Smallpox Shenanigans

The variola virus causes smallpox. You can catch smallpox through infected blankets or clothing, or by inhaling droplets discharged from the nose and mouth of an infected person.

Within 12 days after exposure, those infected will experience fever, nausea, vomiting, headache, backache, and muscle pains. This is soon followed by severe abdominal pain and a subsequent rash develops on the entire body. The rash then transforms into pus-filled sores, which eventually crust over and may leave scars. The disease almost always confers permanent immunity.

There are different forms of smallpox (variola major, variola minor, fulminating, malignant, modified, etc.) and some are more serious than others. According to the WHO, case-fatality rate can reach 20% or higher. By 1980 the WHO declared that smallpox had been eradicated.

Although the WHO was quick to give credit to their own worldwide vaccination campaign begun in 1967, variola had already stopped infecting people in more than 8 out of 10 countries throughout the world. At that time, only 131,000 cases of smallpox were reported. According to Neil Miller:

Some medical historians question the validity of [the WHO's] claim. Scarlet fever and the plague also infected millions of people. Vaccines were never developed for these diseases yet they disappeared as well. Several reputable historians credit multiple public health activities—sanitation and nutrition reforms—with reducing the incidence and severity of the early problematic diseases, including smallpox, scarlet fever, dysentery, typhoid, and cholera.

The history of smallpox inoculations is important to get an understanding of the history of vaccination, and not just because this story explains how the word “vaccine” was derived.

By the 1700s, it was known that contracting smallpox would give you immunity later in life. Some doctors even intentionally exposed people to smallpox hoping to provoke a less severe reaction and still confer immunity. Children were even exposed to pus extracted from “mild” cases of smallpox, a technique known as variolation.

In 1715, Peter Kennedy suggested collecting smallpox fluid and introducing it to the patient through a scratch in the skin. This technique would become the model for future applications and research.

It quickly became customary for the upper and middle classes to submit to the procedure. But it was an uncertain and hazardous practice. Often, smallpox by variolation was indistinguishable from an attack of ordinary smallpox. Moreover, it rarely conferred permanent immunity; the variolated could contract the disease more than once.

The trouble and risks of variolation were disliked and feared but were accepted in the name of duty. The variolated often died from the procedure, became the source of a new epidemic, or developed other illnesses from the lymph of the donor, such as syphilis hepatitis or tuberculosis.

Variolation spread throughout England, Europe, Canada, and the American colonies. However, the primary side effect of the procedure was smallpox itself. This caused researchers to seek alternatives to the dangerous and uncertain medical technique.

In 1774, Benjamin Jesty set out to prove that cowpox infection protected against smallpox. Apparently, there was a rumor in England among 18th century dairymaids that when you catch cowpox, a relatively harmless disease, you would become immune to smallpox.

Jesty took diseased matter from cows and “vaccinated” his wife and sons (cowpox is also referred to as the vaccinia virus). Supposedly, no one in his family contracted smallpox during later epidemics, although his wife almost lost her arm as the result of a severe inflammation, rousing the ire of his peers for experimenting on his own family.

Enter Edward Jenner, an English physician whose work Wikipedia dubiously refers to as having “saved more lives than the work any other human.” Apparently, no credit is due to the 18th century milkmaids, or even Jesty, who “unlike Edward Jenner, a medical doctor who is given broad credit for developing the smallpox vaccine in 1796, did not publicize his findings made some twenty years earlier in 1774.”

Jenner made a deliberate cut on James Phipps, a healthy 8-year-old boy, and inserted cowpox matter into the open wound. The boy caught cowpox. Seven weeks later, Jenner injected smallpox matter into the boy and claimed he was immune to the disease.

Jenner's medical colleagues disputed his claim that cowpox protected against smallpox: “We know that it is untrue, for we know dairymaids who have had cowpox and afterwards had smallpox.” [White, W. The Story of a Great Delusion: In a Series of Matter-of-Fact Chapters (London: EW. Allen, 1885): xi.]

