In a previous letter to the Secretary of War, dated October 14, 1918,
and published in the _Washington Herald_ of November 20, 1918, I have
pointed out the dangerous nature of vaccination, particularly during
epidemics, and the hygienic importance of suspending all vaccination
during our recent epidemic of influenza and pneumonia, and the further
desirability of making all vaccination strictly free and voluntary. I
also then called attention to the probability that the repeated and
multiple vaccinations of millions of men, in this country and Europe,
with various septicemic infections for the last two years, may have had
some relation to this epidemic, which seems to have been more severe
among the vaccinated men in the military camps and hospitals than among
the rest of the population. And I would now like to repeat here some
of the important facts which I have stated in said letter as to both
the probable and the proved relation of vaccination to many deadly
epidemics.
GRAVE NATURE OF RECENT EPIDEMIC OF INFLUENZA AND PNEUMONIA, AND
POSSIBLE RELATION OF VACCINATION THERETO
From the rapidity, severity, and mortality of this disease, it would
seem not to be a true influenza, as heretofore known, and as its worst
cases are characterized by a rapid and fatal ending, with a few days’
sickness, in malignant or septic pneumonia, with abscesses in the
lungs, it seems more related to the very fatal “_Pneumonic Plague_”
which raged in Manchuria after the Japanese war. This suspicion is
strengthened by the fact that the chief germ found in the fatal
cases is the “streptococcus,” which is found in the worst forms of
“blood poisoning” or “septicemia,” and also in vaccination. Now,
the act of ordinary vaccination, as already proved, is, in itself,
an act of blood poisoning, pure and simple, and it is so classed in
medical and statistical works as a form of “septicemia,” and one
disease germ commonly found, with many others, in vaccine virus is the
streptococcus, which is the chief germ found in all bad pus infections
and abscess formations. Therefore, as the act of vaccination is simply
the impregnation of the body and blood with a pus infection identical
with “septicemia” or “pyæmia,” and as this infecting process has been
repeated at wholesale in the bodies of thousands and tens of thousands
of men closely massed in camps, should it be any wonder if an epidemic
of some sort of “septicemia” should crop out at some time under such
conditions?
In leading medical and statistical works, both influenza and pneumonia
and typhoid fever and vaccination are all classed as different forms of
“septicemia,” and while I do not, of course, know, and do not say, that
the recent epidemic of influenza and pneumonia was actually caused by
vaccination, yet I repeat that when the body and blood of millions of
men all over this country and Europe are deliberately impregnated with
various septic diseases, or septicemic infections, can any reasonable
person, whether doctor or layman, be surprised if such world-wide,
and million times repeated, acts of septicemic infection should be
ultimately proved to have some causative or conditional relation to the
recent world-wide epidemic of septicemic disease? Is it physically or
medically possible to go on sowing and spreading some known and unknown
septic diseases at wholesale, within human bodies, without reaping
some big harvest of deadly septic diseases as a necessary consequence?
In the words of Scripture, can we keep on “sowing” the “winds” of
infection without ultimately “reaping” the “whirlwind” of epidemics?
It has been suggested that this epidemic originated in the
multi-vaccinated and diseased or impoverished German army and has
traveled one-quarter round the earth from that focus of infection.
It has also been suggested that this epidemic originated from a
regiment of coolies or native Hindoo troops brought from India to
France who were infected with a severe disease like Pneumonic Plague,
and from them this disease spread to the other soldiers in camp and
field and thence over the world.
It has been further suggested that this disease should not be called a
true influenza or pneumonia at all, but is essentially a most virulent
form of general septicemia, and that it originated from the frightfully
infected soil of the battle-fields, which, in addition to the ordinary
deadly soil infections, contains virulent septicemic and cadaveric
infections from the great mass of buried and unburied bodies. And as
the soldiers in camp and field were already impregnated with several
septicemic infections in the multiple vaccinations of five or six kinds
to which they have been almost universally subjected, their systems
thus became “sensitized” or highly susceptible to further infection,
particularly to what was evidently a new and very severe type of soil
and cadaveric infection. This theory seems to fit the present known
facts and would explain the probable origin of this very severe type of
virulent septicemic plague, which shows itself in this mysterious and
deadly epidemic with its mortality of thirty to sixty per cent., which
we have been improperly regarding as ordinary influenza and pneumonia.
In my letter to the Secretary of War I proved that there was a distinct
medical and logical relation between influenza and vaccination, and
that many serious diseases, including smallpox and cowpox, commence
like influenza and may be mistaken for it,[2] but I do not need to go
into proof of that point here, but can now say that this point further
strengthens the suspicions stated that the recent epidemic of influenza
and septicemia or septic pneumonia may have had some causative relation
to the extensive wholesale and repeated vaccinations in the military
camps throughout the world, and would indicate, according to another
theory, that this vaccine infection had escaped from and overflowed its
usual bounds and was running wild as a world-wide epidemic infection;
and hence the positive and compelling reasons for checking this
overflowing infection by suspending all vaccination while this epidemic
and infecting condition exists, and making all vaccination voluntary
instead of compulsory as heretofore.