THE FALLACY OF VACCINATION

100 years of small-pox vaccination reviewed in 1899

This is an insightful article that in so many ways sounds so very contemporary - I’m sure as you read, you too will see nothing has changed in centuries when it comes to vaccination…

THE FALLACY OF VACCINATION

By Alexander Wilder, M. D.

Copyright 1899, The Metaphysical Publishing Co., New York.

"Bad begins and worse remains behind.''-HAMLET.

The fourteenth day of May, 1896, was observed at several places in Europe as the centenary of the introduction of vaccination among the resources of the healing art. The event thus commemorated ,was the performing of the first operation by Edward Jenner upon a young lad named James Phipps with the result of successfully pro­ducing the characteristic vesicle of the vaccine disease.

The celebration, however, attracted but little attention; partly because those who credit the utility of the peculiar operation are indifferent to its early history, and partly because the modern notions respecting it are very widely different from those promulgated by Jenner himself. Besides, there is among profounder thinkers and observers a growing conviction that vaccination, so far from being a benefit to mankind, is itself utterly useless as a preventive, irrational and unscientific in theory, and actually the means of disseminating disease afresh where it is performed. Hence, while governments are stepping outside of their legitimate province to enforce the operation, the people who act from better information upon the subject, are steadily becoming adverse.

Several years ago compulsory vaccination was submitted to the voting population of Switzerland by the referendum, and every can­ton but one gave a majority against it. In other countries the gov­ernments act arbitrarily, and have conferred despotic powers upon privileged professional men, and so the practice is enforced without mercy. Its advocates have taken little pains to convince those who distrust its utility, but instead have resorted to the employment of other and often reprehensible means. Children are excluded from the public schools unless they have been vaccinated, and the attempt is made to worry and coerce the parents and guardians into com­pliance with the arbitrary condition by prosecutions for truancy. In many instances they have succumbed from a feeling of utter helpless­ness, precisely as men submit to the bastinado inflicted by Oriental despotism. In other cases, they have followed as in a groove, with­out considering what was right or wrong, reasonable or fallacious. Advantage has been taken of the prevalent inattention to the matter to foist upon the statutes various health regulations and other re­quirements, often in flagrant violation of personal rights, and with no adequate justification. Passengers upon ocean steamers are forced to submit to the operation, unvaccinated children are ex­cluded from schools, and persons employed in factories, warehouses, and the civil service are compelled to submit to be vaccinated on penalty of losing their places. Soldiers in the army and seamen in the navy are also obliged to submit as a matter of discipline, as a century ago they were inoculated perforce for small-pox.

Nevertheless, the claims for vaccination have never been demon­strated to be sanctioned by any ascertained law or principle in the medical art. The chief, indeed, the sole argument has been the citing of statistics, more or less perverted, and the inference that because the matter has been made so to appear it must be presumed to be with good reason. Further argument is met by stolid silence, and by an apparent concert of purpose to exclude carefully all discussion of the matter from medical and public journals, and to denounce all who object. When an accused person finds it hard to repel a charge, he frequently seeks to divert attention by vilifying another.

Yet many objections to vaccination have been intelligently made from personal experience and observation. and by persons fully en­titled to respectful consideration. They will not always be dismissed by obstinate silence and unworthy innuendoes. Those who object are conscious that they are right, and therefore entitled to be heard. If the public health and safety constitute the supreme law, then a candid and critical examination of this whole subject is imperatively demanded.

The contaminating of the body of a healthy person by the virus of disease, under any pretext whatever, is unphilosophical, unjusti­fiable, criminal. The possibilities are that he will not contract a contagious disorder, so long as the standard of health can be main­tained. To infect him with distemper on the plea of protecting him is preposterous.

The lymph of a vaccine pustule contains no virtue or quality that will in any way remove the liability to contract small-pox. No one can intelligently deny that it is itself the product of decay of tissue – ­that it is produced by the decomposition or retrograde metamor­phosis of the tissue of the body. It is but a little remove from ab­solute rottenness. This being the fact, the inserting of such material into the living tissues of another person is a culpable act, and nothing less than the contaminating and infecting of the body of that indi­vidual with filthy, loathsome, poisonous material.

In fact, it will be found by careful observation that whenever a vaccinator or corps of vaccinators set out upon a vaccinating crusade, there follows very generally a number of deaths from erysipelas and other maladies which have been induced by the operation, ac­companied by suffering of the most heartrending character.