Soon thereafter, even Jenner admitted: “There were were not wanting instances to prove that when the cowpox broke out among the cattle at a dairy, a person who had milked an infected animal and had thereby apparently gone through the disease in common with other, was liable to receive the smallpox afterwards.” [Harding Rains, AJ. Edward Jenner and Vaccination (East Hussex, England: Wayland Publishers, 1974):59]

Despite facing a good deal of opposition, Edward Jenner continued his experiments and in 1798 he published his Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae, a “vulgar treatise” on horsegrease cowpox.

He knew of men who milked cows soon after dressing the heels of horses afflicted with “the grease,” an oily and detestable horse disease. Jenner now insisted that these men were immune to smallpox, and that children would forever be protected from the disease if they were injected with cowpox after the cow was infected with the rancid secretions from horses' heels.

Jenner published Inquiry in order to recommend horsegrease cowpox. He carefully discriminated it from plain cowpox, which, he admitted, had no protective virtue.

The public was appalled by Jenner's recommendations. Still, many attempts were made to verify Jenner's prescription for protecting children; every experiment ended in failure. Jenner's peers were pleased to learn of his failures. One commented: “The very name of horsegrease was like to have damned the whole practice of vaccinations.”

This may have been why, in 1806, when the esteemed Dr. Robert Willan published On Vaccine Inoculation, a treatise on the most recent developments in the field, Jenner was freely cited, yet neither horsegrease nor horsegrease cowpox was ever mentioned. Instead, plain cowpox was exalted as the true prophylactic.

Jenner continued to promote his nauseating treatment and as a result of his petitions to the House of Commons in 1802 and 1807, mass inoculation campaigns began.

Soon thereafter cases of smallpox among the vaccinated were reported. At first they were denied. When denial was no longer possible—because the vaccinated were obviously afflicted with the disease—Jenner and his supporters claimed that if vaccination did not prevent smallpox, it at least provoked milder forms of the disease.

But when the vaccinated caught the disease and died, new explanations became necessary. These deaths were attributed to “spurious” cowpox. [Miller, G., ed., *To Doctor Alexander J.G. Marcet, London, 11 November 1801, Letters of Edward Jenner and Other Documents concerning the Early History of Vaccination (London, England: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1983):13]

Jenner explained that “the disease produced upon the cows by the colt and from thence conveyed to those who milked them was the true and not the spurious cowpox.” According to Jenner, protection from smallpox is not possible “until a disease has been generated by the morbid matter from the horse on the nipple of the cow, and passed through that medium to the human subject.”

However, it was virtually impossible to discriminate between the apparently different forms of cowpox. Thus, when the vaccinated recovered from the ordeal, Jenner claimed the cowpox was genuine; otherwise it was spurious!

Wikipedia's bold statement seems to be losing some of its bite, for Jenner even admitted that his “gift” caused disease and death: “The happy effects of inoculation...not very unfrequently produces deformity of the skin, and sometimes, under the best management, proves fatal.” He tried to blame the failures on improper inoculations, an excuse that would continue to be used in the years following his death in 1823.

By that time, three kinds of smallpox vaccination were being used, cowpox (promoted as “pure lymph from the calf”), horsepox (known as “the true and genuine life-preserving fluid”) and horsegrease cowpox, the “foul concoction” promoted in Jenner's Inquiry. All were known to cause disease and death.

After Jenner's deaths, vaccine failures continued to be blamed on improperly administered inoculations. Soon, two or more punctures were recommended, with some doctors claiming that a “good vaccination” required four punctures.

Even though there is no evidence that the number of puncture marks influenced the success of the practice, medical authorities at the time suggested that people be vaccinated again and again “until vesicles cease to respond to the insertion of the virus.” [White, W., pg. xxiii.]

To bolster their claim that smallpox inoculations were safe and effective, vaccine proponents often resorted to medical ploys. Hospital records were consistently “doctored.” For example, smallpox victims who were previously vaccinated and required hospital services were frequently registered as unvaccinated.

