Vaccination Does Not Prevent Smallpox but Really Increases It

A Summary of the Proofs That Vaccination Does Not Prevent Smallpox but Really Increases It (written more than a century ago)



I.
Why Doctors are not the Best Judges of the Results of Vaccination


(1) In the first place they are interested parties, both pecuniary and in a much
greater degree on account of professional training and prestige. Only three years after
vaccination was first introduced, on the recommendation of the heads of the profession,
and their expressed conviction that it would give lifelong protection against a terrible
disease, Parliament voted Jenner £10,000 in 1802, and £20,000 more in 1807, besides
endowing vaccination with £3,000 a year in 1808.


From that time doctors as a body were committed to its support; it has been taught for
nearly a century as an almost infallible remedy in all our medical schools; and has been
for the most part accepted by the public and the legislature as if it were a
well-established scientific principle, instead of being as the historian of epidemic
diseases--Dr. Creighton--well terms it, a grotesque superstition.


(2) Whether vaccination produces good or bad results can only be determined by its
effects on a large scale. We must see whether, during epidemics--at different periods or
in different places--small-pox mortality is diminished as compared with that from other
diseases in proportion to the total amount of vaccination; and this can be done only by
the Statistician, using the best materials--in this country those of our
Registrar-Generals.


Two of the greatest medical authorities on vaccination, Sir John Simon and Dr. Guy,
F.R.S., have declared this to be necessary. The former, in 1857, in a Parliamentary Report
on the History and Practice of Vaccination, says: "From individual cases the appeal
is to masses of national experience."


Dr. Guy, in a celebrated paper published by the Royal Statistical Society, says:
"Is vaccination a preventive of small-pox? To this question there is, there can be,
no answer except such as is couched in the language of figures." The language of
figures is "Statistics"; hence, statisticians, not doctors, are the only good
judges of this question.


But the last Royal Commission consisted wholly of doctors, lawyers, politicians and
country gentlemen, not one trained statistician! Hence, as I have demonstrated in my
"Vaccination a Delusion", they have
made the grossest blunders and their Report is absolutely worthless.


II.
What is Proved by the Best Statistical Evidence Available


(1) The only complete and trustworthy records of mortality and of the causes of death
which we possess, are those of the Registrar-Generals for England and Wales, for Scotland
and for Ireland; the former from 1838, the two latter from later dates.


But for London we have records from a much earlier period--the Bills of Mortality,
which, though not completely accurate, are yet considered to show the rise and fall of the
death-rates from the chief diseases then recognised, with sufficient general accuracy to
be very valuable.


They are continually appealed to in order to show the enormous improvement in the
health of London in the nineteenth as compared with the eighteenth century, and this
comparison as regards small-pox is one of the stock arguments of the doctors, and was
strongly urged by the Royal Commissioners.


It is stated over and over again that, down to the year 1800, small-pox deaths were
excessive, but that from the very introduction of vaccination in 1800 they began to
decrease, and have been getting less and less ever since. No other disease, it is said,
has decreased in the same striking manner.


(2) This being the very foundation of the supposed evidence in favour of vaccination it
is necessary to examine it closely, when it will be found to be wholly worthless, and to
illustrate in a striking manner the complete ignorance of doctors, and also of the Royal
Commissioners, of the very elements of statistical enquiry. This requires some little
explanation, though it is really a very simple matter.


In order to be able to study the effect of any alleged cause of improved health of the
community, we must compare the death-rates before and after the introduction of the
supposed cause of improvement (in this case vaccination), and also compare these with the
death-rates from other groups of diseases, and from all causes.


These facts are given by the Registrar-General in tables showing the number of deaths
each year in each million of the population. Now, small-pox, many fevers, cholera, etc.
are what are termed epidemic diseases, which attack large populations at irregular
intervals with great severity, while at other times they are far less fatal or more local.
Hence the yearly death-rates vary enormously.


