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

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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.

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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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Filed under: health, military, science Tagged: Army, government, Leicester, Local Government Board, Royal Commission, Smallpox, United States, Vaccination

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