Sanitation, Not Vaccination (1881)

By William Tebb – 20 Q&As – Unbekoming Book Summary

In October 1881, as delegates from across Europe and America gathered in Cologne for the Second International Anti-Vaccination Congress, William Tebb stood before them with a paper that would crystallize decades of observation into a single, devastating argument. “Sanitation, Not Vaccination, The True Protection Against Small-Pox” challenged not merely the efficacy of vaccination but the entire edifice upon which compulsory medical intervention had been built. Tebb, serving as Honorary Secretary for the London Society for the Abolition of Compulsory Vaccination, brought to this international gathering evidence that would resonate far beyond the conference halls—evidence that the decline of smallpox owed less to Jenner’s celebrated discovery than to the unglamorous work of improving sewers, water supplies, and living conditions. The Congress itself, which had grown from eighteen delegates in Paris the previous year to forty in Cologne, represented a remarkable coalescence of medical dissent, bringing together physicians, statisticians, and reformers who saw in vaccination not humanity’s salvation but its systematic poisoning.

At the heart of Tebb’s argument lay a simple yet profound observation: wherever sanitation improved, disease retreated, regardless of vaccination rates. He presented data from Leicester, where smallpox had become “about the least dangerous of all diseases” through isolation and hygiene despite having thousands of unvaccinated children. He detailed the Prussian experience, where 124,978 vaccinated citizens died of smallpox in 1871-72 after thirty-five years of the most stringent compulsory vaccination in Europe, only to see the disease virtually disappear following comprehensive sanitary reforms—better water, proper drainage, improved barracks. The contrast was stark: while vaccination had been enforced with increasing severity since 1853 in England, culminating in fines, seizure of goods, and imprisonment for non-compliant parents, smallpox mortality in London had actually increased 80 percent in the decade ending 1880. Meanwhile, typhus and other zymotic diseases, which received no special prophylactic attention beyond general sanitation, showed dramatic declines.

The Congress revealed vaccination’s failures to be neither isolated nor accidental but systematic across nations. Delegates presented maps and statistical tables from Sweden showing smallpox epidemics arriving and departing wholly irrespective of vaccination rates, with the heaviest epidemics sometimes following the most thorough vaccination campaigns. Dr. Oidtmann’s testimony from the Franco-Prussian War proved particularly damning: German forces, who maintained superior hygiene and sanitation, suffered far less from smallpox than French forces, despite both armies being equally vaccinated. The improved dwellings associations in London provided perhaps the most compelling evidence—model housing developments with proper sanitation reported virtually no smallpox deaths over decades, while surrounding slums with similar vaccination rates but poor sanitation remained hotbeds of disease. These were not theories but documented observations that vaccination advocates struggled to explain away.

Tebb’s presentation joined a growing chorus of scientific dissent that included some of the era’s most rigorous minds. Alfred Russell Wallace, co-discoverer of natural selection, was already preparing his devastating statistical analysis that would prove vaccination “both useless and dangerous” using forty-five years of registration data. Dr. Walter Hadwen would soon deliver lectures exposing how Jenner—who never passed a medical examination in his life and obtained his degree through what his own biographer called “little less than fraud”—had built his entire theory on essentially one experiment with James Phipps. These Victorian critics laid the foundation for what would become, over a century later, comprehensive works like “Dissolving Illusions” by Suzanne Humphries and Roman Bystrianyk, which would use the same historical evidence Tebb and his contemporaries gathered to demonstrate that vaccination had simply “waltzed in” after sanitation had done the real work of disease reduction, claiming credit for improvements it had not created. Even respected medical authorities of Tebb’s time were fracturing; Dr. Creighton and Dr. Crookshank, who began as conventional practitioners, became vocal critics after investigating vaccination’s actual evidence base. These were not cranks or conspiracy theorists but serious scientists applying the era’s emerging statistical methods to claims that had previously escaped scrutiny.

Vaccination: Proved Useless and Dangerous (1889)

The Case Against Vaccination (1896)

Dissolving Illusions

What makes Tebb’s 1881 address remarkable is not merely its prescience—though history would vindicate his emphasis on sanitation over vaccination—but its exposure of patterns that would repeat with uncanny precision 140 years later. The manipulation of statistics, the classification of cases to support predetermined conclusions, the punishment of dissent, the elevation of medical dogma over empirical observation, the sacrifice of individual liberty to claimed collective benefit—all these elements that Tebb documented would resurface virtually unchanged during recent events. His closing words ring with particular poignancy: that vaccination represented “a gross infraction of the liberty of the citizen and of parental rights,” enforced through “a cruel and criminal despotism” that ignored mounting evidence of harm while enriching those who administered it. The delegates who applauded his presentation could hardly have imagined that their struggle against what they called medical tyranny would need to be fought again by their descendants, using remarkably similar arguments against remarkably similar opponents, in an age that had promised to be more enlightened but proved merely to be more technologically sophisticated in its methods of coercion.