In 1796 more than 4,000 per million died of small-pox in London, while in the next year
there were only about 800, and the following year (1798) over 3,000. Again, in 1870 less
than 100 per million died of it, while in 1871 there were about 300, and in 1872 about
2,500.


Thus the figures go increasing and decreasing so suddenly and so irregularly, that by
taking only a few years at one period, and a few at another, you can show an increase or a
decrease according to what you wish to prove. Hence it is often ignorantly said that
figures can be made to prove anything. But this is quite untrue. They can often be made to
show anything, which is quite another matter; but if properly exhibited and compared they
lead to one conclusion only; they show the truth.


(3) There are a few simple rules for getting at the truth in such statistics as we are
now discussing. One is that we must take as long periods of time as possible; another is
that we must use the largest populations available.


Two other conditions are almost equally important; we must compare, when possible,
equal periods before and after vaccination was introduced; and we must also compare the
increase or diminution of small-pox with those of other diseases, in order to discover
whether there is anything exceptional in the decrease of small-pox mortality which
requires a peculiar cause to explain it.


But the ever-varying figures in long columns are so confusing to most people, that it
is impossible to make anything out of them, and to simplify them, averages have to be
taken, showing the deaths every five or every ten years, and in other ways, so as to find
out what the figures really mean, and even then, by altering the periods or beginning at
different years, a very different result may often be shown.


(4) By far the best way and that usually adopted by statisticians and mathematicians,
is to draw out diagrams by which the whole course of the mortality from each disease or
group of diseases can be seen and compared at a glance. From the various elaborate tables
given in the Reports of the Royal Commission and from the annual reports of the
Registrar-General.


I constructed twelve diagrams, each showing the comparative rise or fall of small-pox
mortality and other diseases in various places and under different conditions; and all
these without exception demonstrate either that vaccination has no effect whatever, or
that it tends to increase rather than decrease small-pox mortality.


(5) As many people do not understand these diagrams I here give a part of one of them
in a simplified form in order to render statistical diagrams intelligible to all, and it
will serve to show what is the nature of the evidence against vaccination, and also how I
prove that the statements made by the doctors and by the Royal Commissioners are not only
misleading but absolutely untrue.


(6) The figures on the bottom and top of the diagram show the years, from 1770 to 1830,
while those on the right and left show the number of deaths to each million of population.
The three wavy lines show the proportion of deaths to population during this period of 60
years; the lower line the small-pox deaths; that next above it the deaths from the other
zymotic diseases (fevers, diphtheria, whooping-cough, etc.); while the top line shows
deaths from all diseases. These last deaths, being so much more numerous, have had to be
drawn out on a smaller scale in order to show them on the same page as the others.


(7) This diagram shows us that small-pox decreased during the ten years before
vaccination at very nearly the same rate as it did in the ten years after vaccination. The
other zymotic diseases decreased even more than small-pox during the ten years after
vaccination.


General mortality also decreased after 1800 more rapidly than before 1800. Yet the
Royal Commissioners declare that there was nothing but vaccination to produce the decrease
of small-pox, and that there was no improvement in sanitation in the beginning of the
nineteenth century, as compared with the latter part of the eighteenth century, to account
for the difference.


( Now, in an Appendix to my "Vaccination a Delusion," I have given an
account of a number of improvements affecting health at this very period which are amply
sufficient to produce the results shown by the diagram, and I believe it is the most
compact and most interesting account of these improvements yet given. The chief of them
are:


(1) That many West-end squares and suburbs were built at this very period, and were
inhabited chiefly by city people.
(2) That the streets were more systematically cleaned and the roads improved.
(3) That the water supply was much improved.
(4) That potatoes, tea, and coffee came into more general use; while the better roads
allowed more fresh meat, vegetables and milk to be used.
(5) Cemeteries were formed outside London and many City graveyards were permanently
closed.