Dr. Hubert Boens, of Belgium, has pushed the matter further, and announced even more alarming discoveries. The appearance and character of vaccine pustules have warranted apprehension that their remoter origin was from an infection more venomous than small-pox. The virus used by the earlier vaccinators had been de­rived from the diseased teats of cows and heels of horses. The disease in these cases was thought to be spontaneous. It appears, however, that every such case could be traced to a groom or a milker who was suffering from the "bad disease." No heifer or bullock had cow-pox, but only milch-cattle; and then only when the hand of the milker disturbed them. Ricord, the famous specialist of Paris, caused sev­eral individuals to be inoculated from the blebs of patients suffering from that complaint. The result was the development of vesicles, scabs, and eschars, easy to be taken for those of vaccine ulceration.

The description of the one would answer for a description of the other. If it be insisted that the virus now used is not of such a character, it may be replied that outbreaks of that disease have re­peatedly ensued upon vaccination. Besides, the practice exists of inoculating calves from small-pox vesicles, and huckstering the ma­terial thus obtained as vaccine virus.

With these facts in view, it seems almost unnecessary to declare the current notion that vaccination will prevent small-pox, or even mitigate the severity of the attack, to be entirely destitute of founda­tion. Indeed, every observing person can enumerate examples of vaccinated persons who were afterward taken with the disease. Even young Phipps, whose case furnished the occasion for the late com­memorative celebration, was afterward attacked by small-pox in the confluent form. Several others who had been vaccinated for experi­ment also had the disease at a later period. Baron carefully kept several such experiences out of sight, actually insisting that facts of this character must be held from the newspapers. In a letter of remonstrance he wrote as follows: "I wish my professional breth­ren to be slow to publish fatal cases of small-pox after vaccination."

Among our own people in later years this injunction appears to be diligently heeded. Occasionally, however, a death by vaccination is published, and immediately the effort is put forth assiduously to make it to be believed that it was from some other cause. The statistics of small-pox, purporting to distinguish between vaccinated and unvaccinated persons, are too often not quite trustworthy. Many persons who have been vaccinated are falsely reported as unvacci­nated. Even when death occurs as the result of vaccination, the truth is concealed and the case represented as scarlet fever, measles, erysipelas, or some "masked" disease, in order to prevent too close questioning.

The failure of vaccination to assure exemption from small-pox has been made a reason or pretext for repetitions of the operation. Nevertheless, the history of the last fifty years affords sufficient evi­dence to show that even repeated vaccination has no merit. A case came to the knowledge of the writer, some years ago, of a man em­ployed for years in a hospital, who was "successfully vaccinated" some seven or eight times, and afterward contracted small-pox. An­other had been vaccinated in infancy, then vaccinated a second time when he procured employment as a coachman, and a third time upon entering the army; after which he was taken with the disease. Much of the terrible mortality of the prisoners confined at Andersonville during the Civil War was caused by vaccination; and there were sev­eral peculiar "epidemics" in both the Federal and Confederate armies, attributable to a similar origin.

Medical men, scholars, and publicists of the highest reputation, concur in their testimony in regard to this subject. Alexander Von Humboldt, in a letter to Mr. Gibbs, president of the Anti-Vaccination League of London, declared emphatically: "I have clearly perceived the progressive, dangerous influence of vaccination in England, France, and Germany."

“While utterly powerless for good," says Alfred Russell Wallace, "vaccination is a certain cause of disease and death in many cases, and is the probable cause of about 10,000 deaths annually, by inocula­ble diseases of the most terrible and disgusting character."

Francis W. Newman, Herbert Spencer, and others of equal note have borne similar testimony. Besides these are prominent physi­cians, some of whom have been in charge of small-pox hospitals, where they had abundant means of observing. Several of them freely gave up hundreds of pounds of professional income for the sake of their convictions of duty thus enkindled.

Even to have had small-pox itself affords no safeguard against its recurring. Louis XV. of France contracted the disease by inocula­tion at the age of sixteen, and died of a second attack at sixty-four. Sir Thomas Watson, author of the standard work on "Medical Prac­tice," makes the following statement: "During an epidemic of small­pox in Scotland, Dr. John Thomson saw. from June 1818 to Decem­ber 1819, five hundred and fifty-six cases. Of these, forty-one took the small-pox the second time, and Dr. Thomson knew of thirty others, making seventy-one in all."