With thanks to William Tebb.

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Discussion No.127:

Insights and reflections from “Sanitation, Not Vaccination”

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Analogy

Imagine a grand old mansion that has fallen into disrepair. The walls are damp, the rooms are filled with refuse, vermin scurry through the halls, and the air is thick with foul odors. The inhabitants are constantly falling ill. Now, two different experts arrive to solve the problem. The first expert, representing the vaccination approach, says: “The solution is to inject everyone living here with small doses of various diseases. This will protect them from getting sick in this environment.” They proceed to give everyone shots containing weakened versions of the very illnesses plaguing the house, claiming this will build immunity.

The second expert, representing the sanitation approach, shakes their head and says: “The solution is to clean the house, fix the plumbing, let in fresh air and sunlight, remove the refuse, and eliminate the sources of disease.” They proceed to transform the mansion - opening windows, scrubbing floors, installing proper drainage, and creating a clean, healthy environment. Soon, the inhabitants stop falling ill not because they’ve been injected with diseases, but because the causes of disease have been removed. The anti-vaccination movement of the 1880s was essentially arguing that society had hired the first expert when they should have hired the second - that we were poisoning people to protect them from poison, when we should have simply removed the poison from their environment.

The One-Minute Elevator Explanation

In the 1880s, a global movement challenged the medical establishment’s insistence that injecting people with cowpox would protect them from smallpox. These anti-vaccination advocates weren’t crazy - they were presenting hard evidence. They showed that cities with the highest vaccination rates still had terrible smallpox epidemics, while places that focused on cleanliness, fresh air, and good drainage saw the disease virtually disappear. Take Leicester, England - they refused vaccination but isolated any smallpox cases immediately and had hardly any deaths. Meanwhile, London forced everyone to get vaccinated, even hunting down resisters like fugitives, yet their smallpox deaths increased by 80% over thirty years.

The movement’s investigators discovered something shocking: vaccination was spreading other diseases like syphilis to infants, killing thousands more than smallpox ever did. They found that smallpox, like all contagious diseases, thrived in filth and poverty. Clean up the slums, give people decent housing and pure water, and the disease vanished - no vaccination needed. Model housing projects in London proved this dramatically, with residents enjoying near-zero disease rates while surrounded by epidemic-ravaged slums. The anti-vaccinators argued that governments were violating personal freedom and parental rights by forcing a dangerous medical procedure that didn’t even work, when simple sanitation would actually solve the problem. They wanted to restore the basic human right to protect your own children from what you believed was harmful, not be forced to inject them with disease in the name of prevention.

[Elevator dings]

Follow these threads: Look up the Leicester Method of smallpox control, research the model dwellings movement in Victorian London, and investigate infant mortality statistics before and after compulsory vaccination laws.

12-Point Summary

1. Sanitation Triumphant Over Vaccination The anti-vaccination movement of the 1880s built their case on solid empirical evidence showing that improved sanitation, not vaccination, was responsible for declining disease rates. Cities that focused on cleanliness, proper drainage, pure water, and fresh air saw dramatic reductions in all zymotic diseases including smallpox. The movement presented data from multiple sources demonstrating that whenever sanitary conditions improved, disease rates plummeted regardless of vaccination status. This wasn’t theoretical - it was proven repeatedly in model housing developments, military campaigns, and entire cities that chose sanitation over vaccination.

2. The Leicester Method’s Success Leicester, England, became the movement’s crown jewel of evidence. With 120,000 inhabitants including thousands of unvaccinated children, the city rejected mass vaccination in favor of immediate isolation of any smallpox cases. The result was stunning: over five years, they had hardly five smallpox deaths total. The disease became less dangerous than scarlet fever, measles, or even whooping cough. This practical demonstration that simple isolation worked better than vaccination enraged the medical establishment but inspired anti-vaccination advocates worldwide. Leicester proved you could control smallpox without injecting anyone with cowpox.