The result of these five groups of improvements was strikingly shown in the decrease of
the death-rate in a number of the most fatal diseases (as recorded in a Table by Dr. Farr,
reprinted in the Third Report of the Royal Commission) to fully one-half in 1801-10 as
compared with 1771-80; an amount of improvement which has never occurred in any similar
period during the whole of the 270 years for which we have official statistics. And yet
the Royal Commissioners declare that nothing but vaccination can explain the corresponding
and very similar decrease in small-pox!


(9) As you will now understand the method of exhibiting statistics by means of
diagrams, I will proceed to state the other more important conclusions to be drawn from
our national statistics of death-rates. Those who wish to study them more fully must
obtain the book itself, and examine the diagrams and the full details there given.


III. London
Death-Rates during Registration. 1838-96


(1) These tables show us that neither the general mortality nor that from zymotic
diseases decreased much till about 1868, but from that date there has been a large and
continuous decrease. Small-pox had a sudden increase in 1838, in which year the mortality
was greater than it had been for the preceding twenty-five years. Then it decreased slowly
till 1870, and this decrease is always ascribed by the doctors to vaccination.


But in 1871 there was a great epidemic, when the mortality was greater than at any
period during the preceding seventy years of constantly increasing vaccination! Since 1871
small-pox has decreased, but only at about the same rate as the other zymotic diseases.


The interesting thing to note here is, that the Main Drainage of London was completed
in 1865, and about five years later (the time required for the connection of all the house
drainage) the marked diminution in the mortality above-mentioned began to show itself. And
if we average the enormous small-pox mortality of 1871 with that of the preceding ten
years, we shall find that it will bring the small-pox mortality into almost exact
correspondence with that from all other causes, and thus leave nothing to be imputed to
vaccination!


(2) In another diagram in my book I show the mortality from the five groups of zymotic
diseases taken separately: Fevers, Whooping-cough, Diphtheria and Scarlatina, Measles, and
Small-pox, for the same period of Government Registration. All of these diseases show a
nearly similar decrease in the latter half of the period, except measles, which shows
hardly any diminution; but there is reason to believe that the cause of this is, that,
when vaccinated children after a short illness die of small-pox, measles or chicken-pox
are often given as the cause of death.


IV.
Death-Rates in England and Wales during the Period of Registration


(1) My third diagram is one of the most instructive and conclusive in my book, because
it deals with the whole population of England and Wales and the death-rates from various
groups of diseases as in the illustrative diagram.


In the first twenty-five years, from 1848 to 1872, there is on the average hardly any
decrease either of general mortality, zymotics, or small-pox, since the enormous small-pox
mortality of 1871-72 if distributed over the preceding ten years will bring it to
correspond closely with the other classes of mortality.


But from 1873 to 1895--the last twenty-three years shown--there is a diminution in all
three of the diseases to a considerable amount. For the last ten years the diminution in
small-pox is the greatest; but this can be proved to be not due to vaccination, as I will
now explain.


(2) It is only from the year 1872 (after the great epidemic of small-pox) that all
vaccinations, private as well as public, have been officially registered, and a table
showing their amount has been given in the Final Report of the Royal Commission. From 1872
to 1882 the vaccinations amounted to 95 percent of the births; practically all were
vaccinated if we allow for those that died before they could be operated on or very soon
afterwards.


But from that date the number of vaccinations steadily decreased, till in 1895 they
were only 80 percent of the births, a diminution of 15 percent in fourteen years. If
vaccination were the chief or only preventive of small-pox we ought to have a considerable
increase of the disease during this period, instead of which it is in this period only
that the diminution of small-pox has been more marked than that of the other zymotic
diseases!


Here, then, we have the first distinct proof that it is vaccination which keeps up the
disease, and that when a larger number of children escape the blood-poisoning lancet
small-pox diminishes!


Another and even more conclusive proof is given . . . by Dr. Ruata, M.D.1 The whole
male population of Italy are revaccinated on entering the army. Under the age of 20, men
and women are alike as regards vaccination; afterwards men have an enormous advantage, if
vaccination is of any use.


