CHILD AT COLNE. "The victim of the disease which is attributed by the parents and various medical men, including Dr. Miller, medical officer of health for Nelson, to the effect of vaccination, is a young lad residing with his parents in Sutcliffe's Place, Colne. Thither our representative proceeded for the purpose of investigating the matter. The mother of the lad, a cleanly and intelligent woman received myself and guide, and conducted us to the spacious kitchen. Here we found the lad seated listlessly in a large, com- fortable rocking-chair by the side of a glowing fire. He was clothed in a shirt, vest, and knickerbockers, his arms and legs being left uncovered, and presented an appearance painful in the extreme. Dwarfed and deformed, with a small pale face, large eyes which instead of beaming with intelligence, showed a hope- less indifference to everything which passed around him, the lad's condition looked pitiable indeed. His mother informed us that he was nearly twelve years old, but the unfortunate boy looked no more than five at the outside. The right arm, which had been vaccinated, was much the worse deformed of the two. It was scarcely as thick as three fingers of an ordinary man's hand, and was drawn up across the narrow chest, as if in a sling, the hand being turned away at an unnatural angle, giving a dis- located and claw-like appearance. Only two thin, skeleton-like

		INJURIES AND FATALITIES.                                17I fingers were extended, the others being clutched together in one close clasp. The whole limb was paralyzed and totally use- less. On the back of the hand, the elbow, and shoulder, were sores too hideous to be described in detail, which exuded, al- most continually, a foul yellow matter. The elbow joint was swollen and contrasted strongly with the slenderness of the arms above and below, which were merely skin-covered bones. Two other sores existed, one on the body under the arm, and another under the chin. This latter wound had closed up, but the mother of the lad said that some time ago, a hole under the chin, where the sore now existed, went so far down that 'you could see the roots of the tongue.' On the left cheek was an- other large sore which disfigured the little face sadly. The left arm, although not so deformed as the right, was of very little use to its owner, being thin as a lath, except at the joints. The back of the left hand too was covered with a foul, festering mass, and the fingers were slender and elongated until they also re- sembled the claw of a bird. Sores, little better than those on the hands, almost covered the lad's knees; and both feet, which were naturally small, bore similar corrupt excrescences. The mother informed us that all the sores exuded filthy matter which made perfect cleanliness among the lad's clothing and bedding impossible, although she made every effort within her power to effect this end. "Another young lad of about nine years old was in the room, and he presented an appearance the exact opposite of that of his elder brother. He was a sturdy strong little fellow with ruddy cheeks and bright eyes, and looked as if he had never known a day's illness. 'This child,' said the woman, 'has been vaccinated too, but I plucked the stuff off the minute it had been put on, and I wouldnSt have another child vaccinated like the other one if I was to go to Court every day.' ' Several doctors, it appeared, had attended the eldest lad at different times, but all had been equally unsuccessful, Dr. Brodribb. Medical Officer of Health for Colne, had lanced one of the sores on the lad's right hand, but this treatment only made the hand appear worse, and the mother would not permit him to use the lancet on the other hand. Dr. Miller, Medical Officer of Health for Nelson, had attended the lad and had told

		172                                     VACCINATION A CURSE. the mother that neither he nor any other doctor could cure him. 'The child's blood,' he said, 'is poisoned from head to foot.' "Questioned as to how long the child had been in that con- dition the mother said that from the time the child was vacci- nated it had never been healthy, but not until two years after the operation had been performed did the sores break out in the manner described. The child then had endured nearly ten years of this 'living death,' as his condition has been described. Many people had done their best to relieve him, the woman told us. 'I had him at one doctor and he said that if he did not cure him he would not charge anything. He gave him fifteen bottles, at 2s. a bottle, and he was just as far off when he had got it as he was before he began, and he said, 'I'll give him up.' "The mother of the boy said she had had twelve children, and had always been a hearty woman. Her husband was also a healthy man, and she could not think that the lad had taken any disease from them. They had always lived in Colne, in Chapel Fold 15 years, and in Colne Lane 20 years. After de- scribing the various treatments to which the child had been sub- jected, the woman went on to speak of the manner in which his life was spent. He had never learnt to read. He had been sent to school when he was able to get about, but he had been or- dered back, as it would not do for him to sit with the other children. When he was better than usual he was able to run about a little and on fine days he would wander about the street on which they lived; and on one occasion he was even able to walk as far as the station. The other children in the street would not play with him, and directly he went Snto the thor- oughfare their parents called them into the house until the boy had gone. Thus the poor lad was shunned like a leper and at that early age, experienced one of the greatest trials to which he could possibly be subjected." Dr. Pickering continues :—"The subject of my illustration has been described by medical men as a case of 'vaccinal syphi- lis.' Not that I think much of their opinion. It may be that or it may be that and something more. I lean to the latter opin- ion. * * * My illustration shows what an ugly blot and what a ghastly risk vaccination is when it can change a healthy

		INJURIES AND FATALITIES.                                173 child into an object the mother can never look at without a shudder. No consideration in the wide world, save that of its money value, would lead a body of men, claiming some knowl- edge of pathology, physiology, and chemistry, to retain an ob- servance where such accidents are possible." This poor boy died while Dr. Pickering's book was going through the press. His agonies were so terrible a few days be- fore his death, that he said to his mother, "Mother, give me some poison to send me home." That had already been done by the vaccinator, who probably felt as little concern over the result as the saloonkeeper does over the wrecked and wretched home whose husband and father he prepared the pit-falls for which precipitated his destruction. Many children die of diseases after vaccination, previously unknown to physicians—diseases so malignant as to suggest a connection with a distinct order which requires new rules of classification in order to refer them to their proper categories; an order in which the last and highest potency of both human- ized and animalized virus have formed a conjunction and evolved a new species, from which a new and distinct diathesis has been established in the human organism. Those who wish to experi- ment with these poisons on their own person, by all means leave them to their liberty; but to subsidize this practice by state grants and enforce it by means of state penalties, is a usurpation of personal liberty which the American people would not tole- rate a single day if they could once realize the really dangerous situation. As early as 1808 Dr. Richard Reece wrote—Prac. Dict, of Domestic Medicine, London :— "Even if the cow-pox did afford a certain security against small-pox infection, as Dr. Jenner has represented it, it would still remain a question whether the human race would really be benefited by its universal adoption, since the cutaneous erup- tions that have followed have in many instances proved more fulsome than even small-pox itself. That those eruptions do oc- cur after cow-pox infection must be allowed by its most stren-