3. London’s Vaccination Failure Despite the most aggressive vaccination enforcement in England - including house-to-house searches, prosecution of resistant parents, and forced vaccination of week-old infants in workhouses - London’s smallpox mortality increased by 80% between 1851-1880. The capital city had vaccination officers hunting down the unvaccinated like fugitives, special payments to encourage compliance, and relentless court prosecutions. Yet smallpox deaths rose from 7,150 to 15,551 over three decades. This spectacular failure of the most thoroughly vaccinated city in the world provided powerful ammunition for the anti-vaccination cause.

4. Disease Transmission Through Vaccination Official government statistics revealed a horrifying truth: vaccination was transmitting deadly diseases to infants. Syphilis deaths among babies under one year increased from 472 to 1,851 per million births, while scrofula rose from 335 to 1,153 per million. Medical authorities admitted these diseases could be transmitted through arm-to-arm vaccination, with documented cases of forty-year-old adults contracting syphilis during re-vaccination. The movement calculated that 26,000 infants died annually from vaccination-transmitted diseases to allegedly save 50 from smallpox - a deadly mathematical absurdity.

5. The Poor Suffer Most Statistical analysis revealed that smallpox devastated poor districts while barely touching wealthy areas, regardless of vaccination rates. During the 1881 London epidemic, aristocratic neighborhoods like Hyde Park and Kensington saw virtually no cases, while slums in Hackney, Bethnal-green, and Southwark were ravaged. The pattern was consistent: damp, overcrowded, poorly ventilated areas near rivers and marshes suffered terribly, while clean, airy suburbs remained healthy. This proved that living conditions, not vaccination status, determined disease susceptibility, yet authorities continued forcing vaccination on the poor while ignoring their squalid environments.

6. International Movement Organization The anti-vaccination movement achieved remarkable international coordination through two major congresses. The 1880 Paris Congress brought together delegates from eight countries and successfully blocked French legislation mandating compulsory vaccination. The 1881 Cologne Congress expanded to forty delegates representing leagues across Europe and America, establishing an international executive committee with representatives from fifteen countries. They shared statistical evidence, distributed literature in multiple languages, and coordinated strategies to challenge compulsory vaccination laws. This wasn’t a fringe movement but a sophisticated international alliance of doctors, scientists, and reformers.

7. Model Dwellings Prove Sanitation Works London’s model dwelling associations provided irrefutable proof that sanitation alone could prevent disease. The Improved Industrial Dwellings Company housed 18,000 people in London’s densest areas yet achieved mortality rates half those of surrounding slums. During a severe smallpox epidemic, they had exactly one death. The Metropolitan Association went ten years without a single smallpox death among thousands of residents. These weren’t theoretical experiments but practical demonstrations that clean, well-ventilated housing with proper drainage protected residents better than any vaccination program, even in the midst of epidemic-prone areas.

8. Historical Evidence of Sanitary Success The movement presented compelling historical evidence showing how diseases disappeared when sanitary conditions improved, without any medical intervention. Plague, sweating sickness, and black death - once considered inevitable divine punishments - vanished when cities stopped dumping refuse in streets, separated sewage from water supplies, and improved ventilation. Dr. Oidtmann’s evidence from the Franco-German War proved this dramatically: French hospitals with poor sanitation suffered massive casualties while German hospitals with good hygiene had excellent recovery rates, though both armies were equally vaccinated. History demonstrated repeatedly that cleanliness, not vaccination, conquered disease.

9. Medical Profession’s Economic Interests The anti-vaccination movement exposed how financial incentives corrupted medical objectivity. Vaccination grants exceeded £100,000 annually, creating a powerful economic motive to maintain the system. Public vaccinators received special payments for achieving high compliance rates, while no funds were allocated to investigate disease causes. Edwin Chadwick revealed that twenty years of doubled medical department spending produced no measurable improvement in death rates, unlike modest investments in sanitation. The movement compared doctors defending vaccination to clergymen opposing church disendowment - both protecting their income sources rather than serving public good.

10. Personal Liberty and Parental Rights Compulsory vaccination laws were denounced as gross violations of English constitutional principles and fundamental human rights. The movement compared forced vaccination to American fugitive slave laws, noting how parents were hunted, prosecuted, and imprisoned for protecting their children from what they believed was harmful. The 1853 Vaccination Acts passed without public discussion or debate, imposing medical treatment by force. Anti-vaccinators argued that parents’ sacred duty to protect their offspring was being usurped by the state’s pretended duty to experiment on children, representing an intolerable tyranny that must be resisted and overthrown.