Yet, over 20, many more men than women die of small-pox, while under 20 the mortality
is equal, again demonstrating that vaccination increases small-pox mortality!


V.
Thirty Years of Rapidly Decreasing Vaccination in Leicester, and its Teachings


(1) The great manufacturing town of Leicester, with nearly 200,000 inhabitants, affords
the most conclusive proof of the uselessness of vaccination that it is possible to have;
and the doctors and government officials carefully avoid dealing with it except to
prophecy evils which have never come to pass.


Down to 1872 Leicester was one of the most completely vaccinated towns in the kingdom,
the number of vaccinations, owing to alarm after epidemics, several times exceeding the
number of births. Yet in 1871, at the very height of its good vaccination record, it was
attacked by the epidemic with extreme severity, its small-pox deaths during that year
being more than 3,500 per million of the population, or about a thousand per million more
than the mortality in London during the same epidemic.


If ever a test experiment existed it is this of Leicester, where an almost completely
vaccinated community suffered more than unvaccinated and terribly unsanitary London, on
the average of the last forty years of the eighteenth century.


But even more conclusive evidence is to come.


(2) That fearful mortality destroyed the faith of Leicester in vaccination. Poor and
rich alike, the workers and even the municipal authorities began to refuse vaccination for
their children. This refusal continued till, in 1890, instead of 95 percent the
vaccinations reached only 5 percent of the births! As this ominous decrease of vaccination
went on the doctors again and again prophesied against it, that once small-pox was
introduced it would run through the town like wildfire and decimate the population.


Yet it has been introduced again and again, but it has never spread; and from that day
to this no town in the kingdom of approximately equal population has had such a very low
small-pox mortality as this almost completely unvaccinated and--as the doctors
say--unprotected population!


Surely this completes the demonstration that vaccination, instead of preventing,
increases the liability to small-pox, and that the only way to abolish the disease is to
do as Leicester did, leave off vaccination altogether and devote our energies to
sanitation, and the isolation of such rare cases as do occur.


Yet this wonderfully conclusive test experiment was passed over by the Royal
Commissioners in 1894, with a few scattered remarks, which are either absolutely untrue or
entirely beside the question. (See "Vaccination a Delusion," p. 277.)


VI. The
Army and Navy: A Demonstration of the Uselessness of Vaccination


(1) The doctors always claim that, though the effect of vaccination in infancy wears
out, yet re-vaccination offers an almost complete protection for the rest of the person's
life. In a circular issued in 1884, and up to the time of the Royal Commission widely
distributed with the approval of the Local Government Board, it is stated that:


"Soldiers who have been re-vaccinated can live in cities intensely affected by
small-pox without themselves suffering to any appreciable degree from the disease." I
will now show you that this official statement is absolutely false.


(2) All soldiers and sailors are re-vaccinated on entering the service, unless they
have recently had small-pox. The reports of the Royal Commission give the small-pox deaths
in the Army and Navy from 1860 to 1894. The Registrar-General gives the total mortality
from disease in the two services for the same period.


I have compared these two mortalities by means of a diagram constructed from the
tables, and this is what we find. First, throughout the whole period the total mortality
from all diseases in the Army is much higher than in the Navy. Clearly, this is the result
of the one class living in barracks, largely in towns and cities, the other in the midst
of the pure and bracing sea air.


In the second place, there has been, in both services, throughout the thirty-four years
a continuous diminution of mortality, so that it is now only about one-third of what it
was thirty-four years ago; and this enormous improvement is stated by the Army and Navy
doctors to be due to the much better sanitation of ships and barracks, and to the great
improvement in the food and general treatment and medical attention in both services.


Thirdly, in both Army and Navy there has been a large decrease in the small-pox
mortality throughout the whole period, corresponding closely with that of the general
mortality, and certainly due to the same causes--improved sanitation and medical
treatment.


