- Dear Jeff,
-
- After listening to your interview with Dr. Tim O'Shea
(12-3-02) concerning Edward Jenner and the origins of smallpox vaccination,
I did some research and turned up this article by Walter Hadwen, one of
Jenner's harshest 19th Century critics. I thought the arguments of the
late Dr. Hadwen concerning sanitation to be highly relevant to the modern
debate on the urgent need for mass vaccincation to counter pie-in-the-sky
bio-terrorist threats.
-
- The article may be found at http://www.know-vaccines.org/smallpox.html
-
- Regards Danny Chaplin
-
- Sanitation Vs. Vaccination - The Origin of Smallpox
-
- By Walter S. Hadwen M.D.
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- Since Edward Jenner demonstrated the use of cowpox vaccine
against smallpox in 1796, vaccinations against smallpox were started. Despite
this, a smallpox epidemic swept England in 1839 and killed 22,081 people.
-
- In 1853 the Government made smallpox vaccinations compulsory,
but the incidence of the disease kept increasing, and in 1872 another epidemic
killed 44,840 people, most of whom were vaccinated.
-
- The compulsory vaccination law was abolished in 1948.
Similar disasters occurred in Germany and Japan, but possibly the worst
was in the Philippines in 1918 when the US Government forced over three
million natives to be vaccinated. Of these, 47,369 came down with smallpox
and 16,477 died. In 1919 the program was doubled, and over seven million
were vaccinated, of whom 65,180 came down with the disease and 44,408 died.
The epidemic was a direct result of the vaccination program. These facts
are described by Dr William F. Koch in his book The Survival Factor in
Neoplastic and Viral Disease (1961).
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- By following the superstitious impulses of Edward Jenner
and the ancient tradition of time Gloucestershire dairymaids, the medical
profession has lost sight of the vital question, what is the origin of
smallpox?
-
- The faculty of reasoning upon time subject appears to
have become almost extinct; in its place there has arisen a demand for
obedience to authority. Fashion has usurped the place of scientific thought,
and arbitrary Acts of Parliament and the policeman's truncheon have supplanted
logical consistency.
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- When the question is asked, "Why does smallpox break
out at all?" the twentieth century scientist answers, "Because
time populace have not been 'protected' against it by vaccination."
-
- This reply only begs the question. It presupposes that
smallpox is a natural visitation of Providence which may strike anybody
at any moment, and that the only way by which this presumed inevitable
evil can be met, is to compel every human being in this world to undergo
a process of "protection," which is to render the system "immune"
to attack. This is a negative form of reasoning. It leaves unanswered the
crucial question, what is the origin of smallpox?
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- Why are we to suppose, as was believed in the eighteenth
century, that a smallpox attack is the probable lot of every member of
the race? Why must everybody be diseased to protect him against disease,
especially if that disease is one from which, owing to altered conditions,
he is never likely to suffer? Surely, if a disease breaks out there must
be a cause for it.
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- The Source Of All "Outbreaks"
-
- Now one fact stands out pre-eminently in every part of
time world where smallpox has appeared--namely, it has been invariably
associated with unsanitary and unhygienic conditions. From time immemorial
it has been called in Austria "The Beggar's Disease." It has
followed in the wake of filth, poverty, wars, pestilences, famines, and
general insanitation, in all ages.
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- It accompanied the clash of arms of the American armies
in their struggle for independence, and in their Civil and Spanish wars;
it claimed more victims than the battlefield in the ravages of the Crimea;
it formed the dark background to the triumphant marches of the German army
in 1870; it increased tenfold the horrors of the siege of Paris; and plagued
our warriors at Tel-el-Kebir.
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- Even during the late Great War no inconsiderable amount
of smallpox occurred amongst all the armies involved wherever conditions
of insanitation triumphed over the scrupulous efforts made to circumvent
them.
-
- Smallpox outbreaks and epidemics have invariably been
the call of Nature to responsible authorities at home: "Put your house
in order"; personal municipal, and civic cleanliness has been her
unvarying demand, a demand which was couched in one striking injunction
by the prophet of old: "Wash and be clean."
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- Redruth
-
- I remember 26 years ago there was an outbreak of smallpox
at Redruth, in Cornwall. The Press in all parts of the United Kingdom was
immediately supplied with exaggerated reports, and scares were created
by public vaccinators hundreds of miles away. I went down to investigate
the affair on my own account. There were altogether 44 cases; 84 per cent
occurred in vaccinated persons.
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- One-fourth of the cases was located in "Trestrails
Row," consisting of seven houses, each containing only two small low-roofed
rooms, and with no water connections. One midden privy, in the most disgusting
condition, accommodated the seven houses. One of these hovels was occupied
by no fewer than seven persons, all of whom contracted smallpox, and out
of the total of seven deaths three occurred in this house.
