. . .” On May 14, 1796, the physician Edward Jenner took disease matter from the hand of a milkmaid he believed had cowpox and inoculated an 8-year-old boy with it, then in July, inoculated the boy with smallpox, and after the child did not catch smallpox from the inoculation, declared that his vaccine would be 100% effective for life (later saying every 10 years and eventually it would last for a year). As no controlled experiments were done to study this practice, immunity was judged by the belief the presence of a vaccine scar would guarantee immunity, and even now, the CDC admits the level of antibody necessary to prevent smallpox infection is unknown. Additionally, studies of the vaccines with modern technology have found they contained a wide variety of viral species (widespread contamination and poor-quality control was also observed during the initial smallpox vaccination campaigns), and a debate as to the exact biological origination of the vaccine exists to this day.
Skepticism and Rejection of Smallpox Vaccination
Initially Jenner’s claims (first published in 1798) were met with much skepticism, as many physicians had observed patients develop cowpox and subsequently smallpox, and others questioned the basic validity of his studies (one physician who tested 3 children with Jenner’s vaccine found all 3 subsequently developed smallpox after inoculation, with similar results obtained by other physicians). Nonetheless, the practice gradually caught on, became a larger share of physician income, became more and more popular within the medical field, and over the next hundred years, the number of dissenting physicians gradually diminished. However, what is relatively unknown now is that many did speak out, and published literature with data showing serious issues with the vaccine.
Some examples are as follows:
Dr. Woodville, in 1799, after having administered the vaccination to many children stated, “…in several instances, the cowpox has proved a very severe disease. In three or four cases out of 500, the patient has been in considerable danger, and one child actually died.”
In 1809, the medical observer reported on over a dozen cases of often fatal smallpox contracted after vaccination (frequently occurring a year after vaccination), while the 1810 medical observer contained 535 cases of smallpox after vaccination (97 that were fatal), and 150 cases of severe vaccine injuries.
An 1817 London Medical Repository Monthly Journal and Review likewise found that many people who received the smallpox vaccination were still experiencing smallpox.
In 1818, Thomas Brown, a surgeon of 30 years and ardent proponent of vaccination, after vaccinating 1200 people stated: “The accounts from all quarters of the world, wherever vaccination has been introduced… the cases of failures are now increased to an alarming proportion.”
In 1829, the Lancet describing a recent outbreak stated “It attacked many who had had small-pox before, and often severely; almost to death; and of those who had been vaccinated, it left some alone, but fell upon great numbers.”
In 1845 George Greogory M.D. reported: “In the 1844 smallpox epidemic, about one-third of the vaccinated contracted a mild form of smallpox, but roughly 8 percent of those vaccinated still died, and nearly two-thirds had severe disease”.
Because of the genuine concerns against the immunizations, widespread resistance existed in the public towards the immunization practices. As the press was less censored at this time, there were frequent reports of deaths from smallpox in properly vaccinated citizens, as well as deaths from other conditions after vaccination.
In 1829, William Cobbett, a farmer, journalist, and English pamphleteer, wrote, in addressing the failures of vaccination: “Why, that in hundreds of instances, persons cow-poxed by JENNER HIMSELF [William Cobbett’s capital emphasis], have taken the real small-pox afterwards, and have either died from the disorder, or narrowly escaped with their lives!”
A 1850 letter to the “Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle, ” claimed there were more admissions to the London Small-Pox Hospital in 1844 than during the smallpox epidemic of 1781 before vaccination began, and that one-third of the deaths from smallpox were in people who had previously been vaccinated.
Mandatory Smallpox Vaccination
As it became clear that the smallpox vaccine was unable to prevent disease as initially promised, the medical profession moved the goal posts from lifelong “perfect” immunity to “milder disease” to justify vaccination, a tactic that has since repeated with other vaccination campaigns.
Mr. Henry May, writing to the Birmingham Medical Review, in January, 1874 reported that deaths as a result of vaccination were often not reported because of an allegiance to the practice. Often a vaccinated person was recorded as having died from another condition such as chicken pox or erroneously listed as unvaccinated. “ . . .
( Illustration at article here)
. . .” This corruption of the vital statistics creates many challenges in assessing the efficacy of immunization, and is also why many authors argue no metric can be used to assess COVID-19 immunizations except total number of deaths (independent of cause) as this cannot be fudged. Of note, a different significant overlap exists with the early Polio campaigns (also detailed within the book), where “Polio” diagnostic criteria was repeatedly adjusted to meet the political need for Polio cases.
Governments responded to this skepticism by progressively using more and more force to mandate vaccination. Vaccination was made compulsory in England in 1853, with stricter laws passed in 1867. In the United States, Massachusetts created a set of comprehensive vaccination laws in 1855 (which created the Supreme Court case Jacobson v. Massachusetts a case that is frequently cited about state enforced vaccination). Lemuel Shattuck emphasized the need for vaccination and pushed for house-to-house vaccination to be enforced by the authority of the City of Boston in an 1856 report, also noting ““The City has already provided that no unvaccinated child shall be admitted into the public schools.”
A situation emerged I term the vaccine positive feedback cycle. Keep in mind that most systems in nature are instead negative feedback systems. In these, when something occurs, it self-corrects the system and turns it off rather than accelerating it, as occurs in a positive feedback system.
The cycle is as follows:
A concerning disease exists
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Immunization is cited as a potential solution to the problem
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A preliminary immunization campaign is conducted and makes the problem worse
↓
As the problem is now worse, the need for immunizations to address it increases and another campaign is conducted
↓
This makes the problem worse
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This increases the need for more aggressive measures to increase immunization
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This makes the problem worse and further perpetuates the cycle, before long leading to very questionable governmental policies designed to force unwilling parties to vaccinate.
The underlying drivers of this process seem to be an unquestionable faith in vaccination, a conviction dating back to the days of smallpox, that vaccinating an ever increasing proportion of the population through vaccination can end epidemics (now termed herd immunity), and the government having limited options to address the issue besides immunizations and governmental force.
Effects of Mandatory Smallpox Vaccination
In accordance the positive feedback cycle, these results were found everywhere. Within the United States, as smallpox worsened in Boston, in 1855, the government made enacted strict enforcement of vaccination. It was followed by the epidemics of 1859-1860, 1864-1865, 1867 (these were all similar in size to earlier epidemics), and then infamous 1872-1873 epidemic which dwarfed all previous epidemics (proving fatal to 1040 persons, at a rate of 280 deaths per 100,000 people). “ . . .
Mr. Henry May, writing to the Birmingham Medical Review, in January, 1874 reported that deaths as a result of vaccination were often not reported because of an allegiance to the practice. Often a vaccinated person was recorded as having died from another condition such as chicken pox or erroneously listed as unvaccinated. “ . .
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“The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.”
- Hegel