Fourthly, in the very same years (1871-2) as the great epidemic in England and on the
Continent, there was also a small-pox epidemic both in the Army and the Navy, and taking
account of the age of the men and their condition of constant medical supervision, quite
as severe as among the general population, who had not the alleged complete protection of
re-vaccination.


Fifthly, this is proved by two comparisons--with Ireland and with Leicester--from
tables given in the Reports of the Royal Commission extending from 1864 to 1894. The
diagrams formed from these tables show us that Irishmen of about the same ages as our
soldiers and sailors suffered more during the epidemic of 1872, but for the remainder of
the thirty years they had rather less small-pox mortality; while since 1881 they have had
not half the small-pox mortality of the Army and Navy.


(3) The other comparison is with Leicester, which city, in the period of twenty years
(1873-1892), during which they had been growing less and less vaccinated, has had a total
of only 16 small-pox deaths per 100,000 of its population, which includes thousands of
unvaccinated children and infants; while for the same period the deaths in the Army and
Navy amounted to over 70 per 100,000.


And yet we have had the impudently false statement circulated by thousands, under the
approval of the Local Government Board, that the re-vaccinated Army and Navy do not, under
the worst circumstances, "appreciably suffer!"


The Royal Commissioners, on the other hand, shirk the whole matter--make no comparisons
with other populations--but state vaguely that "particular classes" who have
been "exceptionally" re-vaccinated exhibit "quite exceptional advantages in
relation to small-pox,"--a statement which, as regards the only
"exceptionally" re-vaccinated large classes of men, is, as their own tables
show, the very reverse of the truth, since they suffer much more than the least vaccinated
class of about equal population in the whole kingdom.


It is thus absolutely demonstrated that it is the exceptionally unvaccinated that
possess the exceptional advantages, while the "exceptionally re-vaccinated" Army
and Navy show quite exceptional disadvantages, in a small-pox mortality during the same
twenty years, more than four times as great as the exceptionally unvaccinated town of
Leicester!


But the learned men of the Royal Commission never put these two facts side by side, so
that the Government and the public might draw their own conclusions from them. So far as
their Final Report shows, these gentlemen were ignorant or oblivious of the very existence
of these facts, which conclusively prove that Vaccination is not only worthless but an
injurious operation--a Gigantic Medical Imposture!


(4) For the reasons now stated, we call upon voters of all parties to refuse support to
every candidate who upholds the legal or other enforcement of vaccination, which, as we
have shown, both spreads disease and increases mortality.


No government has the right to order healthy infants to be blood-poisoned, under the
pretence of protection against a danger that may never arise.


The abolition of all laws enforcing or encouraging vaccination is therefore of more
immediate and vital importance than any party dogma or any political program.


VII. How to Deal with
Medical Pro-Vaccinators


(1) In my "Vaccination a Delusion" I have given examples of the grossest
misstatements of doctors and officials from the time of Jenner down to the present day.
They are such as often appear to be incredible, but none of them have ever been disproved.
Several have been given here; but there is one more which is so universal that it must be
briefly referred to.


In all Official Reports of small-pox epidemics the fatality of the unvaccinated is
always declared to be enormous as compared with the vaccinated. As an example, Dr. Gayton,
in a Table published in the Second Report of the Royal Commission, gives the percentage of
deaths to cases as follows:--


Vaccinated--7.45 percent


Unvaccinated--43.00 percent


But all the medical writers on small-pox during the eighteenth century agree in stating
that the average death-rate of small-pox patients was then from fourteen to eighteen per
cent. At that time, however, the sanitary state of our towns and hospitals was abominable,
while the medical treatment of small-pox was so incredibly bad that it is a wonder any
survived.


Yet the doctors ask us to believe that now, with far healthier conditions and with far
better treatment and nursing, more than twice as many unvaccinated small-pox patients die
as died then, when all were unvaccinated!


The thing is absolutely incredible and absurd; and the belief in it is due solely to
the fact that doctors register all deaths from small-pox as "unvaccinated" when
they can possibly find any excuse for doing so. One of them has stated that "the mere
assertions of patients or their friends that they were vaccinated counts for
nothing."