The "London Medical Gazette,” of November 6. 1830, contained a letter dated at Cawnpore in India, written by Dr. J. S. Chapman, assistant surgeon to the Eleventh Light Dragoons, having the following items: "Small-pox has been playing the very deuce at this station. There appears to be no positive security against the disease, either by vaccination or small-pox inoculation; and I have seen several cases where the patients have caught the small-pox twice, and have each time been severely marked, and in two instances have died of the second attack of small-pox. Certainly by far the greater number of our small-pox cases have occurred in persons vaccinated in India twelve or fifteen years ago." Sir James Y. Simpson, of Edinburgh, mentions the case of a woman who died from her eighth attack. In the Small-pox Hospital of London there were three cases which occurred after a previous attack of the disease, two of which were after both vaccination and small-pox, besides four which came after the patients had small-pox from inoculation.

Epidemics of small-pox are as numerous and as severe as they were one or two centuries ago. It is probably no more possible to avert them than it is to prevent volcanic eruptions, droughts, or devas­tating storms. One epidemic, however, is never precisely similar to another in manifestation or severity. The type and character are principally determined by the predominating influence in the earth and atmosphere.

Dr. Charles Creighton of London, writing for the "Encyclope­dia Britannica,” declares that the total death-rate from small-pox in modern times is almost the same as it was in the Eighteenth Cen­tury. Large aggregates collected by experienced statisticians in times preceding the introduction of vaccination exhibit a mortality of 18.8 per cent. Those of later periods show a death-rate of 18.5 per cent., which is hardly a noticeable decrease." It must be borne in mind," says Dr. Creighton, "that the division into discrete, conflu­ent, and malignant small-pox, is an old one; that a mild type was quite common in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and was then characteristic of whole epidemics, just as in the case of scar­latina: and that the vaccinated are at present liable to be attacked by the confluent and malignant disease, as well as the discrete " (varioloid).

Dr. Creighton quotes several tables of statistics, and then re­marks: "The official figures for Bavaria are more precise. Among the 24,429 cases of small-pox in vaccinated persons, there were 3,994 deaths, while among the 1,313 unvaccinated cases there were 790 deaths; of the latter no fewer than 743 deaths were infants in their first year. The mortality, both among the vaccinated and the unvacci­nated, is always excessive in infancy. Feeble health, as well as non-­vaccination is a factor in the very excessive mortality at that tender age."

The statistics show that from 1847 till 1865 three-fourths of the cases of small-pox in England were those of children under five years of age. The Great Epidemic of 1871 was characterized by the change of this disparity from children to persons of mature years. The aver­age number of children continued the same as before, but the enumer­ation of adults had mounted up to an extraordinary figure.

The Epidemiological Society of London, making an effort to pro­cure the enforcement of vaccination, cited these tables of statistics. A report of the Society accordingly set forth the comparison that, dur­ing the twelve years before the passage of the Compulsory Vaccina­tion Act of 1853, there had died of small-pox in England and Wales, no less than 82,825 persons; while for the twelve years immediately ensuing to that period, the number of deaths from that malady was but 47,710 – a little more than half.

It appears from these figures that during the twenty-four years enumerated there had died from small-pox in the two countries 130,535 persons. The average fatality from the disease before the enact­ing of the Compulsory Law was seven per cent. It seems, accord­ingly, that despite the enforcing of vaccination two millions of the population were attacked. Of this number of small-pox patients, eighty-four per cent. had been vaccinated.

The facts hardly verify the assumption that small-pox had been mitigated by the enforcing of the Compulsory Law. In the Census of 1870 there is a table which shows that there was more small-pox in England in 1860 than in 1850, and still more in 1870 than in 1860. Small-pox had become more prevalent since the spread of vaccina­tion; and yet in each year this disease was far less fatal than measles, scarlatina, or consumption.

An examination of the statistics kept in the different cities of the United States will disclose similar facts. In the seasons when small­pox is epidemic, the deaths from measles invariably exceed those from that disease, while the cases of scarlatina and the deaths from it are far more numerous, sometimes outnumbering thirty to one. If the facts were impartially presented in their true light, and no effort made to create a panic over the few cases of small-pox for the sake of jobs in vaccination, the public attention would be directed to the dis­eases that were actually sweeping away their victims by the scores and hundreds, rather than to the meager roll of small-pox cases.