					VACCINATION A CURSE.
			174
		uous advocates, being perfectly novel, of a nature unknown be- fore the introduction of vaccination, and pecular to those who have been vaccinated, and often so inveterate as more than to counterbalance the trivial advantages that we were first led to expect from its introduction." Again, he says:—"It must be allowed that the local inflammation excited by the inoculation with this matter, is of a very unfavorable nature, and often ends in a deep sloughing, frequently producing such an adhesion of the muscles of the arm, as very much to confine its motions; and some instances have occurred of the mortification spread- ing, so as to destroy the life of the child; an instance of which happened in St. George's Fields. The child was inoculated at the Cow-Pox Institution, Salisbury Square, Fleet Street; the in- flammation of the arm exceeded its usual boundary; on the sixth day mortification ensued, which proved fatal to the child. In the "Medical Observer" for September, 1810, Dr. Charles McLean gives a list of sixty cases of vaccinal injuries, with the names and addresses of ten medical men, including two professors of anatomy, whose families had suffered, seriously suffered, from vaccination. Dr. Scott Tebb, of London, details the following case:— "A Century of Vaccination," page 282:— "At an inquest held on December 8, 1882, on the body of Lilian Ada Williams, born in St. Pancreas Workhouse, and vac- cinated on the seventh day after birth, the jury found 'that the death caused by suppurating meningitis, following ulcera- tion of vaccine vesicles on the arm, and they were of opinion from the results of the post-mortem examination that the vacci- nation of the child ought to have been postponed." "Such instances are by no means rare, as disclosed in Ap- pendix ix. to Final Report of the Royal Commission, one of the most flagrant cases there reported being a fatal one of pyaemia in a 'puny and probably syphilitic' seven months child weigh- ing 4 pounds 2 ounces, and vaccinated when less than two clays after birth. (No. cxxi)." The London "Lancet" remarks in a leading article.—Vol. II, page 35:—

		INJURIES AND FATALITIES.                                175 "There is a belief—it may be denounced as a prejudice, but it is not the less a deeply-rooted conviction, and one not con- fined to the poor or the ignorant—that if the vaccine disease may be transmitted by inoculation, other diseases less beneficial may be propagated in the same manner, and by the same opera- tion. Many a parent of high and low degree dates constitutional disease in her offspring to vaccination with 'bad matter.' Who shall say that this etiological conclusion is always false?" In the number for October 28, 1854, (vol. ii., p. 360), it is stated:— "The poor are told that they must carry their children to be vaccinated by medical men who may be strangers to them. They apprehend—and the apprehension is not altogether un- founded, or unshared by the educated classes—that the vaccine matter employed may carry with it the seeds of other diseases not less loathsome than the one it is intended to prevent." That cow-pox disease is sufficient to cause death in a weakly child, is shown by a case where calf-lymph was em- ployed, recorded by Dr. Farrar—British Med. Jour., Oct. 13, 1894: "I consider her death to have been due to a constitu- tional malaise, induced by vaccine virus in a poorly nourished child." Again, Dr. Tebb writes—"A Century of Vaccination," page 291:— "A disease of the skin which has been especially referred to by the Vaccination Commissioners is impetigo contagiosa. The frequent occurrence of this malady after vaccination has been remarked on by the late Dr. Tilbury Fox and others. An extensive epidemic of impetigo contagiosa was occasioned by vaccination in the Isle of Rugen in 1885; seventy-nine children were vaccinated on June 11 with humanized thymos-lymph ob- tained from a government establishment at Stettin; all, with three exceptions, were attacked with impetigo contagiosa, and, by infection, the disease was spread to 320 out of a population of 5,000 inhabitants. A commission of inquiry was appointed by the German government, who reported that they were unan- imously of opinion that the outbreak of the disease had been a direct consequence of calf-lymph vaccination." In Prof. Wallace,—"Wonderful Century," page 232, are the details of a most distressing case:—.

		176                                   VACCINATION A CURSE. "As an example of the dreadful results of vaccination, even where special care was taken, the following case from the Sixth Report of the Royal Commission (p. 128) is worthy of earnest attention. It is the evidence of Dr. Thomas Skinner, of Liver- pool : ' 'Q. 20,766. Will you give the commission the particulars of the case?—A young lady, fifteen years of age, living at Grove Park, Liverpool, was re-vaccinated by me at her father's re- quest, during an outbreak of small-pox in Liverpool in 1865, as I had re-vaccinated all the girls in the Orphan Girls' Asylum in Myrtle Street, Liverpool (over 200 girls, I believe), and as the young lady's father was chaplain to the asylum, he selected, and I approved of the selection, of a young girl, the picture of health, and whose vaccine vesicle was matured, and as perfect in appear- ance as it is possible to conceive. On the eighth day I took off the lymph in a capillary glass tube, almost filling the tube with clear, transparent lymph. Next day, 7th March, 1865, I re- vaccinated the young lady from this same tube, and from the same tube and at the same time I re-vaccinated her mother and the cook. Before opening the tube I remember holding it up to the light and requesting the mother to observe how perfectly clear and homogeneous, like water, the lymph was, neither pus nor blood corpuscles were visible to the naked eye. All three operations were successful, and on the eighth day all three vesi- cles were matured 'like a pearl upon a rose petal,' as Jenner de- scribed a perfect specimen. On that day, the eighth day after the operation, I visited my patient, and to all appearance she was in the soundest health and spirits, with her usual bright eyes and ruddy cheeks. Although I was much tempted to take the lymph from so healthy a vesicle and subject, I did not do so, as I have frequently seen erysipelas and other bad conse- quences follow the opening of a matured vesicle. As I did not open the vesicle that operation could not be the cause of what followed. Between the tenth and the eleventh day after the re- vaccination—that is, about three days after the vesicle had ma- tured and begun to scab over—I was called in haste to my pa- tient, the young lady, whom I found in one of the most severe rigors I ever witnessed, such as generally precedes or ushers in surgical, puerperal, and other forms of fever. This would

		INJURIES AND FATALITIES.                                 177 be on the 18th of March, 1865. Eight days from the time of this rigor my patient was dead, and she died of the most frightful form of blood poisoning that I ever witnessed, and I have been forty-five years in the active practice of my profes- sion. After the rigor, a low form of acute peritonitis set in, with incessant vomiting and pain, which defied all means to allay. At last stercoraceous vomiting, and cold, clammy, deadly sweats of a sickly odor set in, with pulselessness, collapse, and death, which closed the terrible scene on the morning of the 26th of March, 1865. Within twenty minutes of death rapid decompo- sition set in, and within two hours so great was the bloated and discolored condition of the whole body, more especially of the head and face, that there was not a feature of this once lively girl recognizable. Dr. John Cameron, of 4 Rodney Street, Liv- erpool, physician to the Royal Southern Hospital at Liverpool, met me daily in consultation while life lasted. I have a copy of the certificate of death here. " 'Q. 20,767. To what do you attribute the death then ?— I can attribute the death there to nothing but vaccination.'" Prof. Wallace continued:—"In the same report, fifteen em- inent medical men gave evidence as to disease, permanent in- jury, or death caused by vaccination. Two gave evidence of syphilis and one of leprosy as clearly due to vaccination. And, as an instance of how the law is applied in the case of the poor, we have the story told by Mrs. Amelia Whiting (QQ. 21,434- 21,464). To put it in brief:—Mrs. Whiting lost a child, after terrible suffering, from inflammation supervening upon vaccina- tion. The doctor's bill for the illness £1 12s. 6d.; and a woman who came in to help was paid 6s. After the first child's death, proceedings were taken for the non-vaccination of another child; and though the case was explained in court, a fine of one shilling was inflicted. And through it all, the husband's earn- ings as a laborer were 11s. a week." Let us moralize for a moment. Had Mrs. Whiting's child been injured or killed by a railway train, he could sue the com- pany for heavy damages. But suppose the state not only quashes this indictment, but arrests and fines Mr. Whiting for not having already exposed his second child to the same danger.