According to Dr. Russell of the Glasgow Hospital, “Patients entered as unvaccinated showed excellent marks (vaccination scars) when detained for convalescence.” Vaccinated patients who died from either smallpox or the smallpox injection were often certified as unvaccinated as well, or had their death certificates falsified.

For example, according to Dr. Herbert Snow, senior staff surgeon of the London Cancer Hospital, “Of recent years, many men and women in prime of life have dropped dead suddenly. I am convinced that some 80% of these deaths are caused by the inoculations or vaccinations they have earlier undergone. The coroner always hushes it up as 'natural causes.' I have been trying to get these case referred to an independent commission of inquiry, but so far, in vain.” [McBean, E. The Poisoned Needle (Mokelumne Hill, CA: Health Research, 1957)]

Even the renowned playwright George Bernard Shaw was aware of the medical shenanigans used to hoodwink the public: “During the last epidemic at the turn of the century, I was a member of the Health Committee of London Borough Council. I learned how the credit of vaccination is kept up statistically by diagnosing all the re-vaccinated cases as pustular eczema, varioloid or whatnot—except smallpox.” [Ibid., pg. 64]

By around 1850, several countries had enacted compulsory vaccination laws, including Bavaria, Denmark and England.

Prior to compulsory vaccine legislation, smallpox outbreaks were regional and self-limiting. The most severe epidemics occurred following mandatory shots.

In England, from 1870 to 1872, after more than 15 years of forced immunizations—and a 98% vaccination rate—the largest epidemic of smallpox ever recorded maimed and killed thousands of people. Most of the population had been vaccinated and re-vaccinated. [Allen, H. Don't Get Stuck! The Case Against Vaccinations and Injections (Tampa, Florida: Natural Hygiene Press, 1975):32]

Dr. William Farr, Compiler of Statistics of the Registrar-General, London, noted that “Smallpox attained its maximum mortality after vaccination was introduced. The mean annual mortality to 10,000 population from 1850 to 1869 was at the rate of 2.04, whereas in 1871 the death rate was 10.24 and in 1872 the death rate was 8.33, and this after the most laudable efforts to extend vaccination by legislative enactments.” [McBean, E., pg. 27]

According to Sir Thomas chambers, a London health official: “Of the 155 persons admitted to the Smallpox hospital in the Parish of St. James, Piccadilly, 145 had been vaccinated.” At Marylevore hospital, 92% of the smallpox cases had been vaccinated. In 1871, officials at Highgate Hospital admitted that 92% had been vaccinated as well.

Figures were similar in many other countries where compulsory laws were established. For example, in 1870 and 1871 more than one million Germans contracted smallpox after Germany enforced mandatory shots; thousands died. 96% of the victims were vaccinated. [Ibid., pg. 13]

The German Chancellor himself opined, “The hopes placed in the efficacy of the cowpox virus as a preventative of smallpox have proved entirely deceptive.”

From 1887 to 1889, countless Italian citizens contracted smallpox after Italy enforced mandatory shots; thousands died. According to Dr. Charles Dauta, Professor of Hygiene and Materia Medica at the University of Perugia, “Italy is one of the best vaccinated countries in the world....For 20 years before 1885, our nation was vaccinated in the proportion of 98.5%....The epidemics of smallpox that we have had [from 1887 to 1889] have been so frightful that nothing before the invention of vaccination could equal them.” [“Vaccination in Italy,” NY Med J (July 22, 1899)]

Over a twenty year period beginning in 1886, thousands of Japanese citizens died and hundreds of thousands were infected with smallpox after Japan enforced mandatory shots every five years. [Shelton, HM. Vaccine and Serum Evils (San Antonio Texas; Health research, 1966):20-21]

In 1918 and 1919, after the US took control of the Philippines, mandatory smallpox vaccination was enforced. Thousands died after the entire population was vaccinated. A 1920 Report of the Philippines Health Services declared, “The 1918 epidemic looks prima facie as a flagrant failure of the classic immunization.” [Ibid., pg. 22]

Once the connection between mass vaccination and the increase in epidemic became more apparent, several countries rescinded the mandatory vaccination laws and even outlawed the practice completely.