11. Scientific Evidence Against Vaccination Theory The movement marshaled extensive scientific evidence challenging vaccination’s basic premises. Swedish statistics showed smallpox epidemics came and went regardless of vaccination rates, with some of the worst outbreaks following thorough vaccination campaigns. Pasteur’s oxygen experiments suggested that fresh air naturally destroyed disease organisms, supporting sanitation over inoculation. The fact that authorities refused to vaccinate weak or sickly children - those most needing protection - exposed the logical contradiction at vaccination’s heart. If it truly protected, why deny it to the vulnerable? The answer was that vaccination itself was dangerous, particularly to those already weakened.

12. Vision for Natural Health The anti-vaccination movement articulated a comprehensive vision for public health based on natural law rather than artificial intervention. They advocated for every household to become a center of sanitation: letting in sun, keeping out damp, maintaining cleanliness, eating pure food, and breathing fresh air. This approach would make vaccination unnecessary by removing disease causes rather than spreading disease to prevent disease. They sought a future where improved living conditions, education about hygiene, and respect for human rights would replace forced medical procedures. Their ultimate goal was liberating humanity from both disease and medical tyranny through the simple application of sanitary science.

The Golden Nugget

The most profound yet little-known revelation in this text is Dr. Oidtmann’s discovery during the Franco-German War that provides irrefutable proof of sanitation’s superiority over vaccination. Both the French and German armies were equally vaccinated, yet their smallpox outcomes differed dramatically based solely on hospital conditions. In French military hospitals with “pest atmosphere” and poor ventilation, soldiers died in appalling numbers from blood poisoning and disease. But in Abbeville, where German doctors maintained proper hygiene without French medical supervision, both French and German soldiers recovered at equal rates. This natural experiment - same war, same diseases, same vaccination status, but different sanitary conditions - produced completely different outcomes. The implications are staggering: two equally vaccinated populations showed that environment, not vaccination, determined who lived and who died. This evidence was so powerful it could have ended the vaccination debate, yet it remains largely unknown because it threatens the entire theoretical foundation of disease prevention through inoculation.

20 Questions and Answers

1. What was the main argument presented at the Second International Anti-Vaccination Congress in 1881?

The central argument was that sanitation, not vaccination, constitutes the true protection against smallpox and other zymotic diseases. The Congress maintained that disease prevention should focus on removing the causes of disease through improved living conditions, pure water, fresh air, and cleanliness rather than artificially spreading disease through vaccination. This position held that placing healthy populations in favorable conditions of air, water, warmth, food, dwelling, and work would provide the most effective security against disease invasion.

The delegates argued that the propagation of disease on the pretext of preventing disease was fundamentally flawed in logic, wicked in morals, and futile in practice. They presented evidence that smallpox epidemics occurred irrespective of vaccination rates, with some of the heaviest epidemics following thorough vaccination campaigns. The Congress sought to demonstrate through statistical and empirical evidence that improved sanitation had achieved what vaccination had failed to accomplish - the actual reduction of disease mortality.

2. How did historical sanitary conditions in cities contribute to disease outbreaks?

Two centuries ago, cities were breeding grounds for pestilence due to appalling sanitary conditions. Streets remained unpaved with open gutters, cesspools festered under houses, and stagnant ditches polluted the environment. The air was contaminated with effluvia from decaying bodies interred close to urban populations. Cabbage stalks and rotting fruit accumulated at the thresholds of even noble residences, while rubbish was shot into public squares, creating receptacles for dead animals and offal under the windows of the great magnates of the realm.

Indoor conditions proved equally unwholesome, with floors made of loam and strewed with rushes that remained for twenty years, accumulating fish bones, broken victuals, and filth from both dogs and men. Clothing was seldom changed and pervaded with odours, while food was coarse and badly cooked. These conditions fostered plague, sweating sickness, black death, remittent fever, and smallpox - all forms of zymotic diseases engendered by filthy habits and unwholesome surroundings. Men died faster in the lanes of towns than on the coast of Guinea, making urban life extraordinarily hazardous.

3. What evidence did Dr. Oidtmann present from the Franco-German War regarding sanitation and disease?

Dr. Oidtmann’s observations from the 1870-71 campaign provided compelling evidence for sanitation’s superiority over vaccination. He found that French hospital rooms were inexpressibly close and ill-smelling, becoming breeding places for smallpox poison where patients were miserably decimated. The French hospitals maintained a veritable pest atmosphere night and day, resulting in wonderfully great numbers dying from pyaemia and phlegmonia compared to German hospitals, despite both armies being equally vaccinated.