		178                                      VACCINATION A CURSE. We should justly conclude that the corporation and the state were in a conspiracy to sacrifice the children of the poor. The case is not quite parallel, I admit; for while we can readily dis- cover an adequate motive in the vaccinator, it would be difficult to find a corresponding motive in the corporation. Here the vaccinator had already killed one child, and not only collected his fee for inoculating the blood with his vaccine poison, but also another fee for treating the fatal symptoms he had occa- sioned. One would think he ought to be satisfied with this, and so spare the crucified and bereaved parents further sorrow. But no, the vaccinator was not going to stop with any half way sacrifices. Mr. Whiting had failed to show due respect for the vaccinating god in not bringing all he had and placing it upon that vaccine god's accursed altar. And therefore, notwithstand- ing the day's wages were barely sufficient to keep the family from hunger, he is arrested and fined. There must surely be impending a judgment day for the manifold oppressions which have so long cried to heaven for redress. Dr. Pickering writes—"Sanitation or Vaccination," pages 73-74:— ''In a census organized by the A. V. Leagues in Scarbro, about four year ago (1888), the results as to cases of injury, the experience of the householders of a certain district were certi- fied to as follows: Cases of injury 74, and of death 37; total in. An analysis showed them to be composed of skin diseases, more or less severe, 24; scrofula, 2; abscesses, 13; convul- sions, 3; ruined health, 16; erysipelas and other forms of blood- poisoning, 18; crippled for life, 7; not stated, 28; total, 111. These results, it must be allowed, are somber and suggestive in detail. "Other answers, in various towns, have yielded similar re- sults. If Scarbro, a health resort, gives such convicting evi- dence as to the baneful effects of the complications and sequelae of vaccination, what would 'Whitechapel' say?" *****              *             * "Look at that little child the mother is fondling on her

			INJURIES AND FATALITIES.                                 179 knees. She how she caresses it; 'tis the loveliest of all earthly gifts. Its skin is white as Alpine snow; its rounded arms and legs are supple, yet firm withal. The eyes are bright as when they first saw Eden. Its sleep is calm and sweet. With a sense of awe and anxiety unknown to man that mother lingers over its fair features, and heaves a sigh pitiful and sad—that child has to undergo a medical operation on the morrow. A medical operation!! The morrow comes, and with it the doctor. He has carefully selected 'good matter,' the incision is made, and the cancerous deed is done. After many assurances, which are not worth a breath—the mother heeded them not—the vacci- nator packed up his traps and away he went, dreaming not of what he had left behind to work out its cunning. In a few days the child became ill; the arms were inflamed, the eyes and nose were running sores; it wasted away, and death ended the puny child's career, and that was all! No, it was not. The mother lost her child; her reason went after it, and she was consigned to a mad-house. The father was a widower and childless. This is vaccination! Do you say it is an exceptional case ? So far as father and mother are interested, yes; but not so with regard to the child itself. I maintain that for the United Kingdom a folio volume of the size of Dooms-Day Book would be required in which to register the mishaps of a single twelvemonth!
		"Here is another case of vaccine injury, unique and har- rassing in its details. A child was vaccinated, and a short time afterwards it developed sores over the whole body. Infirmaries and their medical staffs were helpless to relieve the sufferer, and it survived for nearly two years; but the skin shrivelled up and resembled that of a mummy. Prior to its decease the parents covered up the face, it was so agonizing to look at. Here is a case, also related by Dr. Pickering, though not a special case of vaccinal injury, it is nevertheless so full of sug- gestiveness and common sense, I will insert it here—page 65:— "During the epidemic years 1871-2, I had the most singular requests made to me. I was sent for to see patients young and old, in all stages of the disease and at all hours of the day and night, both in Leeds and the suburbs. One morning when I was

		l80                                    VACCINATION A CURSE. about to leave my house a note was brought from Miss H., the daughter of a soldier, saying that the husband of a sister of her maid, living at Armley, was very bad with the small-pox, and would I kindly go and see him. After reading my letters at the office, I took the train up to Armley, and proceeded to the house of a Mr. Skinner, at the address furnished me by my correspond- ent. He was in a bad condition truly. I never saw a worse case. The wife was in a state of mind bordering on distraction. She said to me, 'The doctor says my husband can't recover, He came yesterday and said he should not go into the bed-room again, as it was the severest attack he had seen.' I answered, 'You may perhaps save your husband's life if you are prepared to carry out my injunctions with a woman's will.' 'Sir,' she re- plied, 'tell me what I am to do, and it shall be done.' 'Go, then,' I said, 'at once to the nearest shop, and purchase a piece of mackintosh two yards by two, and some soft soap; place the mackintosh under him, and wash the body well with wash leather, using the soft soap and tepid water; do this five or six times during the day and, when the fever symptoms abate, you can reduce the washings to three or four per day, but the ablu- tion of the body must be continued morning and night for a fortnight. After the second day you can use a bed-room towel instead of the wash leather, but in the present tender state of the skin the wash leather will not irritate it more than he can bear. Let him have milk, oatmeal gruel, and as much cold water as he can drink. Have the windows and doors open, but keep him warm with extra blankets. In a few days—two or three— sponge the body with cold water after the tepid wash, and with this treatment put an additional blanket over him, so as to en- tourage a healthy re-action. Do this, and you have done your best to save your husband's life.' I repeated my orders again where necessary, and left the two, wife and husband, in charge of the good angel of Sanatory Science. "In three weeks time that man was at his work, 'sound, wind and limb.' "He and his wife have since emigrated to Aus- tralia, and I heard, only a month ago, they were doing well in their adopted country. This man had been vaccinated." That small-pox is such a terrible scourge, is chiefly due to popular ignorance. Drastic drug specifics are not required in