The alleged enormous mortality of the unvaccinated is further shown to be erroneous by
the fact that the published Reports of three of the largest small-pox hospitals for London
from 1876 to 1879 showed that the average small-pox mortality of all patients was about 18
per cent., or a little higher than during the eighteenth century.


This may be explained partly by the fact that many of the milder cases do not go to the
hospitals, and partly by the weakening of the constitution due to the blood-poisoning
operation of vaccination, which, when conditions are alike, renders the vaccinated less
able to resist small-pox than the unvaccinated. It has been well asked: "If about 36
percent of unvaccinated patients die of small-pox while only about 18 percent died in the
eighteenth century who or what kills the other 18 percent?"


It cannot be the general conditions, since the mortality from all diseases has greatly
diminished. There remains only the medical treatment. Do doctors accept this?


(2) Now if any one brings forward doctor's or official's figures as to the enormous
value of vaccination, ask them first the above questions. They will deny the facts. Then,
in my book you will find the official authority for these and all the other facts referred
to. They will be obliged to say they have never enquired into them, and you may then tell
them that they have no right to teach you who have enquired into them.


If you have a medical man to deal with, ask him why he does not admit Sir John Simon's
statement, that "the great masses of national experience can alone prove the value of
vaccination." Then show him the diagrams (in my book) which I have here referred to,
and ask him to prove that they show "great benefits of vaccination," instead of
showing as they do its absolute worthlessness.


(3) As to its terrible dangers, the thousands of lives vaccination has destroyed or
ruined as regards health, I have no space to refer to them here, but ample evidence from
the Royal Commission Reports is given in my book.


(4) Doctors and Members of Parliament are alike grossly ignorant of the true history of
the effects of vaccination.


They require to be taught; and nothing is so likely to teach them as to show them the
diagrams I have referred to in this short exposition of the subject--those of London for
thirty years before and after vaccination--of England and Wales during the period of
official registration--of Leicester which has almost abolished small-pox by refusing to be
vaccinated for thirty years--and for the Army and Navy--which, though thoroughly
re-vaccinated and therefore (according to the doctors) as well protected as they possibly
can be, yet die of small-pox at least as much as badly vaccinated Ireland, and many times
more than unvaccinated Leicester.


A doctor who has not studied these most vital statistics has no right to an opinion on
this subject.


A candidate for Parliament who will not give the necessary time and attention to study
them, but is yet ready to vote for penal laws against those who know infinitely more of
the question than he does, is utterly unworthy to receive a single vote from any
self-respecting constituency.

---

Note Appearing in the Original Work:


1[communication from Dr. Ruata:] "There is another consideration which has a
certain relation with vaccination and small-pox in the Italian Army. Our young men are
obliged, by law, to enter the Army at the age of twenty, so that the greatest part of them
pay this tribute to the State.


The consequence is that, after the age of twenty years, men are by far better
vaccinated than women, and after the age of twenty small-pox should kill less men than
women.


I wished to ascertain if this were true, and here are the figures representing the
numbers of deaths from small-pox in men and in women before and after the age of twenty
during our great epidemical years, 1887-88-89:--

Deaths	1887	1888	1889	Totals
	(men/women)	(men/women)	(men/women)	(men/women)
Under Twenty	5,997/5,983	7,349/7,353	5,626/5,631	18,972/18,968
Over Twenty	2,459/1,810	1,990/1,418	1,296/863	5,745/4,091

"All the following years until the last-known (1897) give the same results."


"I had care to send you these facts, which every one can appreciate as he thinks
best; and I hope that, for love of truth, you will publish them in the British Medical
Journal."


I remain, dear Sir,
Yours most faithfully,
Charles Ruata, M.D.,
Professor of Materia Medica in the University of Perugia,
and Professor of Hygiene in the Royal Agricultural College,
Universita di Perugia, May 10th, 1899.




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