The Secretary of the Governing Board in Dublin, Ireland, declared, “Smallpox virus taken from the calf would communicate that disease to the human subject and be thereby a fertile source of propagating the disease, and would, moreover, render the operator liable to prosecution under the Act prohibiting inoculation with smallpox.” [White, W., pg. xxi.]

Australia abolished compulsory vaccinations in the late 1800's, and proceeded to report only 3 cases of smallpox in 15 years. Statistics from England and Wales show an inverse correlation between the percentage of babies vaccinated and the number of smallpox deaths: the greater the number vaccinated, the greater the loss. Deaths from smallpox tumbled after people refused the vaccine. [Official statistics from England and Wales, as reported by Shelton, HM., pg. 22]

By the mid-1850's, a very large anti-vaccine movement had been established. After the 1870-1872 smallpox epidemic, thought to have been caused by mandatory shots, this movement gained credibility and became more organized in its efforts to resist compulsory laws and awaken others to the inherent dangers of smallpox vaccinations.

In 1878, Mary Catherine Hume published 150 Reasons for Disobeying the Vaccination Law by Persons Prosecuted Under It. Parents were being fined a jailed for refusing to submit their children to the shots.

Before the Exemption Act was passed in 1907, every year thousands of parents were prosecuted for resisting vaccination. Many had their homes and property confiscated. Hume's book advocated civil disobedience despite the punitive efforts of pro-vaccinators.

In 1884, a massive collection of smallpox data was published by the London Society for the Abolition of Compulsory Vaccination, containing “unbiased vaccine statistics, newspaper stories about people who were damaged by the shot, and legal briefs regarding compulsory laws.”

Despite harsh laws, many people refused to be vaccinated and would not allow their children to receive the shots. According to Lord Bramwell, “It is a most mischievous thing that there should be a law in existence which good people are tempted to disobey. It is a bad example to set, and it tends to bring laws into contempt which are of real importance.”

Even Mahatma Gandhi, although by no means a scientist, would eventually weigh in on the vaccine debate: “I am and have been for years, a confirmed anti-vaccinationist...I have not the least doubt in my mind that vaccination is a filthy process that is harmful in the end.” [Gandhi, MK. Gandhi an Autobiography: Story of My Experiments With Truth (Boston: Beacon PR., 1957)]

   

The following quotes are from late 18th and early 19th doctors and other health officials who were very vocally skeptical of the claims of the proponents of the smallpox vaccine. They are taken from these sources: Fatality Rates of Small-Pox in the Vaccinated and Unvaccinated by R.P. Garrow, Fatality Rates of Small-Pox in the Vaccinated and Unvaccinated by L.A. Parry, New York Press, (January 26th, 1909), and McBean, E., pp. 21-24; 42, 72.

Vaccination does not stay the spread of smallpox, nor even modify it in those who get it after vaccination. It does introduce in the system contamination and, therefore, contributes to the spread of tuberculosis, cancer, and even leprosy. It tends to make more virulent epidemics and to make them more extensive.

—Dr. Walter M. James, Philadelphia practitioner

I have studied the question of vaccination conscientiously for 45 years. As for vaccination as a preventative of disease, there is not a scrap of evidence in its favor. The injection of virus into the pure bloodstream of the people does not prevent smallpox; rather, it tends to increase its epidemics and it makes the disease more deadly.

—Dr. Charles E. Page, Boston practitioner

Cancer was practically unknown until cowpox vaccination began to be introduced. I have had to do with 200 cases of cancer and I never saw a case of cancer in an unvaccinated person. -Dr. W. B. Clark, New York practitioner

Abolish vaccination and you will cut the cancer death rate in half.

—Dr. F. P. Millard, Toronto practitioner

I am convinced that the increase of cancer is due to vaccination.