		INJURIES AND FATALITIES.                                  l8l its treatment, or will not be when people order their lives in con- formity with the physiological laws and rise above the depress- ing influence of fear. Every year fever slays its thousands. Dr. Pickering lived in the midst of the small-pox for years nursing and caring for those afflicted with the disease, yet the infection never became active in his organization. In the "Family Physician" issued by Cassell & Co., p. 508, we read: "We know of no cure for small-pox and the disease must be allowed to run its course." Again on page 568: "It must always be borne in mind that we have no specific remedy for any of our common fevers. We cannot hope to cure them and in many cases the object of the treatment is simply to con- duct the fever to a favorable termination, and to ward off any inter current disease." This work is the product of many med- ical writers and is a compendium of physic up to date. I sim- ply drop these hints, but it is not my present purpose to enter upon a discussion of a rational mode of treating all zymotic af- fections. But I will state on general principles, if the regular doctors could bring themselves to feel a small fraction of the solicitude for the people to adopt sanitation, hygiene and phys- iological modes of living, that they do for forcing vaccination on the general public, we should then have prevention on a scale that would amount almost to perfection. If it were not for the shekels associated with vaccination and lack of it in teaching the laws of clean-living,—in other words, if the wampum, to use the Indian's word for cash, could be transferred to the other "bull's horn"—we might then hopefully look for a changed atti- tude from that fraud of the profession whose main dependence is the calf-lymph infected lancet, and drastic drugs. William Forbes Laurie, M. D., Edinburgh, St. Saviour's Cancer Hospital, Regent's Park, says: "Being anxious not to do mischief to my fellow-creatures, and being, as regards my own family, liable to fine or imprisonment under the Compul-

			l82                                         VACCINATION A CURSE. sory Vaccination Act, I lately wrote to some members of Parlia- ment on the subject. I asked them to come here and see for themselves the dismal results of vaccination in cases of paraly- sis, blindness of both eyes, hip joint disease, consumption and frightful forms of skin disease. Though I received replies they have not yet inspected the cases."
		VACCINATION A FRUITFUL CAUSE OF CANCER, ERYSIPELAS AND LOCKJAW. Cancer in the human system is somewhat analagous to the mistletoe on forest trees, as it grows at the expense of the life or structure upon which it fastens. It is a morbid and foreign growth, converting the cells and tissues of organs in which it has established itself for the growth of its own inversive death- prophesying structure. In its immediate vicinity the tissues de- teriorate and die, often leaving a gap or open ulcer between the sound flesh and abnormal growth. It is often hereditary and may remain latent for thirty or forty years, and then suddenly burst forth in its work of destruction. It may be propagated or communicated to the blood of a healthy person through an abrased skin, or from the point of a lancet, somewhat after the manner of the leprosy contagion. In Zurich, Germany, Dr. Hanan succeeded in propagating cancer in rats by inoculation in 1890. It may be readily communicated by means of arm to arm vaccination, since the cancer virus is latent in the blood of many an apparently healthy child. Nor can we be certain that calf- lymph is free from latent hereditary cancer. Indeed, there are not wanting the highest medical authorities who believe vacci- nation is the principal cause of the alarming increase in cancer during recent years. Dr. William Hitchman, consulting surgeon to the Cancer

		INJURIES AND FATALITIES.                                     183 Hospital, Leeds, formerly public vaccinator to the city of Liv- erpooS, stated in 1883, that "syphilis, abdominal pathisis, scrof- ula, cancer, erysipelas, and almost all diseases of the skin ,have been either conveyed, occasioned, or intensified by vaccina- tion."—Vac. Inquirer, p. 31. Dr. Dennis Turnbull, author of "The New Cancer Treat- ment," says:— "In my treatment of cancers and tumors during the last 30 years, it has fallen to my lot to come in contact with all grades of society; and, with a view of eliciting the true facts, it is my habit carefully to interrogate my patients, relative to their gen- eral habits of life, their antecedents, and the health of their an- cestors. I have, therefore, fathered a considerable store of in- formation, which enables me to speak with some authority; and I have no hesitation in stating that, in my judgment, the most frequent predisposing condition for cancerous development is infused into the blood by vaccination and re-vaccination."— The Vegetarian, London, 24th November, 1888. "Cancer," says Dr. Hitchman, "is a blood disease; so also is cow-pox; and when, to inherited or acquired morbid ten- dency, vital exhaustion, digestive disorder, and unhealthy sur- roundings, are added the various complications attending vacci- nation, the presence of certain growths, or even bony structure in the larynx or any other part, is not surprising to one who be- lieves in casual sequence. Scientifically, whatever tends to a diminution in the natural color and specific gravity, especially of the red corpuscles of the blood, may, sooner or later, lead to serious transformation into tubercular, syphilitic, or cancerous affection."—Vaccination Inquirer, London, February, 1888. It is also important to note a very peculiar relationship be- tween calf-lymph and human tissue, namely, in their relative rates of organic change. The growth from infancy to adult life in man is extremely slow, while bovine organic processes are very rapid. Hence innoculation of the blood through the skin of a human subject with calf-lymph—however pure—would fur- nish the conditions for the commencement and growth of can- cer, owing to difference in rate of growth of the two sets of

		184                                      VACCINATION A CURSE. plasmic cells. The foreign cells thus introduced would grow in the weaker organ where they would become seated, at the ex- pense of the cells in the surrounding structure; and when we re- member that all vaccine matter is a degenerate form of lymph— lymph which has undergone retrograde metamorphosis, putri- faction—the disturbance and ultimate destruction it will occa- sion by injection into the circulation, will be a hundred-fold greater than if taken into the stomach, where nature could dis- pose of it without sensible harm. The lymphatic system is traversed by a far finer network of glands and vessels than is comprised in the veins and arteries, and according to Swedenborg, the lymph that circulates in these vessels is "the true purer blood" of the body. Now, the poison that finds its way through an abrasion or puncture of the skin, is immediately taken up by the lymphatic vessels; and when a cancer begins to grow its little branches and rootlets traverse and ramify in these very vessels, which are specially and im- mediately invaded by vaccination. We need not therefore, be surprised that so many cases of vaccinal injury occur even when ''pure glycerinated calf-lymph" only is used by the vacci- nator. For every case of small-pox which vaccination "miti- gates" we may be pretty sure there will be ten cases of cancer. Cancer cases are now most rapidly multiplying in those coun- tries where vaccination is well nigh universal—Germany, Eng- land, New Zealand, and the United States. It has been stated, re-stated and never denied so far as my knowledge extends, that no Jew or Jewess was ever known to have a cancer unless they had first been vaccinated. It is undeniable that calf-lymph virus —the extract of heifer sores and ulcers—is the cess-pool that breeds blood diseases—the medical wayside weed-patch, on which grows and thrives pimpled faces, ulcerous sores, tumors, cancers, scrofula, and consumption. Dr. Turnbull, in his book, "The New Treatment," writing on the origin and spread of cancers, after referring to sundry