In contrast, at Abbeville where German physicians implemented proper hygienic arrangements without French army doctors present, the recovery statistics from smallpox proved highly favorable and equal for both French and Germans. The enormous difference in mortality between the two armies stemmed from the crying neglect of hygienic precautions in French military departments versus the freshness of German hospital arrangements. This demonstrated that sanitary conditions, not vaccination status, determined disease outcomes, providing decisive proof that smallpox strength and spread was proportioned to the fostering and shutting in of disease vapours.

4. How did the model dwelling associations in London demonstrate the effectiveness of sanitation?

The Improved Industrial Dwellings Company, controlling 3,681 tenements with 18,000 residents in London’s densest areas, achieved a mortality rate of only 16.7 per thousand while adjoining houses suffered rates of 30 to 35 per thousand. During a severe smallpox epidemic year, only one death from the disease occurred among their entire population. This remarkable achievement resulted solely from providing wholesome habitation with proper ventilation, drainage, and cleanliness.

The Metropolitan Association for Improving the Dwellings of the Industrial Classes showed similar results, with a death rate of 15.5 per thousand among 5,675 residents, saving seven to eight lives per thousand compared to the metropolitan average. Over ten years, not a single smallpox death occurred in their buildings, while surrounding habitations remained hotbeds of contagion. The Victoria Dwellings Association achieved even more impressive results with only twenty-four deaths among 2,500 residents over twelve months - less than half the metropolitan death rate - and zero smallpox deaths since formation.

5. What were the key achievements and decisions of the International Anti-Vaccination Congresses?

The first International Anti-Vaccination Congress in Paris (December 1880) brought together eighteen delegates from eight countries and resulted in widespread continental attention to the vaccination question. The delegates successfully prevented Dr. Liouville’s bill to make vaccination and re-vaccination compulsory in France through direct representations to government ministers. Twenty addresses containing vast medical and statistical evidence against vaccination were published and widely distributed, marking a significant victory for the movement.

The Second Congress at Cologne (October 1881) exceeded its predecessor with forty delegates representing leagues from Switzerland, Württemberg, Prussia, Saxony, Belgium, France, England, and the United States. The Congress exhibited maps and tables demonstrating smallpox incidence irrespective of vaccination rates, distributed extensive anti-vaccination literature, and formulated working plans for continued agitation. The delegates unanimously decided to hold the 1882 Congress in Berlin, carrying the standard into the center of the German pro-vaccination camp, while establishing an international executive committee with representatives from fifteen countries to coordinate the global movement.

6. How did Leicester’s approach to smallpox prevention differ from other cities?

Leicester, a town of 120,000 inhabitants with many thousands of unvaccinated children, adopted a policy of immediate isolation upon discovering any smallpox case rather than relying on vaccination. This approach resulted in hardly five deaths over five years, making smallpox about the least dangerous of all diseases in the city - less threatening than scarlet fever, measles, whooping cough, diarrhea, or consumption. The success of this method led to the complete disappearance of fear regarding the disease among the population.

The Leicester approach demonstrated that practical sanitary measures could effectively control smallpox without vaccination. Their resistance to vaccination increased as their alternative method proved successful, creating a model that challenged the orthodox medical establishment’s insistence on compulsory vaccination. The Leicester Town Crier even produced a clever cartoon showing how their representative, Mr. P.A. Taylor, had crushed the arguments of vaccination advocate Dr. W.B. Carpenter, symbolizing the triumph of empirical success over theoretical medical dogma.

7. What statistical evidence was presented showing vaccination’s failure to prevent smallpox?

The Registrar-General’s data for London revealed damning evidence against vaccination’s efficacy. Despite rigorous enforcement including house-to-house visitation, workhouse vaccinations of week-old infants, and relentless prosecution of non-compliant parents, smallpox mortality increased dramatically. The decades showed: 1851-60 had 7,150 deaths, 1861-70 had 8,347 deaths, and 1871-80 had 15,551 deaths - representing an 80% increase in the last decade despite unprecedented vaccination compliance.

Additional statistics demonstrated that while infant smallpox deaths decreased slightly, adult mortality increased disproportionately. Before compulsory vaccination, 100 per million died of smallpox above age five; after enforcement, this rose to 174 per million. The reduction in infant deaths was attributed not to vaccination but to the elimination of the weakest children through vaccine-induced diseases. Swedish official returns showed smallpox epidemics came and went wholly irrespective of vaccination, with the heaviest epidemics sometimes following immediately after the most thorough vaccination campaigns.

