WHAT PROTECTS US FROM SMALLPOX IN MODERN TIMES? IS IT VACCINATION OR SOMETHING ELSE? A FALSE CLAIM EXPLODED
We have just seen in the preceding chapter that high medical authorities positively assure us that vaccination gives no protection against smallpox unless it is done freshly once a year and is also then done repeatedly, “until it no longer takes,” which will surely require at least two successive vaccinations and may require from two to three, four or more successive vaccinations each year! Now let us seriously ask here: How many persons are there in the civil population or in the Army and Navy who have ever been, or are now, vaccinated in this way, viz., regularly once a year and then vaccinated repeatedly until the condition of vaccinal saturation is reached where “it no longer takes”? I firmly believe that no well informed doctor, student or statistician will deny that not five per cent. of the civil population or of the Army and Navy has ever been vaccinated according to this rule and system which the experts assure us is the only safe and certain rule for vaccinal protection from smallpox! What, then, keeps the general population and the men of the Army and Navy so free from smallpox that for the generation past there are ordinarily less annual deaths from smallpox than from lightning? Surely it can not be vaccination that is responsible for this freedom from smallpox in modern times when not five per cent. of the population is vaccinated so that it can have any protection from smallpox!
The extreme pro-vaccinator has, however, long and loudly claimed, and has deceived himself and the trusting public with this false claim, that general vaccination is practically the sole and only thing that has brought about the modern reduction of smallpox or that can ever reduce smallpox! But this claim is obviously absurd and false on its face when we have already seen that not five per cent. of the population is vaccinated in such a way as can give any protection, and that ninety-five per cent. of the vaccinated population has no effective vaccinal protection whatever!
This false claim that vaccination has been the chief cause of the reduction in smallpox in modern times is further positively disproved by the flagrant fact that countries which are most extensively vaccinated have had the worst epidemics in modern times, such as the case of Japan cited on page 53; and that as a rule in all smallpox epidemics the great majority of cases always occur in well vaccinated subjects and the minority in unvaccinated subjects as officially acknowledged in the last epidemic in New York City in 1901 and 1902, cited on page 204.
Surely, therefore, vaccination cannot be solely responsible for the great modern reduction of smallpox, but, per contra, there have been some great benign, natural and artificial conditions which have intervened in human life since the old days of big smallpox epidemics and the adoption of vaccination, which benign conditions have brought about the great decline in smallpox—and not the unnatural and irrational condition of vaccination which has been falsely credited with this result. And it must be obvious that benign conditions which act by the prevention and reduction of disease are more likely to produce this result than a remedy like vaccination, which means the actual propagation and infliction of disease. Now what are these benign conditions? They are clearly of two kinds, “Natural” and “Artificial.” They are, first, natural, that is, some pervasive natural changes in conditions of human life, which are more or less unknown or not yet fully understood in their exact nature, but which have surely brought about a great reduction in the general death-rate and also in specific death-rates from several deadly diseases, in which no remedy such as vaccination has ever been used, and yet the general death-rate and the death-rates of these particular diseases have been reduced in modern times even more than smallpox has been reduced since the use of vaccination. For a few examples of these greatly reduced diseases we might mention Bubonic Plague, Epidemic Erysipelas, Typhus Fevers, Cholera, Scurvy, etc., etc. All of these terrible diseases which were once as bad or worse than smallpox have been not only reduced more than smallpox in modern times, but most of them have practically been totally obliterated in modern life, so that they have now become almost medical curiosities, and yet no such thing as vaccination has been used in this reduction. The other conditions which have brought about this reduction of these deadly diseases are the artificial and purely benign conditions of Sanitation, Hygiene and Isolation. Now if these safe and benign natural and artificial conditions have, undeniably, brought about the reduction or obliteration of these terrible diseases without any vaccination, is it not most logical and reasonable to conclude that these same safe and benign conditions have been the chief cause in reducing smallpox also, and that the burden of proof is clearly on the pro-vaccinators to prove, if they can, the preposterous claim that vaccination is the chief cause of this great reduction of smallpox?
At this point this striking historic and medical fact should be distinctly remembered that before the adoption of vaccination, and for some time afterwards, there were practically no such remedies known or used as Sanitation, Hygiene or Isolation. These rational defenses against smallpox and other diseases are in fact of very recent usage and have practically been used, in any extended or efficient manner, only within the last generation! And the reduction in smallpox practically dates from this usage and is proportional to the extent and regularity of this usage. See the great success of sanitation and isolation, etc., in reducing smallpox, without vaccination, in the English City of Leicester and the general effect of sanitation in recent times as set forth in the book, “The Vaccination Question,” by Dr. Millard, London, 1914.
It may therefore be very hard for us to realize this fact in modern times, that in the old unsanitary days of big epidemics and deadly plagues, the general population had no clear idea at all of the actual contagiousness of epidemic diseases or that they were spread by actual contact or close proximity, from one person to the other, and therefore no effort whatever was made to isolate cases of dangerous disease like smallpox, which were thus commonly left freely exposed in public and private until they spread like wildfire through the whole community in frequent and wide-spread epidemics common in those days. Per contra, the idea generally held by the people in these old, unsanitary times was that epidemic diseases were spread universally, by some general malign influence, through the air—not by contact from person to person—and that they were divine scourges sent by the wrath of God to punish man for his sins, and that it was not only useless but even impious to try to escape these scourges. Hence the old barbarous schemes of smallpox inoculation and cowpox vaccination agreed perfectly with this barbarous medical theology, for by these remedies the sinner or penitent patient did not try to escape the wrath of God but willingly bowed to it and took the scourge upon himself in a mild form with the hope in Divine Mercy to escape it in its worst form! This seems to have been the medical psychology of vaccination in past times!
THE UNSANITARY CONDITIONS OF JENNER’S DAY EXPOSED. POWER OF SANITATION TO EXTINGUISH SMALLPOX ADMITTED BY JENNER’S CHIEF ASSISTANT IN 1815
It can therefore be readily seen that, as soon as the barbarous system of deliberately inviting and spreading disease described in the preceding paragraph was abandoned, and the reckless exposure of smallpox in public and private was prevented by strict isolation and proper sanitation, smallpox epidemics were bound to decline and disappear. But this result has happened only in very recent times in advanced communities which have adopted some effective system of sanitation and isolation, and with little effect one way or the other from vaccination except that smallpox and other diseases and the general death-rate seem to be much worse where vaccination is extensively used and sanitation, isolation and hygiene are neglected, as has been proved flagrantly in the case of much-vaccinated Japan, cited on page 53, and, reversely, in the case of the English City of Leicester, cited on page 22, where the best effects in reduction of smallpox and increase in general health have been produced by abandoning vaccination and relying on sanitation, isolation and hygiene for the last thirty-five years.
Now, a very interesting and convincing evidence in this direction is furnished by Dr. Jenner’s chief assistant, Dr. James Moore, before quoted, who, writing over one hundred years ago, clearly recognized and admitted the truth and force of the above contention, viz., that sanitation and isolation would extinguish epidemic smallpox, without regard to vaccination; and this point I will now prove from Dr. Moore’s book on “The History of Smallpox,” published in London in 1815, which seems to have been one of the first authorities to urge sanitation and isolation for the suppression of this disease.