---

			INJURIES AND FATALITIES.                               185 exciting causes—tight lacing, smoking, drinking, etc., says; "Numbers of my patients have expressed themselves as abso- lutely certain that they never had the slightest sign of cancer until after they submitted to re-vaccination. Let all truly scien- tific men cease to vaccinate, and, my word for it, the spread of cancer will be materially lessened." In a carefully written pamphlet on "Cancer and Vaccina- tion," by "Esculapius," the writer concludes as follows:— "No candid and scientific inquirer who has read the recent works of Drs. Creighton, Edgar Crookshank, and Scott Tebb, can be surprised that an alarming increase in cancer is even now evident. Those who adopt so blindly the brutal practice calf-lymph vaccination are but too surely sowing the wind which they must inevitably reap as the whirlwind, a whirlwind of corruption, disease, and national deterioration. Where the so- called human lymph is employed, syphilis, leprosy, and tubercu- losis follow in its train; and wherever calf-lymph is used, tuber- culosis and cancer spread like a conflagration." Erysipelas is one of the most frequent as well as serious effects that follow vaccination. But of late years the deaths re- sulting from this cause have been classed under different head- ings. In England and Wales, between the years 1859 and 1880, 379 deaths from erysipelas were directly traceable to vaccina- tion. Indeed the usual inflammation excited by cow-pox virus is erysipelatous in character. The following table, from Dr. Scott Tebb's work, page 346, gives the number of deaths for each of the intervening years:—
		Year. Deaths from erysipelas after vaccination. Year. Deaths from erysipelas after vaccination. 1859 ... 5 1870 ..... 20 1860 . .. 3 1871 ..... 24 1861 . . . 2 1872 ..... 16 1862 . . . . . 3 1873 ..... 19 1863 . ....11 1874 ..... 29 1864 . . .13 1875 ..... 37 1865 ....10 1876 ..... 21 1866 . . .10 1877 ..... 29 1867 . . . . 4 1878 ..... 35 1868 .... 9| 1879 ..... 32 1869 . . 19| 1880 ..... 39

		l86                                         VACCINATION A CURSE. In the "Am. Jour, of the Med. Sciences," October, 1850, Mr. W. Moreland, secretary of the Boston Society for Medical Improvement, gives extracts from the records of the society relating to erysipelas following vaccination, and reported on by medical men. Eleven cases were given, three being fatal. Of the eight that did not prove fatal, four were very severe, three of which were attended with extensive sloughing. In the "Lancet," May 31, 1863, Mr. J. R. Wells relates a case of a lady aged 55 years, who was re-vaccinated. Symptoms of phlegmonous erysipelas set in the following day and in four days after the operation she died. The "Lancet" of Nov. 24, 1883, relates the cases of two chil- dren named Elliston and Griggs, who were vaccinated October 16, and in seven days two other children were vaccinated from lymph taken from the child Elliston. In a short time the Ellis- ton child and the two last children vaccinated, died of erysipelas. The operations were performed at the regular vaccinating sta- tion. "In 1875, there was an official inquiry at Gainsborough by Mr. Netten Radcliffe, of the Local Government Board, into cases of erysipelas following vaccination, of which six died; a searching investigation failed to dissociate the operation from the fatal erysipelas. "In 1882 another Local Government Board inquiry was held by Mr. Henley and Dr. Airy at Norwich into certain deaths alleged to have been caused by vaccination. It was shown that eight children suffered from erysipelas 'due to some abnormal peculiarity or contamination of the lymph;' of these, four died. "On the 25th of May, 1883, sixty-eight recruits were vacci- nated at Dortrecht, Holland. Of these seven were attacked with erysipelas, and three died. In consequence of these cases, the minister of war, Mr. Weitzel, issued a circular notifying re- cruits that hereafter re-vaccination was not obligatory in the Netherlands army. "Before the South Wales and Monmouthshire branch of the British Medical Association, on Nov. 15, 1883, Dr. C. T. Vachell,

		INJURIES AND FATALITIES.                                     187 of Cardiff, related a series of cases where erysipelas followed vaccination. On November I, a child, aged three months, and an adult were vaccinated with lymph obtained from London. On the eighth day the arm of the adult was much swollen and red. On the same day the child presented every appearance of having been successfully vaccinated, and five tubes were charged from it. On November 10, five children were vaccinated from these tubes. On the 11th and 12th all these cases were attacked with erysipelas of the arm vaccinated, and, on inquiry, it was found that the child from whom the vaccine lymph had been taken was attacked with erysipelas on November 9." "A Century of Vaccination," page 348. Among the older records of the Local Government Board are the following:— "(1). A series of nineteen cases of erysipelas from vacci- nation at Warrington, with five deaths, in 1871. "(2). A case of serious erysipelas from vaccination with National Vaccine Establishment lymph at Stoke Newington in 1871, in which inquiry elicited that violent inflammation had oc- curred in others vaccinated with lymph from the same vaccin- ifer; the vaccinifer having an inflamed arm on the thirteenth day and a small abscess in the axilla. "(3). Six cases of serious inflammation and three deaths in a series vaccinated with ninth-day lymph from one vaccinifer at Appleby, in 1873. "(4). Several cases of erysipelas and inflammation, with five deaths, in a series of vaccination at Chelsea, in 1875. "(5). Twelve cases of excessive inflammation, six of ery- sipelas, with three deaths, two cases of axillary abscess, and one large ulcer, in a series of vaccinations at Plomesgate, in 1878. "(6). Ten cases of erysipelas or abscesses, with four deaths, and several cases of eczema in a series of vaccinations at Clerk- enwell, in 1879, in which 'it is clear that the erysipelatous con- tagion was imparted at the time of vaccination.' These assumed the form of syphilis. "(7). Three cases of extensive erysipelas from vaccination at Blandford, in 1883. "(8). Three fatal cases of erysipelas from vaccination at Sudbury, in 1883.

		l88                                   VACCINATION A CURSE. "Between the 1st of November, 1888, and the 30th of No- vember, 1891, one hundred and thirty-two cases of inflamma- tory or septic disease (mostly erysipelas) following vaccination and terminating fatally, were the subject of inquiry by the Lo- cal Government Board. Numerous cases have also been inves- tigated by the Royal Commission on vaccination, and are cited in Appendix ix. to their final report.—Ibid. p. 350, Scott Tebb. "Dr. Theodore Dimon, St. Louis "Courier of Medicine," 1882, vol. vii., pp. 310-312. Boy, nine years old; vaccinated January 6, 1882, with bovine lymph. Tetanus supervened on January 27; no cause discovered except vaccination, which was followed by an irregular shaped ulcer. Boy died on the tenth day. "Dr. H. J. Berkeley, 'Maryland Medical Journal,' 1882-83, vol. ix., pp. 241-245. Healthy man, forty years old; vaccinated in the middle of January, 1882. Tetanus supervened on Feb- ruary 7; death on February 13. No lesion discovered except at the point of vaccination, which was occupied by a deep ulcer, with an inflamed and indurated border resembling syphilis. '"Dr. W. T. C. Bates, 'Transactions of the South Carolina Medical Association,' 1882, vol. xxxii., p. 105. Mulatto boy, aged five years; vaccinated February 9, 1882, with humanized lymph. Tetanic symptoms supervened on March 8. No other cause but vaccination discovered. Boy lived fifteen days. "Dr. R. Garcia Rijo, 'Cronica Medico Quirurgica de la Ha- bana,' 1886, vol. xii., p. 388 White child, two years old; vac- cinated in April, 1886. Characteristic tetanus appeared in lat- ter part of May. No lesion beyond vaccination discovered. Death followed on the fourth day. "Dr. Zahiroodeen Ahmed, 'Indian Medical Gazette,' March, 1889, vol. xxiv., p. 90. Adult, aged twenty-one. The symptoms appeared fourteen days after primary vaccination. He died. ''Local Government Board, Case x., Appendix ix., Final Report, Royal Commission on Vaccination. Female, aged two years; vaccinated on September 10, 1889. Symptoms of te- tanus first appeared on October 2, and patient died on the 5th of October.

				INJURIES AND FATALITIES.                                189 "Dr. P. A. Morrow, in referring to eruptions incident to vaccination, observes: 'It must be confessed that the profes- sion has manifested a most decided unwillingness to recognize their direct dependence upon vaccination.' "Again, in the Local Government Board inquiries on ery- sipelas, held by Mr. Netten Radcliffe at Gainsborough, and by Mr. Henley and Dr. Airy at Norwich, before referred to, there were in all ten deaths, and in only one of these was vaccination mentioned on the certificate of death. *          *            *            *            *            *          * "It is impossible to form any accurate estimate of the total amount of serious and fatal injuries produced by vaccination; the following table only gives the deaths recorded by the Reg- istrar-General :— England and Wales.—Deaths from cow-pox and other effects of vaccination, from 1881 to 1896.
		1881................... 1882................... 1883................... 1884................... 1885................... 1886................... 1887................... 1888................... 58 65 55 53 52 45 45 45 1889................... 1890................... 1891................... 1892................... 1893................... 1894................... 1895................... 1896................... 58 43 43 58 59 50 56 42
			DR. S. TEBB. "This shows that in England and Wales, according to med- ical death-certificates, one child on an average dies every week from the effects of vaccination. This fatal record, however, does not by any means represent the damage done by the operation, as for every death there must be a very large number of chil- dren who are injured, but survive for years with enfeebled con- stitutions.—Ibid pp. 360-61. ******* "Also, in an inquiry, on behalf of the Royal Commission, on a series of injuries from vaccination at some villages in Nor- folk, in 1890, Dr. Barlow found, from the brief provisional inves- tigation he was able to make, that some septic material had been introduced at the time of the insertion of the vaccine lymph, and that this was mainly responsible for the untoward results

		190                                    VACCINATION A CURSE. obtained. There were three deaths and in none of these was the word 'vaccination' mentioned on the death certificate.— Ibed p. 364." A perusal of the history of vaccination is not calculated to excite our veneration toward the medical profession, the older schools of which sanction a species of blood-poisoning with con- centrated animal virus in a manner that contravenes the prin- ciples of all true science. Their specifics are largely derived from the traditions and superstitions of an ignorant age. All their theories concerning the preventive and mitigating effects of vaccination belong to the category of pseudo-science. The profession knows this to be pseudo-science, and yet with craft and cunning they shun discussion, shelve complaints, evade and mutilate facts, twist statistics, raise false and irrevelent issues, make false returns of death from vaccinal injuries, dub anti- vaccinators as pestilent agitators, lobby for compulsory vacci- nation, persecute the true psychic who restores the sick without medicine, and do many other things which reveal motives for- eign to the public welfare. In this domain—the vaccinating branch of the profession— medical practitioners are inversive, reversive, and subversive; they invert the order of nature by creating disease with the pre- tence of preventing disease; they revert to an ancient super- stition which Jenner borrowed from peasant milk-maids, and which Lady Montagu borrowed from the common folk in Tur- key; and they subvert the intention of nature by sowing an extra crop of incurable diseases in the name of health—scrofula, cancer, erysipelas, leprosy, consumption, etc. No part of the organism requires greater care and attention than the skin. It is the most fatal avenue through which poi- sons can reach the blood. The venom of the rattlesnake would be comparatively harmless in the stomach, but reaching the blood and nervo-circulation through the skin it is swiftly fatal,

---

		INJURIES AND FATALITIES.                                       191 while the virus of scrofula, leprosy, or cancer, reaching the blood in the same manner, may lie latent for years and then spring forth with malignant activity. Note also, that the func- tion of the skin is to excrete not to absorb; it is to throw out waste material that has fulfilled its use, not so much to take in material, for this would be "climbing up another way" than the one ordained by nature. Ninety-nine per cent. of all substances that enter the body through the skin are interlopers and enemies which forever war against the original integrity of the man. A mosquito made a minute puncture on the neck of a healthy girl; it had just previously left the cheek of a leper. The fol- lowing year that maiden revealed the unmistakable symptoms of leprosy. A blue bottle fly inoculated an abrazed surface on the nose of a butcher; a rusty nail pierced the foot of a girl in her stocking feet; a wasp stung a delicate child on her arm. All these died with blood poisoning. Only last Fourth of July, about a dozen small boys in various parts of the country re- ceived slight skin flesh wounds from gunpowder; all of whom developed lock-jaw in a few days, and died. And not many months since I read accounts in the daily press of one child bit- ten by a red ant, and another child was stung by a bee, in both of whom blood poisoning supervened, and they died. Thus we see how the skin is a gateway through which the most subtle and infinitesimal poisons may reach the citadel of life, there to deploy in the work of destruction, either slowly or swiftly, but always surely, having only one goal, which is death. It is through the skin the opium fiend injects the agent of his fantasia, through the skin the viper strikes his venom; aye, through the skin the vaccinator pushes his lance, dipped in the virus that may have traveled from afar, gathering a legion of diseases on the way.
			RE-VACCINATED HOSPITAL NURSES. It is frequently asserted by advocates of vaccination, that re-