Before the end of the second twelve years indicated in the report of the Epidemiological Society there broke out an epidemic in England severe enough to dampen whatever confidence the representations of the Society might have inspired. During the years 1863, 1864, and 1865, when vaccination had become general and compulsory, small­pox prevailed to an unusual extent in England as well as in Germany, Hungary, France, and Sweden. As an example of its severity, there were 1,346 persons in Upper Bavaria attacked by it in the malignant form, of whom ninety per cent. had been vaccinated.

Never, however, did the faith in vaccination receive so rude a shock as in the Great Small-Pox Epidemic of 1871 and 1872. Every country in Europe was invaded with a severity greater than had ever been witnessed during the three preceding centuries. In England the number of deaths from the disease was increased from 2,620 in 1870 to 23,126 in 1871 and 19,064 in 1872, falling again to 2,634 in 1873. Upon the Continent, particularly in France and Germany, the visita­tion was even more severe. In Bavaria, for example, with a popula­tion vaccinated more than any other in the world, the mortality was greater than in any other country of Northern Europe, except Swe­den, which experienced the greatest that had ever been known.

What was even more significant, many vaccinated persons in al­most every place were attacked by small-pox before any unvaccinated persons took the disease. These facts are sufficient to overthrow the entire theory of the protective efficacy of vaccination.

During these two years, there were 14,808 persons treated for small-pox in the English hospitals, of whom 11,174 had been vac­cinated. Dr. Farr, the Registrar-General, was compelled to acknowledge, however reluctantly, that vaccination did not by any means afford entire immunity against attack, or even against death by small­pox.

Professor William B. Carpenter, the author of the text-books on Physiology, declared in 1882 that he considered the city of Montreal as thoroughly protected by vaccination. A very few years afterward there broke out the most frightful epidemic of small-pox ever known on the Western Continent. The panic was even more dreadful, ex­tending into the United States.

Very similar was the experience in the late epidemic in Chicago. It was enough, we should imagine, to convince everybody except those who will not be persuaded even though one rose from the dead. A physician of the city, who had been a defender of vaccination, told the writer of a family that he had attended professionally at that time. Most of the members had been vaccinated, two of them but a little while before. The small-pox, however, made no discrimination in their favor; those who were vaccinated had it in the confluent form.

Marc d'Espine, the eminent physician of Paris, in a report in the “Echo Medical" of July, 1859, gave a statement of facts occurring under his observation. Enumerating the patients who had been seized with small-pox, he stated that sixty-five per cent. of those who had been vaccinated, and twenty-three per cent. of those unvaccinated had the disease in the malignant form. When, from want of physical energy, the eruption had failed to appear at the surface of the body, fifty-six died out of the hundred who had been vaccinated. Yet, as declared by M. Perrin, of those who had not been vaccinated only eight per cent. died at the Hôtel Dieu.

It is noteworthy that the principal adversaries of vaccination con­sist of those who had believed in it till the evidence of its utter use­lessness and pernicious results compelled them to change their views. Many of them are physicians who have, because of their convic­tions, given up the lucrative emoluments which are derived from the practice. It was the refusal of one of these, a distinguished prac­titioner of London, to vaccinate the daughter of Mr. William Tebb, that directed the attention of that gentleman to the subject; and his investigations, supplemented by an excessive persecution with prosecutions, led him to undertake the Herculean work of delivering Eng­land from the scourge of compulsory vaccination.

Three Parliamentary Commissions have been appointed at di­fferent periods, composed of majorities of members favorable to the practice, and the unanswerable evidence that has been produced be­fore them has probably given the obnoxious measure its death-blow. It is certain that many who vaccinate have no faith in the operation, but perform it for the sake of the fee. The men who forego this from conscientious scruples, like Collins, Crookshank, Creighton, and J. J. Garth Wilkinson, are steadily increasing in number. Some of the local officers of towns, as in Leicester and more recently in Gloucester, have abstained from enforcing vaccination, and we witness the grati­fying result, that while small-pox ravages the towns where vaccination is general, the visitation in these towns has been no more severe.*

(*Dr Walter R. Hadener conclusively disposed of the false statements respecting the epidemic of 1895-96 in Gloucester. The first outbreak of small-pox was the case of a vaccinated person; and of the 2,000 who were seized with the malady 1,128 had been vaccinated, of whom 114 died. A hundred had been re-vaccinated, one of them eight times. Thus two vaccinated person contracted small-pox to one unvaccinated; while 9,000 children that had not been vaccinated escaped unscathed. At the next municipal election in Gloucester, the opponents of compulsory vacci­nation carried every ward in the city. )

The pernicious consequences also demand notice. The vaccinat­ing of a healthy person is nothing less than the implanting of a nox­ious element in the body. The success of the operation consists in the producing of actual disease, in bringing about a permanent, unnatural and morbid condition. The person thus contaminated will seldom if ever regain the former integrity of body, but is made liable to a variety of ailments. Such compulsion to contract disease is an outrage analo­gous in its turpitude to enforced debauchery.

