Tonsillitis, quinsy and sinus infection have frequently followed hard upon vaccination. In allergic individuals vaccination some times produces a particularly violent reaction. In asthmatic subjects and tuberculous individuals untoward consequences have many times been recorded. Appendicitis has followed vaccination with more than casual frequency.
We recall the case of a man forty hears of age with a strong tuberculous family history. He had been successfully vaccinated when a child and was re-vaccinated during the “vaccination epidemic” which occurred in Philadelphia in the spring of 1926. The sore refused to heal, remained open and discharged pus for months. His physician finally cauterized the sore with silver nitrate, thus checking or suppressing the discharge, which then found another avenue of expression and attacked the appendix.
The patient was operated for abscessed appendix and drainage was required. The drainage continued and after several months local treatment was undertaken and the purulent discharge was suppressed. Again thwarted in her eliminative efforts, nature was forced to retreat and the trouble was driven to a still deeper level within the constitution. The lungs were attacked with active tuberculosis and the patient died. In our opinion the sequence of evens was perfectly orderly and logical:.
1. The family history of tuberculosis (predisposition).
2. The primary vaccination in childhood (increasing the. natural allergen).
3. Re-vaccination at forty years of age.
4. Suppression of the vaccinial discharge by cauterization.
5. Appendicitis with abscess formation.
6. Suppression of this discharge.
7. Tuberculosis of the lungs.
8. Death.
We believe vaccination in this case was just as truly a cause of death as tuberculosis. At least it was to determining factor which wrapped the patients constitution and turned his biochemistry in a wrong direction and every subsequent therapeutic measure helped to seal his doom.
Nature has made all necessary provision to handle articles of food and drink and even medicinal substances introduced into the body through the mouth. Where nature has anticipated invasion she has protected herself against it. Surgical or therapeutic invasion of the easily accessible mucous surfaces of cavities is note particularly dangerous although we are generally opposed to local treatments or surgical operations involving the sinuses. We believe more cases of sinus infection are caused than are ever cured by such intervention. In cases of invasion of the serious cavities, such as the knee joint, the most perfect technique and the most careful asepsis usually fail to prevent inflammatory reactions of varying grades of severity.
To vaccinate an individual, to inject a serum or even to give a blood transfusion is to turn foreign elements and biological substances loose within the body and at a point where nature has not anticipated invasion nor protected herself against it. Serums and vaccines of all kinds are complex materials of more or less unknown structure and composition and their ultimate effect upon the constitution is not limited to the aim and intention of the physician who prescribes them. The appearance of the vaccine vesicle is evidence that nature recognizes the presence of a foreign and objectionable substance and attempts to throw it out of the system.
If the vaccination doe not apparently take does it necessarily ,mean that nothing has happened within the organism? By no means. It may, of course, signify that the potency of the vaccine was below the usual standard, but it usually means that the patients powers of reaction are deficient. If someone hits a strong, healthy man on the jaw the chances are he will react with both promptness and vigor. Hit a weak, sickly individual who has no fight left in him and he will just have to take it. The vaccine virus may be absorbed into the constitution and lie apparently dormant for years.
It is significant that the alarming increase in cancer, infantile paralysis, encephalitis, diabetes, heart diseases, nervous disorders and insanity is closely following the ever rising curve of serum and vaccine prophylaxis and treatment.
As free citizens of a free common wealth and a supposedly self governing democracy every individual should have the right to say what shall or shall not be done to his own body and person and to the bodies of his minor children. If he engages the services of a physician, that physician has the right to advise and prescribe whatever treatment seems to him indicated or advisable, but it is the patients inalienable right to discharge the physician and engage someone else anytime he sees fit to do so. If the treatment appears to him likely to prove worse than the disease he dopes not have to take it.
Compulsion is incompatible with freedom. It is a sinister step toward totalitarianism and toward to dictatorship which would ultimately invade every department of life and human activity.
In the opinion of the writer,if compulsory vaccination were to be done away with it would not only be in the interest of freedom, but also in the interest of improved public health. The only ones who would be likely to suffer in the absence of compulsion would be those having a commercial interest at stake. PHILADELPHIA,.
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.