		192                                    VACCINATION A CURSE. vaccinated hospital nurses very rarely if ever contract small- pox, and still more rarely die of it. While we may admit with Bacon that, "The plague is not easily received by such as are continually about them that have the plague, as keepers of the sick and physicians;" still, such immunitiy as they enjoy is in no wise related to vaccination or re-vaccination. They take the disease and die, the same as other people, but more rarely. Their unifrom protection lies in their general health, sanitary habits, and in their cheerful spirits, which are never associated with fear. Dr. Robert Cory officially distributed cards to parents at public vaccinating stations, which stated that: "For fifty years nurses in small-pox hospitals had wholly escaped small-pox, ow- ing to their re-vaccination." This card was originally printed —"Nurses at the small-pox hospital, Highgate." By dropping out "the" and appending an "s" on hospital, a much stronger case for the vaccinator was made out. This same Dr. Cory was the heroic gentleman who inoculated himself with syphilis from a syphilitic child, to prove experimently by vaccination that it could not be thus communicated. But its possibility was duly and painfully demonstrated in his person. The sad sequel need not be related. I will here append a few reported cases, sufficient to illus- trate two or three aspects relating to hospital nurses: "Dr. C. T. Pearce said to the Parliamentary committee of 1871: 'I yesterday visited the small-pox hospital at Highgate, and (after the statements which have been made in this room that the nurses of that hospital are secure against small-pox by re-vaccination) I confess that I was not a little astonished when the door was opened by a nurse whose face was scarified all over with small-pox. I asked the nurse how many patients there were in the hospital? She said 104. 'Are there many vacci- nated?' 'Nearly all, sir, now, and many of them twice over.' 'How many nurses are there?' 'Twelve.' 'How many night nurses?' 'Two.' I went from Highgate to Northumberland Street, and there had an interview with the assistant clerk, who

		INJURIES AND FATALITIES.                                  I93 gave me the astounding information that at Stockwell a nurse recently engaged because she was pitted with small-pox, was re-vaccinated on her engagement, and she is now in bed with confluent small-pox!"—London Soc. Tract, p. 6, Hospital Nurses. "At the Fulham Hospital, three of the re-vaccinated attend- ants under Dr. Makuna took small-pox."—Small-pox and Vacci- nation. Dr. W. T. Iliff.. p. 10. "At the same hospital, Dr. Sweeting states that four of his re-vaccinated nurses had taken the disease." "At the Halifax Hospital, in April, 1881, the matron and a nurse contracted small-pox from a patient; the matron had been previously vaccinated, while the nurse had been re-vacci- nated only a week before she was taken ill."—British Medical Journal, May 7, 1881. "At the Lewes Fever Hospital a nurse was engaged, and re-vaccinated November, 1881. She took small-pox about a week afterwards, and had it badly, but was not marked. She had been vaccinated in infancy, and again when ten years of age."— Vaccination Inquirer, vol. iv., p. 66. Letter, W. T. Martin. **** * * "In a letter addressed to Mr. Wm. Tebb, dated January 20, 1882, the late Dr. W. J. Collins states that on the occasion of a recent debate on the vaccination question, at which the house surgeon of the Fulham Hospital was present, he (Dr. Collins) 'had a chat with him afterwards, when he confessed that five of his re-vaccinated nurses had taken small-pox! He (the house surgeon) said he had not considered the difference as regards stating between vaccinated and re-vaccinated.' " (! !)—Ibid. "Ashton-under-Lyne has just passed through a small-pox scare in consequence of the occurrence of some twenty cases with seven deaths. Nearly all were vaccinated, including two re-vaccinated nurses in the Workhouse Infectious Hospital."— Vaccination Inquirer, v. 10, p. 5. "The 'Leicester Chronicle,' July 1, 1893, stated that Mr. Clarke, Inspector of Nuisances to the Blaby Union, died of small-pox at the board's 'hospital camp.' In commenting on the case, 'The Vaccination Inquirer' says:—'It was not long before he contracted his own fatal illness that he remarked, in conver-

		194
					VACCINATION A CURSE.
			sation with Mr. Amos Booth, that he considered it impossible for him to take small-pox, so well protected was he.' " "Writing in 'The Star,' March 1, 1894, in reply to state- ments in 'The British Medical Journal,' Mr. J. T. Biggs, member of the sanitary committee, Leicester, said:—'During the present outbreak, which began in September last, five of the nurses and attendants at the hospital, all well vaccinated (one of the nurses being re-vaccinated), have been attacked with small-pox. One of these, a very bad case, died of confluent small-pox." "Nurses, being generally advanced in years, habituated to fatigue, and little liable to worry of spirits, do not readily re- ceive infection."—Instructions Relative to Contagious Dis- eases, London, 1801. "This well-known phenomenon attending small-pox will appear less singular when we reflect that the same observation has been made respecting the plague, a more virulent contagion, the history of which shows in every invasion of that dreadful malady, that many escape, though constantly employed about the sick, or infants sucking their infected mothers."—(Small- pox) R. Walker, M. A., London, 1790. ''In Buck's 'Treatise on Hygiene and the Public Health,' vol. 2, p. 521 (Art. 'Small-pox and Other Contagious Diseases') we read: 'It is a fact, fully appreciated by medical men, that persons constantly exposed to small-pox very rarely contract the disease. In the case of physicians, health inspectors, nurses, sisters of charity, hospital orderlies, and some others, this is the rule; and of over one hundred persons who have been, to my knowledge, constantly exposed, some of them seeing as many as a thousand cases, I have never personally known of more than one who has contracted the disease; but there are many writers who believe perfect immunity to be extremely rare. In this connection, attention may be called to the exemption of certain persons who occupy the same room, and perhaps bed. with the patients, and though sometimes never vaccinated, al- together escape infection." "The late Dr. W. J. Collins, of London, who had a long experience as a public vaccinator, in his essay entitled 'Have You Been Vaccinated?' writes:— " 'I have had a good deal to do with nurses, and know

		INJURIES AND FATALITIES.                                    195 their physical capabilities as well as any man. At one time I had a staff that I was in the habit of employing, and they were so constituted in mind and body as to resist any infection. They were built upon the square, hard as nails, broad as they were long, with plenty of room for the vital organs to play. They had no idea of danger, and seemed to have been born before nerves were invented. They were always in capital spirits, and troubled with a good appetite. * * * These nurses were in constant attendance upon patients who were suffering from small-pox, fever, etc. They had never been vaccinated or had small-pox.' " "Mr. Thorpe Porter, M. R. C. S., of the Small-pox Hospi- tal, South Dublin Union (see 'Medical Press and Circular March 2, 1872,), says:— " 'With reference to re-vaccination, I have no faith in it. Not one of the thirty-six attendants at the South Dublin Union Sheds has taken small-pox. Only seven of the number were re-vaccinated, and as the remaining twenty-nine enjoyed the same immunity, wherein is the necessity of the operation?'"— Ibid.
			CONSUMPTION AND VACCINATION. The experiments conducted by M. Toussaint, in France (1881) leave no room for doubt that tuberculosis is due to a spe- cific organism, and may be communicated to a healthy person through vaccination. He vaccinated a tubercular cow with lymph from a vaccine vesicle raised on a healthy child. Then in turn with the lymph from the pocks of the cow he vaccinated four rabbits and a pig. The rabbits were killed two months afterwards and found to be suffering from tuberculosis at the point of inoculation, in the glands and in the lungs. The pig also developed tuberculosis, both local and general. Here we are confronted with a fact of great significance. Toussaint's ex- periments prove that tuberculosis is communicable through vac- cination; and as cows are subject to the disease, both in its lat- ent and active form, we can never be certain that the calf-lymph