Young children are the principal sufferers from such violation. They cannot resist, and those having charge of them are often unable or too ignorant to do so. They are thus made subject to the evil results all their lives. For example. every fever or other illness that an infant undergoes, leaves its sequels behind. An expert dentist will tell by the condition of the teeth of a lad or lass whether and when there was sickness in infancy. We may be certain, therefore, that a great cause of decay of teeth, characteristic of Americans, may be referred to the disease inflicted in early life by the vaccinator. Be­sides, there are the multiplex eruptive diseases, the torturous eczemas, and their associates, which so often make life a burden.

Consumption follows in the footsteps of vaccination as directly as an effect ever follows a cause. The vaccine poison being the product of decaying animal tissue and often tuberculous in character, must naturally produce its like wherever it finds the suitable oppor­tunity. In the districts of this country where vaccination is most gen­erally practiced, it has been observed that pulmonary disease appears to be a perpetual epidemic. “It is certain" says Copland's Medical Dictionary, “that scrofulous and tubercular diseases have increased since the introduction of cow-pox, and that the vaccine virus favors particularly the prevalence of various forms of scrofula."

Professor Bartlett, of the Medical Department of the University of New York, made the following statement, some years ago: "In 208 children who had been vaccinated 38 died of tubercular consump­tion, and 170 of other malaclies. In 95 who were not vaccinated, 30 only died of consumption, and 65 of other diseases." It is notorious that the mortality in the city of New York from pneumonia and other pulmonary complaints is out of all reasonable proportion; but how far this is from climate, general vaccination, or other specific causes, we leave others to determine.

The "Medical Times and Gazette" of London, for January 1, 1854, as long ago as that period called attention to the fact that consumption had widely spread since the introduction of vaccination. During the ten years preceding, it had slain 68,204 in the metropolis alone. In the twelve years immediately following the enactment of the Compulsory Vaccination Act of 1853. there was an increase of deaths from this complaint to almost 230,000. The Report of the Registrar-General, for 1869, gave the number of deaths at 53,794 from that cause alone.

Other diseases appear to have been induced as well as consump­tion. St. Gervais, Hufeland, Hertwig, Grisolle, Canstatt, Becluar, enu­merate about thirty. That pyæmia and erysipelas should be caused is no matter of wonder; they are the direct harvest from the seed. Dr. Nittinger, of Stuttgart, asserts that "the membranes, particularly those of the organs of the senses and generation in adults, attest the sufferings and dangers originating in the inoculated kine-pox poison, such as ophthalmia, otorrhœa, fluor albus, prurigo, etc." In response to an invitation from one of the Commissions of the British Parliament, he testified more positively and at greater length. There had resulted, he declares, "an immense degree of sickly sensitive­ness of the stomach and intestinal canal, accompanied by open and hidden disturbances in the whole digestive apparatus, namely: diarrhœa, dyspepsia, phthisis dyspeptica, liver and spleen suffering, never known before." There had also become prevalent since 1806 an entirely new disease, the typhus, "which is a mucous fever with ulcera­tions and pox-eruptions in the abdominal viscera." Croup had be­come more common and malignant with children, as well as whoop­ing-cough. There had been a monstrous increase in consumptive and hectic diseases, which mostly originate in the digestive apparatus. He also instanced a vast increase of disease among young women of chlorosis and fluor albus since 1822; and affirmed that '' our genera­tion has gained a far greater susceptibility to the small-pox poison, which will ravage in the above-mentioned diseased forms of the mucous membrane till the feeding of the poison by vaccination, or­dered ever by laws, sanctioned by usage, and held up by the Faculty, is forbidden by severe penalty."

Utterances so sweeping proved too much for the Commission, the members of which were not prepared for such an indictment. Later observation, however, fully verifies them; and the witnesses are an army. Dr. L. H. Borden, of Paterson, remarked the fact that epi­demics of small-pox and cholera succeeded one upon the other, as though closely related. Dr. Bakewell testified that leprosy had been transmitted, and Dr. L. S. Ludington, of New Britain, Ct., had a case in his own family.

