Fig. 12. Foot and Mouth Disease in a Vaccinated Man.
Epidemic of 1902. Back and front views of man suffering with Foot and Mouth Disease, or Virulent Cowpox, caused by Vaccination. Photograph shows early or mid stage of eruptions, which first appeared four and a half weeks after vaccination. Recovered after nine successive eruptions of this kind in five months after vaccination. Note “umbilicated” form of eruptions like vaccination sores, proving positive relation to Vaccination and Smallpox. Compare with Figs. 2, 4 and 6.
There were ten cases of this kind treated at the Boston City Hospital in January, 1902, by Dr. James S. Howe, who read a report of the cases before a meeting of the American Dermatological Association in Boston in September, 1902, which was afterwards published in the Journal of Cutaneous Diseases for January and June, 1903, from which I quote below. Dr. Howe exhibited photographs of these cases at the meeting referred to, which also appeared in said Journal here quoted, copies of some of which are now shown in Figs. 11 and 12.
These cases and the published report of them are also cited in the medical work before quoted, “Acute Contagious Diseases,” on page 82 therein, so that there is full medical authority for their citation here and ample proof of their nature and origin as being due to vaccination.
Dr. Howe reported that out of the ten cases of this kind treated in the hospital six were fatal, thus showing the deadly nature of this vaccinal disease, which greatly exceeds the average or worst types of smallpox! In Dr. Howe’s report of these cases, at the meeting referred to, he stated as follows:
“Early in January of the present year [1902], while the wave of vaccination was at its full height [during a smallpox epidemic], there were received in the Boston City Hospital for treatment, a remarkable series of cases of bullous dermatitis. All of these cases appeared in persons recently vaccinated.... The longest duration of the disease in any one case was sixteen weeks, followed by recovery, and the shortest was one week, followed by death. The skin lesions began to appear in these cases in an average of five weeks after vaccination, sixteen weeks having elapsed in one case, the longest, and three weeks in one case, the shortest.”
It may be proper to state just here that the “skin lesions” and other eruptions in these human cases were substantially or identically the same as in the cattle affected with foot and mouth disease in the epidemic of 1902 and 1908 previously described, these eruptions being of the same kind and in the same locations; that is, the eruptions consisted of numerous vesicles of various sizes, from the size of a pea to that of a dime, half dollar and dollar, and these vesicles broke out all over the body as shown in Figs. 11 and 12, but particularly on feet and hands, lips and nostrils and inside the mouth and throat, and in fact on and in all interior parts of the body covered by mucous membrane, as well as on the external skin, and sometimes in internal organs. These vesicles would sometimes change to pustules or semi-pustules as shown in Fig. 12, and these would spread and run together into large confluent vesicles or blisters, as shown in Fig. 11, and these blisters would then rupture, collapse, drain and excoriate, leaving great raw sores like terrible scalds or burns, as shown in the big black and gray blotches in Fig. 11, thus causing great suffering and agony in this most pitiable victim of vaccination. The victim in Fig. 11 was a woman forty years old, who died ten hours after admission to the hospital and six weeks after vaccination, and in whom the eruptions first appeared three weeks after vaccination. Fig. 12 shows the eruptions in their early or mid stage, and Fig. 11 shows them in their later or final stage. And it must be here understood that these eruptions appear in successive crops, as in the cattle disease, one crop disappearing and healing, to be followed by another crop in a few days, and these ten cases of Dr. Howe had from two or three to nine successive eruptions before death or recovery! The case shown in Fig. 12 is that of a man twenty-one years old in whom the first eruption appeared four and a half weeks after vaccination and who had nine successive eruptions before he finally recovered and was discharged from the hospital about five months after vaccination!
Dr. Howe gave it as his opinion that the disease in these ten cases was caused by some infection in the vaccine virus at the time of vaccination, and a majority of the doctors present at the meeting seemed to agree with him and gave several instances where similar cases happened in their own practice, thus showing that this disease is really a common result of vaccination. One of the doctors then present, Louis H. Duhring of Philadelphia, an expert on skin diseases, said:
“We must grant, I think, in the light of the history of these cases and what we know of other similar cases, that they are the direct or indirect result of vaccination. While we hear a good deal, pro and con, about vaccination, of its injurious results on the part of those who are opposed to it, and of its value on the part of those who favor it, I have always felt that those who are opposed to vaccination, or, rather, those who have brought forward the possible ill effects of vaccination, did not in some instances have a fair hearing. I, myself, have seen cases at least similar to the ones reported by Dr. Howe, as well as others, where the local and constitutional manifestations were undoubtedly the result of vaccination.”
Dr. Howe seemed to be somewhat mystified by the disease and at a loss for the best or most proper technical name for it, and on this head he stated as follows: