Edward Jenners first vaccination or innoculation with cowpox took place on the 14th of May, 1796,nearly a century and a half ago.
An admirer of Jenners writings in 1957 said: “Study thoroughly that masterpiece of medical induction and imitate the patience and caution and modesty with which Jenner laid the foundation of every statement he advanced.” Commenting on this, Charles Creighton,M.d., Jenners three essays on cowpox innoculation I seemed to find myself dealing with reasoning which were anything but masterly and with a writer who was never – precise when he could be vague and was never straightforward when he could be secretive.”.
Edward Jenner and Louis Pasteur are numbered among the immortals in the annals of modern medical science. In a book entitled bechamp Versus Pasteur by Alexander Paul we find Pasteur referred to as one of the greatest plagiarists of modern times. Both Jenner and Pasteur were apparently responsible for turning medical science and research in a false and dangerous direction.
While we are concerning ourselves with the specific question of vaccination against smallpox we must not lose sight of its significant relation to the many other forms of serum and vaccine prophylaxis and treatment so widely practiced and strenuously advocated at the present time.
The crudity and danger of the old method of variolation or direct arm to arm innoculation with the virus of unmodified smallpox need not concern us for the present.
The history of vaccination records many experiments, many vicissitudes, many legal complications and an untold number of tragedies. The older method of scarification, using bone, quill or so-called ivory vaccine points and the outmoded vaccination shield resulted in many cases to tetanus, syphilis,streptococcic and other pyogenic infections with disastrous and sometimes fatal consequences. The present methods are technically better and the immediate risk much less, but the potential for danger is still exceedingly great, the virus often having an insidiously detrimental effect upon the constitution.
Smallpox vaccine as manufactured at present was originally obtained from a human source, from a typical case of human smallpox. All of the material, including lymph, pus and crusts from the smallpox vesicles, is collected and triturated. Calves are then innoculated with this material.In this way the smallpox virus is modified or attenuated until it has, under ordinary conditions lost its power of producing a generalized eruption and the constitutional symptoms which would warrant the diagnosis of smallpox. The local reaction in vaccination is normally confined to the area of innoculation and there should be no generalized eruptive manifestation.
A consistent effort is maintained by the manufacturers to keep the violence of the reaction sufficiently limited to preclude the likelihood of active opposition to vaccination on the part of either the laity or the medical profession.
The stock or seed virus, as it is called, is kept at a temperature of minus 20 degrees Centigrade (-4 degrees Fahrenheit). If kept at temperatures much above this its potency becomes altered and the reactions modified. This may and often does result in fewer “takes” or successful vaccinations,but sometimes, owing to the accidental presence of spores or bacteria in a resting stage the higher temperature may cause an awakening, as it were, of the spores with perhaps disastrous consequences to the vaccinated individual.
The same strain of virus can be kept going for years and a new harvest of vaccine material is reaped by innoculating a group of approximately twenty calves with the seed virus. A larger or smaller number of calves can be employed according tot he demands of the market. The vaccine is sealed in sterile capillary tubes and the containers are stamped with a date limit. The vaccine should be used within six weeks after production for safety and in order to insure a high percentage of successful vaccinations.
The virus purchased in the market should be kept below 5 degrees Centigrade (41 F.) until used. Does each and every physician place his vaccine in the refrigerator until used? We dare say most emphatically, “No”.
The seed virus previously mentioned sometimes loses its potency and to step it up a healthy baby is vaccinated and all the material, including lymph, pus and scab is obtained when the reaction is at its height. This is triturated and mixed with the seed virus. In this way the vaccine stock is perpetuated indeficiently. One calf should yield enough virus or vaccine lymph to vaccinate about 1500 people-a very neat profit on each calf even if we allow a margin o only ten cents per individual vaccine tube.
According to the manufacturers a primary vaccination should afford reasonable protection against smallpox for a period reasonable projection against smallpox for a period of five years. It is by no means a lifetimes proposition as was formerly assumed to be the case. Therefore, according to the admitted statements of the advocates of majority of those who were vaccinated during childhood have long since outworn their alleged immunity. This means that most of us are really and even admittedly unprotected. Commercially it would be great to put vaccination on a yearly renewal basis, but the public will stand for only just so much.
According to H,.NB.Anderson of the Citizens Medical Reference Bureau, only states have a vaccination requirement; in six it is optional four states specially prohibit it and in twenty-nine there is no requirement. In Arizona.minnesota North Dakota and Utah there are statutory provisions against compulsory vaccination. These facts should be news to the public who are carefully guarded, here in the East especially against any information that might tend to limit the sale of smallpox vaccine or any other biological product.
The psychological aspects of vaccination cannot be ignored. People probably are as gullible today as at any time in recorded history and there has undoubtedly been a commercial or profit motive behind every well established superstition the world over.
The public is advertised and sold into its beliefs. Vaccination is an impressive ritual attended always with more or less emotional shock as well as with a marked physiological reaction. That vaccination does not always confer immunity has been proven too many times to admit of contradiction. There are plenty of recorded instances of physicians, been successfully vaccinated only to come down with unmodified smallpox within a few weeks to a year or so later. The advocates and profiteers of vaccination are gambling on the law of probability.
The vast majority of people will not and would not contract smallpox anyway and the impression is conveyed, which is entirely erroneous, that anyone who goes through life without contracting smallpox has escaped because he was vaccinated. Quarantine, isolation, cleanliness and sanitation are proven methods of prophylaxis against this disease.
The vaccination scar on the arm or leg is, in effect. an amulet or charm. It is like wearing a rabbits foot tied on a string around the neck. Seeing the scar one feels protected and therefore happy about the whole proposition.
By means of the radio, motion picture and the press the public is continually advertised into serum and vaccine prophylaxis and treatment and other recognized and accredited therapeutic measures which are sold for a price. Were it not for the commercial aspect many of these measures would promptly become obsolete.
According to Mr.Porter F.Cope. of Philadelphia,the surviving member of the Pennsylvania Stage Vaccination Commission appointed by Governor Tener in 1911 and who testified as an expert witness in the Marsh vaccination case at Carlisle,., would appear that supposedly reputable members of the medical profession are on salary on the quiet, from biological and chemical houses for no other purpose than to keep the medical profession and the medical societies and organizations whipped into line and goose-stepping to the prescribed music. Anyone who happens to have temerity to take any action or to testify in the interest of health and freedom against such compulsory practices as that of vaccination is very likely to hear about it and the wrath of the gods may fall upon his head.
In the Pennsylvania Medical Journal, February 1939, page 552,we read:.
The country Medical Society-the only doorway through which physicians may become members of the State of Medical Society and the American Medical Association-have constantly used considerable care in the selection of new members and some disciplinary control has been exercised over the professional ethics of the membership in their relation to each other and with the public.
The disciplinary control is exercised whenever large commercial interests are threatened.
Coming now to the potential dangers of vaccination,every physician of experience has heard a statement such as this: “Doctor, he has never been well since he was vaccinated.” We have personally observed stunted growth, anaemia, glandular swellings, infections and many other disorders following so promptly and so frequently after vaccination as not possible to consider as merely accidental Boiled and abscesses have followed vaccination too often to ignore the relation between cause and effect.
Eugene passed away at his country home on Spring Hill, Tuscarora Township, Bradford County, PA. He had been in ill health for several months. His wife, the former Caroline Davis, whom he had married in Philadelphia in 1910, had passed away in 1961. They spent most of their marriage lives in Swarthmore, PA.
Dr. Underhill was a member of the United Lodge of Theosophy, a member of the Philadelphia County Medical Society, and the Pennsylvania Medical Society. He was also the editor of the Homœopathic Recorder.