Cancer may also be communicated. The case of Dr. Barnett, of the city of New York, who was infected fatally in 1895 by the acciden­tal inoculation of carcinous matter, shows conclusively that this is possible. Langenbeck, Lebert, and Follier assert that cancer can be thus transplanted, while Villemin, Cornil, Simon, and others declare the same thing of tubercle. Bovine virus can hardly afford ex­emption, for our domestic animals have both these diseases.

"I do not believe," says Sir James Y. Simpson, “that either vac­cination or drugs can give absolute security against the inroads of small-pox. When every care has been taken, the vaccinated person has been known to be attacked by the disease. In an epidemic such cases are extremely common."

Dr. George Gregory, who was himself physician of the Small-Pox Hospital established in London to test and carry out the theories, ab­solutely refused to permit his own children to be vaccinated. He also published the following statement in the "Medical Times" of June 1, 1852: ''Small-pox does invade the vaccinated, and the ex­tirpation of that dire disease is as distant as when it was first heedlessly, and in my humble judgment, presumptuously anticipated by Jenner." He further declared his conclusions: "The idea of extinguishing the small-pox by vaccination is as absurd as it is chimerical; it is as irra­tional as it is presumptuous."

In the face of testimonies like these, which are now multiplying on every side, the feeble assertion is sometimes made that the ques­tion has been settled long ago and there is no occasion to go over the argument again. In matters of science and the healing-art, there is no such thing as fact absolutely established beyond future investi­gation. Every position has its beginning from an anterior supposition, and may be superseded by later discovery. It is an undeniable fact that the doctrine of vaccination as a protection against small-pox never underwent a critical scrutiny of the character that would be required in a court of law. Instead, it was assumed upon doubtful and equivocal evidence, and promulgated as proprietary nostrums are to this day thrust upon the notice of the public. It was accepted, as Dr. Creighton aptly remarks, upon terms which will seem incredibly loose to every person who has not already made acquaintance with the standard of logic in the medical profession. Since that, it is taken upon trust, without inquiry, upon the presumption, so often a mis­taken one, that a new project, especially if it be a scientific one, had been thoroughly tested and debated on all sides before it received the general assent of its own age. Hence, in relation to the matter, public sentiment is likely to verify the remark of Rudolf Virchow: “When the public sees a doctrine which has been exhibited to them as certain, established, and claiming universal acceptance, proved to be faulty in its very foundation, or discovered to be wilful and despotic in its essen­tial and chief tendencies, many lose their faith in science."

The actual perils of small-pox have been largely exaggerated. It has always kept within moderate limits of age and place, and extended only by repeated provocation. Even when it prevails, the other zy­motic diseases seem almost always to exceed it many fold in intensity and fatality. It does not appear to have prevailed in Europe till it was introduced from Africa, and it was brought into this country simul­taneously with the importing of slaves. It seems to have been un­known in England before the seventeenth century, and it has never shown a tendency toward universal infection. It belongs to over­crowded places, and breaks out spontaneously in military camps. Statistical tables show that from 1675 to 1761, its yearly average of deaths was as follows: In London, 7 per cent.; in Edinburgh, 7.6 per cent.; in Paris, 7.2 per cent., and in Berlin, 8.1 per cent. After inoculation for small-pox was introduced the mortality increased to 10 per cent. Since vaccination was adopted, it is 15 per cent. Mean­while, whatever the epidemic, deaths from zymotic diseases are nowhere materially diminished. As one epidemic ceases another ap­pears, frequently with magnified intensity.

The reason for this undoubtedly exists in the fact that the dis­eases now called "zymotic" as well as others, have a common begin­ning. The indicating of them by one name and another is conven­ient for text-books, medical discussions, and dictionaries, but the dis­tinctions are more or less fanciful, and are often liable to mislead those practitioners who usually accept propositions without investi­gation or follow routine in their prescribing. Dr. J. J. Garth Wilkin­son, the physician-philosopher, accordingly describes the multiplicity of diseases and epidemics as "the mask of a single abnormality of which the 'distinct maladies,' as they are termed, are but symptoms." One form of disease or epidemic passing into another, is, therefore, little else than the effect of some change or modification in external or subjective conditions. Little importance may be attached to the hypothesis of the specific contagion or infection, further than may be admitted in a judicial inquiry.