8. What diseases were claimed to be transmitted through vaccination?

Syphilis emerged as the most dreaded disease transmitted through vaccination, with official returns showing an increase from 472 to 1,851 per million births among infants under one year. The medical profession’s ablest members admitted that syphilis could be inoculated during vaccination, with documented cases of transmission to adults as old as forty years during re-vaccination. The vulnerability of three-month-old infants to such contamination was considered even greater than that of adults.

Scrofula showed a similar alarming increase, rising from 335 to 1,153 per million births. Beyond these specific diseases, vaccination was accused of transmitting various blood impurities from donors including the diseases of the insane, profligate, dram-drinkers, and inveterate tobacco smokers. The practice was also linked to pyaemia, phlegmonia, and general blood poisoning. These inoculable diseases collectively caused 26,313 additional deaths per million births, nearly offsetting the gains from sanitation and representing 26,000 annual infant sacrifices to save merely 50 from smallpox.

9. How did the medical profession respond to sanitary reform advocates?

Initially, the medical profession ridiculed sanitary reformers with unsparing scorn when pioneers like Dr. Southwood Smith and Edwin Chadwick demonstrated that filth, bad drainage, impure water, and overcrowding caused zymotic diseases. The rank and file of doctors dismissed these theories despite accumulating evidence, and many would have placed themselves outside the intelligence of the age had they not eventually yielded to public opinion. Even then, the medical establishment yielded reluctantly and continued defending their oft-exploded theories regarding smallpox.

The medical profession’s response was further complicated by financial interests, as vaccination grants amounted to over £100,000 annually while no funds were allocated for investigating disease causes. When sanitary improvements threatened vaccination’s prominence, medicine men with a craze for vaccination merged sanitary services with other functions, relegating them to secondary positions. Edwin Chadwick complained bitterly that despite doubling expenditure to £27,000 yearly for twenty years, not one instance could be shown where the Medical Department had reduced a town’s death rate, finding only traces of action against smallpox with very incomplete results.

10. What was M. Pasteur’s experimentum crucis and its implications for disease prevention?

Pasteur’s crucial experiment involved sealing tubes containing fresh cholera virus with just enough air for development, keeping them for two to ten months. When opened, the virus remained as virulent as ever. However, tubes exposed to pure air gradually and progressively lost their virulence with mathematical precision until the microscopic parasite died. This demonstrated that oxygen weakens or extinguishes virulence - the presence of oxygen caused the death of the parasite, its absence preserved virulence, and greater oxygen exposure produced greater effect.

This discovery suggested a universal principle that atmospheric oxygen, a natural force everywhere present, could be efficacious against other viruses and might explain the limitation of great epidemics. The theory harmonized various observations: the efficacy of isolation, utility of oxidizing disinfectants, rural salubrity versus urban morbidity, success of open-air treatment, and decline of zymotic disease with improved ventilation. While speculative, it offered scientific explanation for empirically proven sanitary measures and reinforced the superiority of natural prevention through clean air over artificial disease propagation through vaccination.

11. How did vaccination laws violate personal liberty according to the anti-vaccination movement?

The anti-vaccination movement condemned compulsory vaccination as a gross infraction of citizen liberty and parental rights, comparing it to the atrocious Fugitive Slave Law in America. The 1853 Vaccination Acts were passed without notice or public discussion, forcing upon everybody a disease called cow-pox merely because somebody might catch smallpox. This represented compulsory medicine opposed to England’s ancient constitution, according to high authorities including Mr. MacLaren, the late Lord Advocate for Scotland.

The enforcement methods further violated personal dignity and freedom: hunting unvaccinated fugitives from parish to parish like American slave-hunting, inquisitorial house-to-house visitation, remorseless prosecution of parents in every police court, and cow-poxing of week-old infants in workhouses. Parents were stripped of their highest duty and sacred right to protect their offspring from what they considered evil. The movement sought to restore these birthrights and liberate oppressed citizens of many nations from what they termed ignorant, unjust, and indefensible tyranny masquerading as public health policy.

12. What role did economic interests play in maintaining vaccination programs?

Financial considerations significantly influenced vaccination’s persistence, with official grants exceeding £100,000 annually creating substantial income for the medical profession. Public vaccinators and vaccination officers received special awards and stimulation payments for achieving high compliance rates. This economic structure created powerful incentives for maintaining the system regardless of its effectiveness, as human nature dictated that gains from vaccination would influence its maintenance.