			196
					VACCINATION A CURSE.
		from the vaccine farms is free from this subtle and insidous enemy—consumption. In the preface to Dr. Pickering's large work—"Sanitation or Vaccination"—he presents some significant details from his own family history:— "My attention was first directed to vaccination by hearing the details of a mishap in my own family circle. The grand- father of my first wife was a surgeon practicing in a town in the East Riding of Yorkshire. About the year 1808 there was some stir amongst the members of the profession at to the duty of vaccinating their own children, I suppose by way of showing their confidence in the operation. Now the surgeon's wife,— a woman remarkable for her strong commone sense,—exhibited considerable reluctance to her own children being dragged at the chariot wheels of this new invader. At length her husband said, 'Well, it matters this much to me: if vaccination is not per- formed in my own family, I am so teazed about it that I must give up my profession, and seek for some other means of gain- ing a livelihood.' This was an argument the wife was not able to resist; her consent was withheld no longer. "The next question was where to find a healthy child from whom to gather a small harvest of Jenner's 'pure lymph.' A medical neighbor interested himself in this behalf, and in a few days the opportunity occurred to him, when a young woman, resident in Barnsley, came home with her child, three months old, to visit her parents, and was advised to have vaccination performed by the physician who had attended their own family for many years, and she applied to him accordingly. The child was apparently strong and healthy; vaccination was perpe- trated ; virus was stored from this vaccinifer; and the two chil- dren, ranging from one to three years old, members of the sur- geon's family firstly referred to, were vaccinated in due course with the lymph thus acquired. "There was no taint of hereditary disease in the surgeon's family; his progenitors had been farmers in that part of York- shire for two centuries or more; and the wife's family came from a healthy stock. "Within twelve months after vaccination the two children sickened; the ruddy cheeks became pale; and the whole con-

		INJURIES AND FATALITIES.                               I97 stitution showed symptoms of some unaccountable yet disas- trous change. By a sort of instinct peculiar to woman, the wife insisted that her husband should go to Barnsley to inquire into the antecedents of the parents from whose child the lymph had been abstracted. He went, when, to his dismay, he found that both parents were the offspring of families subject to hereditary consumption "The cloud of dejection and regret was never lifted from the future careers of either husband or wife; and the two chil- dren, a boy and a girl, knew not what health was in their after lives. The two grew up tall and handsome; both married in due time, but the sister only had a family; she had three boys and a girl. "To cut a long story short, the parents died of consump- tion before they reached 46 years of age; and of the second generation two of the three boys and the sister died of consump- tion before they attained their 26th year; the other boy, by em- igrating to a warmer climate (Springfield, La., U. S.), added ten more years to a weary and painful existence;—he died of con- sumption, at 35 years of age. "The sister above mentioned became my wife; we were first cousins; she left two daughters; one died of consumption, in her 26th year; the other still lives, but she has never known what 'life' is; she has been more trouble in her rearing than all the eight children by my second wife 'put together.' "Thus the members of a whole family had been hunted —thrust out of existence—by one unfortunate vaccination. How many similar instances there have been in the same period unrecorded, no one will ever know. Some estimate may be formed when I say that, in my journeyings to and fro in the world, I have never met with an individual whose experience did not run on parallel lines with my own; he or she had to re- count misadventures in his or her family, or in the family of a friend or neighbor. No exception to this rule has presented it- self during an advocacy extending over the third part of a cen- tury—a remarkable fact! If the people of England knew the full meaning of "Vacci- nation," of the misery and death for 92 years last past, of which it has been the sole exciting cause, and if they could but follow

		198                                          VACCINATION A CURSE. the history of each event with its far reaching consequences, through three generations of people, not a vaccinating station would be standing in England tomorrow night; nor is there a vaccinator who would ever be permitted to refer to the sub- ject in any educated family to the end of his days. It is bad enough in all conscience, that the medical profes- sion recommend a form of blood-poisoning as a prophylactic against a dreaded disease; but to force such a practice on the children of the poor, is a piece of human folly which deserves to be branded as a merciless crime against society. The physi- cian should be to the people the most reliable oracle, pointing the way to life and health; but instead he sends them the way of disaster and death—even forcing,—compulsorily forcing— them into the path that conducts thither! Professing to stand as guardians and protectors of the little children in seasons of danger, he cuts off every avenue of escape by the device of pol- itic-compulsory laws; then with lance and pus proceeds to poi- son the fountain of youth by the performance of a rite that was imported from the lowest pit of beastliness, sores on horses heels and cow's teats! Neither the third or fourth generation may atone for the injury thus inflicted. Certainly, the doctors would abandon this dreadful business were not their pecuniary interests so completely interwoven with it. I do not say that vaccinators always sin against transparent knowledge, for I know how prone we all are to nurse opinions and beliefs when they favor our self-interest. The "love of money" is, indeed, the root of this "evil" as of every other, and we must be very watchful if we are not caught compounding with error when our bank account is steadily increasing. If it were possible to sep- arate this practice wholly from pecuniary considerations, it is my firm conviction that the concensus of medical opinion would right soon declare against it. In the evil times upon which we have fallen, each individ-

			INJURIES AND FATALITIES.                               I99 vial should strive to become "wise as serpents and harmless as doves," for it is now incumbent upon each human unit in the fermenting body politic, to watch and defend his own integrity. Against this integrity all class-interests combine. Produc- tion, massed in great trusts which are in possession of the labor- saving machines, sends the individual adrift who depends upon the labor of his hands. The grocer feeds the body with adul- terated food; the manufacturer clothes it with shoddy gar- ments ; the vaccinator punctures and poisons it with putrid pus —and so on to the end of the chapter. From every direction enemies arise to assail the integrity of the man. We must, therefore, be alert and don our defensive armor. Of these other sinners, I am only making a passing reference to them; it is the chief of sinners—the public vaccinator—the seed-sower of disease—whom these pages are designed to more especially describe. It is my earnest desire to portray his hideous aspect, to depict the "color of his sandals" in a manner that even the little child—the arch enemy of whom he is—will avoid and flee at his approach! Unfortunately, it is not the supreme desire; of the average human creature to know the truth and follow it whithersoever it leads. If it was, the question of reform would be a very simple one for solution and adjustment. Persecu- tion of reformers does not arise from the fact that they are con- ceived in error, but they are hated and persecuted because the proposed reform strikes at the root of class privileges and self- interest.
		BLOOD POISONING. It is no exaggeration to assume that nine-tenths of the dis- eases that afflict mankind have their origin in some species of blood poisoning; these poisons being chiefly conveyed to the blood through the skin, but also in part through the mucous

Part 4 of Compulsory Vaccination ...    Back to Index