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- Nearly another fourth of the cases was confined to Adelaide
Road and Raymond Road, where smallpox first appeared, the houses of which
were supplied with uncovered cesspits. Three cases occurred in Falmouth
Road, with one death which took place in a house closely hedged in by foul
middens, a manure heap, and a piggery.
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- Three more cases and one death occurred in the midst
of similar unsanitary conditions at Hockin's Court. Midden privies were
the order of the day, and the ultimate disposal of the sewage was primitive
to a degree. The smallpox rapidly played itself out, and then the municipality
corrected the conditions that had been the cause of time outbreak.
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- Gloucester
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- I remember, too, the epidemic in Gloucester in 1895-6.
I was in and out of the smallpox houses throughout that visitation of nearly
2,000 cases. The echo of it is still heard among time ranks of Jennerian
followers, and always with time tragic whisper, "Gloucester was an
unvaccinated city!"
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- Never in all time history of professional scaremongering
was such a determined effort made to boost vaccination, and never a word
was uttered as to the shocking insanitary conditions which produced the
tragedy. In fact, those conditions were persistently denied by time officials
who were responsible for them.
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- The smallpox was practically confined to the southern
half of the city, where there was no fall for the sewage. The pipes had
been hurriedly laid in this new district without concrete base or cemented
joints. There was a drought that lasted months; time water supply ran short;
flushing of the sewers had to be discontinued, and time sewerage pipes
became choked. When, after time epidemic was over, investigation was made,
the pipes were found to be broken in all directions; in fact, the whole
district of--for the most part--crowded houses, many of them back-to-back
with no through ventilation, lay over what was nothing more nor less than
a huge cesspit. The outlets for the sewer-gas consisted of street manholes,
which belched their poison into time atmosphere.
-
- I traced the first case of smallpox in every street to
the house nearest to a manhole. Wooden stoppers were made to close them
down, but they had to be used sparingly lest the sewer-gas should be driven
into the houses. Hundreds of the houses were drawing their water supply
from shallow wells, liable to contamination by constant leakage into them
from house drains; and the sewage-pipes in numerous instances ran under
the floors of the houses from the closets at the back to the street in
front.
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- Some of the houses had their toilets in the back kitchen.
In one street of 114 houses the latter were supplied with water declared
by the city surveyor to be contaminated with sewage from its source to
its delivery, and as it had not force enough to fill the flushing tanks,
the toilets were never flushed and always choked, the contents being emptied
periodically on to the small garden ground attached. In some of these tiny
houses there were seven, nine, and even twelve cases of smallpox.
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- A sixth part of the whole epidemic occurred in three
streets. In one street the sewage entered the cellars of the houses, and
the choked-up street sewer had to be opened up in the midst of the epidemic.
Nearly half the houses in this street had smallpox cases.
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- Then the epidemic caught on in two disgracefully unsanitary
and overcrowded, ill-ventilated elementary schools. Forty-five children
were struck down suddenly in one of them and 31 in the other. The patients
were removed to what was called an isolation hospital. It was congregation,
not isolation. A woman employed in the early part of the epidemic as solitary
night nurse told me that time sight and screaming of these poor children
at night as they ran about the wards in delirium so completely unnerved
her that she was obliged to leave.
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- They were allowed no water for their fevered skins, time
baths were choked with dirty linen, and never used. The little ones were
packed three, four, and even five in a bed; vermin was crawling everywhere;
no oil was used for the faces, and the poor children scratched themselves
till they bled.
-
- Of every two taken in to the Stroud Road Hospital one
was carried out a corpse; when the mortuary became choked with dead bodies,
the bathroom was utilized for this purpose.
-
- One child lay for two weeks and two days with her eyes
scabbed and not a single drop of water was given to relieve her. When one
hospital became full, another one was opened which had been used as a cholera
hospital many years before.
-
- It was built on stakes in a rough, boggy field; it had
no sewerage connections, nor any drainage whatever, and water had to be
carried in water-carts over a quarter of a mile of bog to reach it.
-
- The panic became fearful, and a wild, despairing cry
went up from the plague-stricken city as the destroying angel sped from
house to house in these awful slums.
-
- And what was the answer the terror-stricken inhabitants
received from the Guardians of Public Health? Still the same mad reply:
"These be thy gods, O Israel!" as they pointed to the vaccine
lancets, dripping with their filthy venom; in helplessness and fear they
implored the people, in a unanimously signed medical manifesto, to bow
down and worship at the shrine.
-
- At last the rain came. It washed the atmosphere, it flushed
the sewers and drains; it filled the vacuoles of sewer gas in the sandy
soil, and the epidemic died down.