The contrast with sanitation funding proved telling - while vaccination received lavish expenditure, the Government claimed no funds existed to investigate smallpox causes during the 1881 London epidemic. Mr. Edwin Chadwick noted that twenty years of doubled expenditure on the Medical Department produced no demonstrable reduction in death rates, unlike the first General Board of Health’s more modest budget. The anti-vaccinationists compared this to clergymen’s reluctance to support church disendowment, suggesting doctors and parsons shared similar economic motivations in defending their profitable domains.

13. How did mortality rates change in London between 1851-1880 despite vaccination?

London’s smallpox mortality statistics revealed vaccination’s complete failure to fulfill its promises. The three decades showed steadily increasing deaths despite intensifying enforcement: 1851-60 recorded 7,150 deaths among 2,570,489 population; 1861-70 saw 8,347 deaths among 3,018,193; and 1871-80 witnessed 15,551 deaths among 3,486,486 people. This represented an 80% increase in smallpox mortality during the final decade, precisely when vaccination compliance reached its zenith through aggressive enforcement measures.

The geographic distribution of mortality further undermined vaccination claims. Wealthy districts like South Kensington, Hyde Park, and Bayswater experienced rare smallpox cases, while poor areas including Hackney, Bethnal-green, and Southwark suffered severe outbreaks. This pattern occurred regardless of vaccination rates, demonstrating that living conditions, not vaccination status, determined disease incidence. The epidemic concentrated in courts and alleys with old, decayed habitations and miasmatic atmospheres where the neglected residuum dwelt, proving sanitary factors paramount over medical interventions.

14. What evidence showed that smallpox primarily affected poor, unsanitary districts?

The 1881 London epidemic clearly demonstrated smallpox’s preference for impoverished, unsanitary areas. The disease ravaged districts along river banks - Fulham, Lambeth, Greenwich on the Thames, and Hackney near the Lea with its canals and marshland. These damp, poorly drained areas below sanitary averages bore the epidemic’s brunt. Conversely, aristocratic districts and salubrious suburbs like Hampstead, Highgate, Ealing, and Wimbledon experienced the rarest occurrence of cases despite similar vaccination rates.

The British Medical Journal, despite being ardently pro-vaccination, admitted that larger proportions of unvaccinated persons lived among the ignorant, dirty, and wretched slum inhabitants, with very few among educated and better-fed society members. Disease intensity increased with overcrowding, confirming that smallpox struck the poor, ill-fed, uncleanly, intemperate, overworked populations in courts and alleys. These were the very children deemed too unhealthy for vaccination by official instructions, creating a circular argument where the unvaccinated died more because they were already society’s weakest members living in the worst conditions.

15. How did ancient versus modern medical treatment of smallpox differ?

Ancient medical treatment of smallpox followed disastrous protocols that likely killed more patients than the disease itself. Patients were shut up in heated rooms, loaded with bed-clothes, with every particle of fresh air excluded. Physicians administered stimulants as if purposely hastening death, operating under mistaken theories about the body’s needs during illness. These methods created optimal conditions for disease proliferation and patient deterioration, turning sickrooms into death chambers through medical ignorance.

Modern treatment revolutionized survival rates through opposite approaches even before vaccination’s introduction. Physicians learned to admit fresh air, remove everything heating or stimulating, and administer cooling drinks and appropriate remedies. These sounder views of animal economy’s wants preserved thousands of lives previously lost under older physicians’ mistaken guidance. The transformation from hot, closed environments to cool, ventilated spaces demonstrated how improved medical understanding, not vaccination, had already begun conquering smallpox through supporting rather than fighting the body’s natural healing processes.

16. What was Dr. Benjamin Richardson’s position on Pasteur’s inoculation theories?

Dr. Richardson strongly opposed Pasteur’s “desperate device” of preventing infectious diseases by inoculating new diseases to put out old ones. He characterized this approach as clever and specious but lacking wisdom or proof, calling it “homoeopathy on the grand scale.” Richardson warned against this new conceit of prevention that would manufacture “spic-and-span new diseases” in human, bovine, equine, canine, and perhaps feline races, considering it too much to bear when perfect purity of life was all-sufficient to remove existing diseases.

