JENNER’S GREAT FALSEHOODS. THE ORIGINAL MENDACITIES OF VACCINATION EXPOSED
No chapter on the mendacities of vaccination would be complete without including the great foundation and monumental falsehoods of Dr. Edward Jenner, who was the alleged “discoverer” or inventor of “Vaccination,” by which term is meant the inoculation of cowpox from cow to man and thence from arm to arm, in distinction from the old direct smallpox inoculation from human to human; and it may now be interesting and profitable to devote a few paragraphs to these great falsehoods of the arch-vaccinator himself.
Jenner’s original claims for vaccination were stated, positively, in his Petition to Parliament March 17, 1802, asking for a reward for his alleged “discovery” in these words:
“That your petitioner, having discovered that a disease which occasionally exists in a particular form among cattle, known by the name of the cowpox, admits of being inoculated on the human frame with the most perfect ease and safety, and is attended with the singularly beneficial effect of rendering through life the person so inoculated perfectly secure from the infection of the smallpox.”—See “History and Pathology of Vaccination,” by Dr. Edgar M. Crookshank, London, 1889, page 173, Vol. I.
Now, every proposition in the above statement is a shocking falsehood, as can be easily proved by a few moments’ consideration. In the above quotation the emphasis is mine but the words are Jenner’s, and I have emphasized the words to show clearly where the rank and glaring falsehoods are which make this short statement a very tissue of falsehoods, as will soon appear.
In the first place, it was a downright falsehood for Jenner to claim that he had “discovered” that a disease known as “cowpox” could be inoculated on the human frame and that this inoculation would act as a preventive of smallpox, for it is obvious to every student of the history of vaccination that Jenner made no such original “discovery,” but that this “discovery” was made by the milkmaids and dairy farmers of rural England who had long known and used it, and this “discovery” was given by them to Jenner, who then falsely claimed it as his own “discovery” and finally got a reward of thirty thousand pounds from Parliament for this false claim!
Thus does History show us that vaccination commenced, at its very outset, with gross falsehood and also in what would be called in our day a gigantic piece of medical “graft,” and it has been continued on a similar basis, more or less, ever since.
The second great falsehood in the original claim of Jenner was the shocking and reckless statement that the cowpox was perfectly harmless and could be inoculated on the human body with “perfect safety,” which false claim has been kept up ever since by the mendacious successors of Jenner, as I have already shown. This claim of the “perfect safety” of cowpox was, of course, perfectly false, for not only were some of Jenner’s own experiments and tests on patients harmful, but his whole scheme of arm-to-arm vaccination was soon proved to be so dangerous that it was long ago abandoned and prohibited like its evil predecessor—smallpox inoculation—and, for that reason, is not used to-day, being replaced by what is known as “Bovine Vaccination,” which is direct inoculation of so-called “cowpox” from cattle to man instead of from man to man or arm to arm as used by Jenner. Now, this modern “Bovine” vaccination I believe to be even more dangerous than the old Jennerian arm to arm type, because it involves the extensive diseasing of two classes of animals, cattle and mankind, and has been the cause of deadly epidemics in both classes, as already proved, which was not known under the old system, and it is also guilty of now causing more deaths almost every year than natural smallpox itself, particularly among little children, as I have already proved beyond question.
The third great falsehood in this tissue of Jennerian mendacity is the claim that one vaccination rendered the vaccinated person “perfectly secure” “through life” from “the infection of the smallpox.” This was, of course, a most reckless and absurd claim on its face, for how could Jenner, with a few experiments and tests extending over a few years, declare with any honesty, or with any logical or scientific warrant, that cowpox inoculation gave absolute security from smallpox for life? This reckless claim was, of course, soon proved to be a rank falsehood by the wide-spread failure of vaccination to protect from smallpox as soon as the vaccinated persons were exposed to actual infection or epidemic conditions where they readily contracted the disease, as they do to this day notwithstanding their vaccination! A new apology had therefore to be invented for this wholesale failure of vaccination soon after its first adoption, and this was made by abandoning the false claim of unlimited life protection from one vaccination and substituting the modified claim of a limited protection for seven years—more or less—and the consequent necessity of frequent or periodical re-vaccinations to get any continued or reliable protection from the operation.
Now Jenner’s original false and absurd claim of unlimited or life protection from one vaccination was probably partly due to his ignorance of the real nature and history of smallpox and his credulous adoption of the old fallacy and superstition, in common use, that one attack of smallpox gave sure immunity for life from a second attack, which proposition never really had any scientific basis in theory or fact, as it has been repeatedly proved that smallpox may, and often does, occur two or three times in the same person, whether vaccinated or unvaccinated, and that there is no regularity or certainty in the alleged protection given either by smallpox or vaccination, but that immunity depends largely on sanitary, hygienic and constitutional conditions. In fact, some students seem to think that the person who has once had smallpox is more likely to have it again than one who has never had the disease! It was, therefore, at this first demonstrated failure of vaccination to protect from smallpox that Jenner’s chief assistant, Dr. James Moore, wrote a very interesting little book called “The History of Small Pox,” London, 1815. The chief purpose of this book was to apologize for the failure of vaccination to protect from smallpox, as originally falsely claimed by Jenner, by showing that even smallpox does not protect with certainty for life or any other period, but that the same person may have smallpox two or three times in succession, instances of which are cited all through the book, thus making the ingenious or crafty plea for vaccination that it cannot be expected to give any more protection than smallpox gives; and therefore reliance must not be placed on one vaccination alone for life, but protection can only be obtained by re-vaccinations repeated at frequent intervals of a few years!
It will thus be seen that Jenner completely abandoned his false and reckless claim of perfect protection from smallpox for life by one vaccination, for which he got his big graft or money prize from the English government; but, please note, he did not make this retreat or acknowledge his great mistake until after he had pocketed his big reward of thirty thousand pounds for his shamefully false claim of the unlimited protection and perfect safety of vaccination!