-
- The councilors who put up at the next municipal contest
were one and all indignantly swept away at the polls by the enraged voters,
and anti-vaccinationists took their place; a new sewerage system was laid
throughout the whole smallpox district at a cost of some £30,000;
20,000 sanitary defects in the houses were rectified, and no smallpox has
occurred since, although nearly 90 per cent, of the population is unvaccinated.
But even in that awful epidemic, smallpox picked out the vaccinated for
attack; two-thirds of the sufferers had been "protected" by time
filthy superstitious rite.
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- Sheffield And Other Cases
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- I remember Sheffield and its epidemic in 1887-8. No less
than 98 per cent of the population had been vaccinated; it was the best
vaccinated town in the kingdom the public vaccinators had reaped a richer
harvest of bonuses for "successful vaccination" than those of
any other town, and yet they had 7,000 cases of smallpox.
-
- It originated and clung to an unsanitary area of 175
acres covered with cesspits--which was called The Croft. The medical profession
helplessly cried "vaccinate" and "re-vaccinate"--as
if the pubic had not already had enough of it. At last the floodgates of
heaven were mercifully opened, and the bountiful rains suddenly accomplished
what 56,000 vaccinations had failed to effect.
-
- I went to Middlesbrough in the great epidemic of 1898.
I visited every smallpox hospital ward, and investigated the conditions
of the houses, and their environment, from whence the smallpox came. As
everybody knows, the houses at that time had been run up at an enormous
rate, much too fast for the sanitary officials to keep pace with them.
-
- The part where the smallpox raged was situated chiefly
over a swamp where it was difficult to find foundations for the houses;
many of them were raised on piles driven through the soil.
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- The only method of house sanitation in all that district
was that of pails in the backyards. But whatever else had been neglected,
vaccination had been sedulously attended to--the inhabitants were vaccinated
up to 98.4 per cent, of the population.
-
- Nevertheless the vaccinated and re-vaccinated hospital
officials fell before the disease side by side with the vaccinated and
re-vaccinated inhabitants. Nine hospital ward-maids, one trained nurse,
one medical man and three policemen fell victims to the disease.
-
- Outraged Nature laughed outright at the Jennerian fetish
and declared in plain and unmistaken language that if smallpox was to be
prevented the conditions which caused it must be remedied. Poisoning human
bodies with the products of a foul eruption on a cow's udder could only
add fuel to the fire by reducing the vital resisting powers of the sufferers.
-
- I call to mind the case of one adult male I interviewed
in one of the smallpox hospital wards at that time. He was vaccinated in
infancy, had smallpox when eight years old, and was subsequently re-vaccinated
three times. That man died of smallpox. I took a particular interest in
that case, and was staggered to find when the official report was published
that, owing to his having had the eruption so badly as to cover his vaccination
marks, he was actually declared to be "unvaccinated"!
-
- I have visited Glasgow in two of its smallpox epidemics.
The slums in which they occurred; the overcrowded and unsanitary condition
of the tenements told, the same tale as elsewhere. Nothing but sweeping
away, the rookeries, where smallpox invariably, takes hold, can ever save
those parts of the city from periodical visitations. Space forbids further
reminiscences but it is the same story everywhere. Go back to the records
of Old London and we find insanitation and smallpox keeping company throughout.
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- The Lesson Of The Public Health Act
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- Before the passing of the Public Health Act of l875 in
this country, every succeeding epidemic of smallpox was worse than its
predecessor in spite of more and more compulsory vaccination; but with
less and less vaccination and more and more sanitation smallpox has become
a comparative curiosity. It is only in unsanitary quarters it can gain
a hold.
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- Sir Edwin-Chadwick, the veteran sanitarian, has well
said: Smallpox, typhus, and other fevers occur in common conditions of
foul air, stagnant putrefaction, bad house drainage, sewers of deposit,
excrement sodden sites, filthy street surfaces, impure water, and overcrowding,
and the entire removal of such conditions is the effectual preventive of
diseases of those species, whether in ordinary or extraordinary visitations.
-
- When will the medical profession arouse itself to ask
the question: "What is the origin of smallpox?"
-
- When will a Ministry of Health cease to bring discredit
upon itself by the advocacy of a disgusting fetish that has proved, itself
a failure as a preventive of the disease in every part of the world in
which it has been adopted for the last century and a quarter? When will
a British Government that boasts of its progress and civilisation cease
to ally itself with a filthy, uncivilised, unscientific practice that has
done nothing but spread disease and death amongst the populace for generation
and which is opposed to the common-sense views of the majority of thinking
men and women in the realm?
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- From "Truth," January 17, 1923
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