He urged health reformers not to be led astray by Pasteur’s theories, arguing it would be better to continue in present imperfect states than venture making new prophylactic maladies. Quoting Hamlet’s wisdom to “rather bear the ills we have, than fly to others we know not of,” Richardson advocated for simple sanitary rules: letting in sun, keeping out damp, separating houses from earth, connecting with air above, regular cleaning, eating clean food, and returning to first-fruits of the earth. These natural measures, he maintained, would allow every family to become their own sanitarians without invoking artificial diseases.

17. How did the Chinese community in San Francisco demonstrate natural disease resistance?

The medical officer of San Francisco’s State Board of Health testified that he never knew any disease or pestilence originating or spreading in the Chinese quarter despite their close living conditions. The Chinese demonstrated remarkable immunity through their frugal lifestyle - eating only what was necessary to live upon, following the principle of eating to live rather than living to eat. Their clean habits, constant washing of themselves and clothes, combined with complete abstinence from whisky, provided superior resisting power against disease attacks.

Statistical evidence proved Chinese superiority in health outcomes: death rates were greater among whites than Chinese, with adult white people dying at higher rates than adult Chinese. No epidemics occurred among them, and less smallpox affected them than whites when population ratios were considered. The medical officer had never seen a drunken Chinaman in his life, attributing their healthy condition to clean living rather than medical interventions, thereby demonstrating that lifestyle factors surpassed any supposed benefits of vaccination in disease prevention.

18. What were the reported effects of vaccination on infant mortality?

Official returns revealed devastating impacts on infant mortality from vaccination-transmitted diseases. Deaths from syphilis among infants under one year increased from 472 to 1,851 per million births, while scrofula rose from 335 to 1,153 per million. The seven directly or indirectly inoculable causes showed a combined increase of 26,313 deaths per million births, nearly canceling out the 37,919 reduction achieved through sanitation improvements. This meant approximately 26,000 infants were sacrificed annually to the poisoned lancet to allegedly save 50 from smallpox.

The weak infants killed by vaccination could never live to die of contingent smallpox, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy where vaccination advocates claimed success. Despite this “tare-eradicating process,” 37 out of every 100 smallpox deaths still occurred in children under ten. Survivors faced worse fates than those who died, carrying vaccine-induced corruptions including inherited diseases from scrofulous, insane, profligate, and addicted donors. Thomas Baker calculated that vaccination’s true cost in infant lives far exceeded any possible benefits, calling it a murderous practice masquerading as protection.

19. How did sanitary improvements in the 19th century impact various diseases?

Sanitary reform’s impact proved dramatic across multiple diseases once improvements gained momentum after the 1831 cholera outbreak and subsequent Public Health Acts. Diseases like plague, sweating sickness, and black death - once considered divine visitations - practically disappeared through improved drainage, street cleaning, pure water supplies, and better housing. Earl Spencer reported that British death rates decreased so significantly in ten years that 300,000 lives were saved compared to the previous decade, with three-fourths of the reduction attributed to decreased severe zymotic diseases.

Model dwelling associations demonstrated sanitation’s specific power: death rates dropped by one-third to one-half compared to surrounding areas, with complete exemption from typhus, cholera, and smallpox. Dr. Southwood Smith noted that while improved dwellings eliminated these major killers, other zymotics like scarlet fever and measles occurred rarely and never spread. The transformation from medieval filth to modern cleanliness accomplished what centuries of medical intervention failed to achieve, proving environmental factors paramount in disease control and validating sanitarians’ fundamental premise that removing disease causes prevented disease itself.

20. What was the ultimate goal of the anti-vaccination movement regarding compulsory laws?

The movement sought nothing less than complete and unconditional repeal of all compulsory vaccination laws, viewing them as overbearing acts founded on injustice that must crumble before growing public opinion. Their goal encompassed restoring parents’ birthright to make medical decisions for their children and liberating oppressed citizens across many nations from what they termed ignorant, unjust, and indefensible tyranny. The International League coordinated efforts globally to achieve these ends through education, political action, and public demonstration.

Beyond mere repeal, the movement envisioned a transformation in public health philosophy from artificial disease propagation to natural disease prevention through sanitation. They sought to end the pretended duty of experimenting upon neighbor’s children and restore the real duty of protecting one’s own. The ultimate aim was making every household their own sanitarians, centres of cleanliness and health, where natural vitality provided the best security against disease invasion. This vision rejected state-mandated medical interventions in favor of individual liberty, parental rights, and proven sanitary science.

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Baseline Human Health

Watch and share this profound 21-minute video to understand and appreciate what health looks like without vaccination.