The Smallpox Vaccine
May 18, 2021
Alfred Russel Wallace, one of the first scholars who challenged the science of vaccination
THE modern anti-vaccine movement was born in 19th-century England.
But first the country doctor Edward Jenner, in 1796, came up with the idea of injecting microbes taken from cows infected with a disease similar to smallpox into humans. The idea was that small doses of the organisms would provide immunity. Thus the smallpox vaccine was invented. Jenner was a talented promoter and his project received major government funding.
At a time when many Britons were suffering from malnourishment and overcrowding in cities — both an inevitable consequence of the Protestant “Reformation,” which centralized wealth and caused a collapse of rural life — smallpox was one of many physical scourges that shortened the lifespan.
Interestingly, smallpox deaths were declining (see here) before the small pox vaccine was introduced.
In 1853, the Vaccination Act made vaccination compulsory in the first three months of a child’s life. In 1867, vaccinations were compulsory for all children below 14. Parents who refused were fined or even imprisoned.
Many parents were not happy about this and contended their children were being sickened. In fact, deaths from smallpox increased dramatically after vaccination was introduced. See relevant statistics and sources here.
In March 1884, resident George Bamford told magistrates his three eldest children had been vaccinated. Two had been confined to bed for days and a third had died.
For refusing to vaccinate his fourth child, he was ordered to pay 10 shillings – half the average weekly wage – or spend seven days in prison.
Fines were fiercely enforced. Police collecting a fine from one Arthur Ward threatened his pregnant wife with prison. The argument sent her into premature labour and the child was stillborn. (Source)
In 1869, the Leicester Anti-Vaccination League was founded and in 1885, a mass protest was held in Leicester. The notion that forced vaccination violated inalienable civil liberties was first voiced at that time.
Leicester implemented a system of sanitation and quarantine for smallpox victims and claimed superior results. In fact, the city had a much small rate of smallpox deaths that other municipalities.
Alfred Russel Wallace, the famous naturalist, wrote in 1889 that vaccination for smallpox had proved to be useless and dangerous, sickening people with a host of other conditions.
He wrote:
“It is often asserted that, although vaccination is not a complete protection against Small-pox, yet it diminishes the severity of the disease, and renders it less dangerous to those who take it. This assertion is sufficiently answered by the proof above given, that it has not diminished Small-pox mortality; but more direct evidence can be adduced.
“The best available records show that, the proportion of deaths to Small-pox cases is the same now, although a large majority of the population are vaccinated, as it was a century ago before vaccination was discovered. Dr. Jurin, in 1723; the London Small-pox Hospital Reports, 1746-63 ; Dr. Lambert, 1763 ; and Rees’ Cyclopaedia, 1779; give numbers varying from 16.5 to 25.3 as the percentage of mortality among Small-pox patients in hospitals; — the average of the whole being 18.8 per cent.
“Now for the epoch of vaccination. Mr. Marson, 1836-51, and the Reports of the London, Homerton, Deptford, Fulham, and Dublin Small-pox Hospitals, between 1870 and 1880, give numbers varying from 14.26 to 21.7 as the deaths percent, of Small-pox patients, the average being 18.5. And this, be it remembered, under the improved treatment and hygiene of the nineteenth as com- pared with the eighteenth century.
“These figures not only demonstrate the falsehood of the oft-repeated assertion that vaccination mitigates Small- pox, but they go far to prove the very opposite — that the disease has been rendered more intractable by it; or how can we account for the mortality among Small-pox patients being almost exactly the same now as a century ago, notwithstanding the great advance of medical science and the improvements in hospitals and hospital treatment?*” [bold added]
—- Vaccination Proved Useless and Dangerous from Forty-five years of Registration Statistics by Alfred Russel Wallace, E.W. Allen, 1889; pp. 12-13
In the early 20th-century, smallpox vaccination was compulsory in the United States too. According to Michael Willrich, author of Pox: An American History:
“There were scenes of policemen holding down men in their night robes while vaccinators began their work on their arms… Inspectors were going room to room looking for children with smallpox. And when they found them, they were literally tearing babes from their mothers’ arms to take them to the city pesthouse [which housed smallpox victims.]”
Willrich is an advocate of forced vaccination — now that it has supposedly been made safe — and yet there is no proof that smallpox was eradicated by vaccines — and there is good reason to believe it was not even contagious.
By the way, Edward Jenner vaccinated his 18-month-old son with cow-pox in 1798.
His son died of tuberculosis at the age of 21, and Jenner decided not to vaccinate his second son.
The development of modern vaccines coincides with the growth in eugenicist beliefs and of Freemasonry’s hold over medical thinking. But that is a subject for another day …