Mr Wolfe, in his treatise on "Zymotic Diseases," mentions an instance in India where small-pox broke out in a region many miles distant from any possible source of contagion. He attributed it to the action of decaying animal matter, and remarks that the same poison­ous air will sometimes give one zymotic disease to one member of a family, and another to another, according to the bodily constitution. "An eminent physician once said to me," remarks Mr. Strickland Constable, "that all the zymotic diseases, from nettle-rash to Oriental plague, are probably only varieties of one thing, dovetailing in to each other with intimate complexities, like colors."

Dr. Samuel Dickson, the propounder of the Chrono-Thermal theory, explains that when a disease of any peculiar type is present, anything may cause it; a sudden chill, a depressing passion, or even a mechanical injury. Dr. Forbes Winslow also declares that "mental emotion and shock to nerves may cause almost any disease," and adds with disdain, that there are medical men who will assert that no complaint can be caused without some subtle poison to the blood – ­doubtless, overlooking the fact that every shock or emotion changes the quality of the blood from its effect on the nerves. Dr. Henry Maudesley mentions cases of surgical operations which caused ery­sipelas. Another operation, he said, produced measles; another, scarlet fever, and another, small-pox. Dr. Carl Both adds his testi­mony that “We find small-pox among races or nations that use alco­hol freely."

The danger of contracting the malady is incident to the plight of the patient, apart from the complaint. The disordered condition of the person affords a nidus or matrix for the reception and incubation of the morbific principle. If he is not already in a bad or depressed condition of health, he is not liable to any malignant or dangerous seizure. The human body in a state of integrity will resist any in­cursion of disease whatever. We have all observed that the various malignant diseases and epidemics leave many persons unscathed. Typhus, typhoid. intermittent fever, Asiatic cholera, attack only those liable from deterioration of physical stamina, worry, undue fatigue, or paralyzing terror. Men and women in a cheerful temper of mind, self­-possessed, in a fair state of health, neat and orderly in their habits, are protected as by a wall of fire.

Such are the facts in regard to small-pox. Only those will be attacked who are in the way of it; and their liability is not so much from exposure and contact with the patient, or of morbific emanation, as from some ill condition of body. A free contact with atmospheric air is sufficient to render harmless any effluvium from which mischief may be apprehended. When small-pox is epidemic, there may be greater danger; but when it is only sporadic, little special attention is required in the way of precaution.

Health, we may confidently believe, is more contagious than any form of disease, and far more likely to be contracted upon exposure. It inspires us on all sides, and is energetic to repel and overcome every morbid agency. Even contact in friendly social intercourse with per­sons in health is most salutary. Hygienic agencies, courage, and moral purpose are the best preventives in our possession. There are always persons who are assured against such perils by their vigorous health, or perhaps by idiosyncrasy or mental condition we need not employ a Satan to cast out Satan, but only the "finger of God."

There are hopeful signs in the sky. The people of Switzerland have rejected Compulsory Vaccination; and every country in Europe and America would probably do the same, if there was opportunity. The British House of Commons has appointed three several Commis­sions, and the condemnatory evidence has accumulated to sweep away the Great Delusion. It has shown that there were numerous deaths from vaccination, but the facts were carefully suppressed, that horrible diseases have been often imparted, and that vaccination has no warrant in scientific knowledge. Some of the facts disclosed were shocking to every human sensibility. Mary the Magdalen may have been relieved of seven devils, but in the category of vaccination there is a legion of them introduced afresh. The people of the United Kingdom are op­posed to vaccination, and in this event the Parliament and Govern­ment must respect their wish.

In America is still the protection which does not protect. This disseminating of disease under the pretext of averting it is the cardinal policy of medical men. Perhaps some continue to believe in the efficacy of the procedure; perhaps professional cupidity has an influ­ence to shape their opinions and action. Enough now to say that error is but for a limited period of time. A better intelligence must yet dissipate the thick vapor and let in the sunlight of the higher truth, the true evangel of healing disease, instead of causing it.

ALEXANDER WILDER, M.D.*

* First President of the first Anti-Vaccination League of America.

https://collections.nlm.nih.gov/ext/dw/101229606/PDF/101229606.pdf

And this one - https://online.pubhtml5.com/ejtz/ccjh/#p=5 45 Years of Vaccination Statistics , Proving Vaccination to be both Useless and Dangerous- Alfred Wallace - 1889