—Dr. F. Laurie, Medical Director of the Metropolitan Cancer Hospital, London

It is my firm conviction that vaccination has been a curse instead of a blessing to the race. Every physician knows that cutaneous diseases (including cancer) have increased in frequency, severity, and variety to an alarming extent. To no medium of transmission is the widespread dissemination of this class of diseases so largely related as to vaccination.

—B. F. Cornell, M.D., practitioner

I have removed cancer from vaccinated arms exactly where the poison was injected.

—Dr. E. J. Post, Michigan practitioner

I have no hesitation in stating that in my judgment the most frequent disposing condition for cancerous development is infused into the blood by vaccination and re-vaccination.

—Dr. Dennis Turnbull, 30 year cancer researcher.

Never in the history of medicine has there been produced so false a theory, and such fraudulent assumptions, such disastrous and damning results as have followed the practice of vaccination; it is the ultima Thule of learned quackery, and lacks, and has ever lacked, the faintest shadow of scientific basis. The fears of the people have been played upon as to the dangers of smallpox, and the promise of sure prevention by vaccination, until nearly the whole civilized world has become physically corrupted by its practice.

—Dr. E. Ripley, Connecticut practitioner

Vaccination is the infusion of contaminating elements into the system, and after such contamination you can never be sure of regaining the former purity of the body. Consumption (tuberculosis) follows in the wake of vaccination just as surely as effect follows cause.

—Dr. Alex Wilder, professor of pathology, Medical College of New York

How is it that smallpox is five time as likely to be fatal in the vaccinated as unvaccinated (referring to data published in the British Medical Journal, January 14th, 1928)? How is it that, as the number of people vaccinated has steadily fallen, the number of people attacked with variola has declined and the case mortality has progressively lessened? The years of least vaccination have been the years of least smallpox and least mortality. These are just a few points in connection with the subject which are puzzling me, and to which I want answers.

—Dr. L. A. Parry

I now have very little faith in vaccination, even as to modifying the disease, and none at all as a protective in virulent epidemics. Personally, I contracted smallpox less than six months after a most severe vaccination.

—Dr. R. Hall Bakewell, Vaccinator General of Trinidad

I believed that vaccination prevented smallpox...and I believed that re-vaccination, if only frequently enough, gave absolute immunity. Experience has driven all that out of my head.

—Dr. J. C. Ward, Royal College of Surgeons, England

After collecting the particulars of 400,000 cases of smallpox, I am compelled to admit that my belief in vaccination is absolutely destroyed.

—Professor A. Vogt, chair of Vita Statistics and Hygiene at Berne University

           

Many studies were conducted that confirmed that the smallpox was actually dangerous and largely ineffective. In 1915, the U.S. Department of Agriculture linked several foot-and-mouth disease epidemics to the smallpox vaccine. [U.S. Department of Agriculture. Farmer's Bulletin (April 22, 1915):15]

In the mid-1920's, Great Britain authorized the Andrews and then the Rolleston Committee to study post-vaccinal encephalitis and deaths resulting from the smallpox vaccination.

The contents of this Report were of so damaging a character that it was deemed advisable to withhold it from publication. In this (the Rolleston) Report ninety-three cases of post-vaccinal encephalitis with fifty-one deaths are stated to have occurred between Nov., 1922, and Sept., 1927, and in a subsequent Report (Cmd. 3738), covering the three following years, there are recorded a further ninety cases with forty-two deaths.

Among the “damaging” results from these reports were that young adults vaccinated against smallpox were five times more likely to die from the disease than the un-vaccinated! It's no wonder that many respectable institutions were beginning to question Jenner and his legacy.

The indisposition of the authorities to admit any awkward facts telling against vaccination is a feature in the history of Jennerism. Thus, until 1911 it was the practice to tabulate deaths following vaccination under the heading—“Cowpox and other Effects of Vaccination.”

At the date referred to a new heading, “Vaccinia,” was introduced...five deaths, all of infants, which would in former years have been assigned to the effects of vaccination, appear under the respective headings of erysipelas, pyaemia, septicaemia, convulsions, and phlegmon.

Possibly the Registrar-General could offer some reason for altering the practice of thirty years, but the effect, none the less, is to exonerate vaccination by attributing death to secondary causes instead of to the primary cause—vaccination.

In May 1926, the New York State Journal of Medicine reported on several cases of encephalitis and meningitis that developed shortly after smallpox vaccinations.

In July of that year, the Journal of American Medical Association found correlations between smallpox vaccinations and nervous disturbances. The authors noted: “In regions in which there is no organized vaccination of the population, general paralysis is rare. It is impossible to deny a connection between vaccination and the encephalitis which follows it.”

In September 1926, Lancet published data confirming seven cases of encephalomyelitis following smallpox vaccinations. The authors, Turnbull and McIntosh, declared: “There can be no doubt that vaccination was a definite causal factor.”

The next month Lancet reported on 35 cases of encephalitis, including 15 deaths. The authors concluded: “Vaccination was a definite causal factor and no chance coincidence.”

In 1928, the League of Nations issued a report that noted, “The post-vaccinal encephalitis with which we are dealing has become a problem in itself...Their occurrence has led to the realization that a new, or at least a previously unsuspected or unrecognized, risk attaches to the practice of vaccination.”

The Report also noted 139 recent cases of post-vaccinal encephalitis and 41 deaths in one country alone, Holland. Compulsory smallpox vaccinations were discontinued as a result. [Health Organization of the League of Nations: Geneva. “Report of the Commission of Smallpox and Vaccination,” (August 27, 1928)]

In February 1930, Germany modified its compulsory vaccination law following numerous cases of post-vaccinal diseases: “Vaccinated people developed a cerebral inflammation which resulted in a number of deaths and several cases of mental derangement.” [The International News Service (February 27, 1930)]

Later that year, the Journal of the American Medical Association reported on several fatal reactions among children following smallpox vaccination. They were described as having “encephalitic symptoms.” [J of the American Medical Association (April 5, 1930)]

From 1949 to 1951, in the United States, people died from complications of the smallpox vaccine—mainly from post-vaccinal encephalitis—at rates eight times greater than those who were not vaccinated.

In December of 1952, Lancet published a study documenting the reaction of a woman who was three months pregnant to the vaccine: “She developed a severe primary reaction and three months later she was spontaneously delivered of a feeble hydropic premature infant covered with a very severe generalized vaccinia. The child died 18 hours later.”

Another study determined that 47% of women who were vaccinated during their first trimester failed to give birth to a normal child. [McBean, E., pg. 82.]

During the late 1950s and 1960s, several medical and scientific publications documented numerous cases of post-vaccinal encephalomyelitis following smallpox vaccination. Neurological reactions ranged from encephalitis to epilepsy, polyneuritis, multiple sclerosis, and death.

In some regions of the world, 1 of every 63 people vaccinated was damaged by the shot. Extreme sensitivity to multiple shots was also observed. Subsequent inoculations were responsible for many of the post-vaccinal ailments. In fact, the death rate from vaccination appeared greatest in those who were vaccinated early in life and then re-vaccinated in later years. The morbidity and mortality rates were extremely high in babies as well.

These statements come from multiple sources, including:

Miller, H. et al. “Multiple sclerosis and vaccination.” British Medical Journal (April 22, 1967): 210-213.

Neff, JM., et al. “Complications of smallpox vaccination, United States, 1963.” Pediatrics 1967;39:916-923.

Lane, MJ. “Complications of smallpox vaccination” New England Journal of Medicine 1968;281 (22):1201-08.

Spillane, JD., et al. “The neurology of Jennerian vaccination—a clinical account of the neurological complications which occurred during the smallpox epidemic in South Wales in 1962.”

Dick, GWA. “Scientific Proceedings; Symposium on Virus Diseases. 13th Annual Meeting of the British Medical Association, Belfast.” British Medical Journal, 1962;2:319.

Dixon, CW. Smallpox. (London: J & A Churchill, 1962).