INTRODUCTION
THIS little book on the Horrors of Compulsory Vaccination, its medical barbarism, and its moral and legal atrocity as a gross violation of Basic Personal and Broad American Rights, is dedicated and addressed to our esteemed President, Woodrow Wilson, for several decisive reasons:
First: Because I believe him to be the most potent personality in public office to-day and our greatest present representative and exponent of Fundamental American Principles and Basic Human Rights, and as being now recognized as a world-wide exponent of these principles both at home and abroad.
Second: Because the President is Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy and is thus invested with supreme commanding and pardoning power, through which he can bring about an immediate reform in the evil practice of compulsory vaccination by pardoning, at his discretion, all men in the Army or Navy now unjustly condemned by Court Martial for refusing vaccination, and by abolishing all compulsion and making all vaccination free and voluntary, as it now is in the English Army.
Third: Because the President is our highest civilian officer and represents in his person and office one of our most important American principles, the supremacy of the civil over the military power. It therefore seemed to me most fit and proper to appeal to our chief civilian officer on any great question which concerns the most fundamental civil rights of the citizen or involves any great abuse of military power, as is the case with this evil practice of compulsory vaccination. And I think it will be readily admitted that medical militarism, such as the arbitrary medical compulsion which forces and inflicts disease upon the human body, under the fallacy of medical necessity and the pressure of military law, is surely one of the most dangerous and oppressive forms of extreme militarism that can be conceived and is not in accordance with the spirit of American Institutions, and should be suppressed. While, therefore, I, as a student of this subject, may earnestly and persistently write and urge, and demonstrate the truth on this subject, and prove by undeniable fact, exhibit, and argument the dangerous nature of compulsory vaccination and the shocking falsehoods on which it is based as to its alleged efficacy, necessity and harmlessness, yet I have not the least power or discretion to remove this evil; whereas the power of the President in this matter is plenary, instant and complete, so that in almost the twinkling of an eye he can abolish this evil in the Army and Navy with one word from his lips or one wave of his hand. And if this evil is once abolished in the Army and Navy, its abolishment everywhere else throughout the land is sure to follow, with great advantage to human right and much improvement in public health, as has resulted wherever this medical malpractice of inoculation with inflicted disease has been reduced or abolished, with a corresponding increase in sanitation and hygiene.
For these good reasons, I have therefore thought it most proper and advisable to make this appeal to our highest civilian official and our Chief Military Commander, who is so potently equipped to give the immediate relief and establish the reform herein asked for, viz., the full Medical Freedom to accept or refuse vaccination as each individual sees fit, which is a basic and inherent American right; and I therefore now submit the numerous and conclusive facts and demonstrations in these pages for the special consideration of the President and the general attention of the People and their Representatives in our National and State Legislatures, and as a full justification of the reform prayed for.
In conclusion, I might say that I first began this work as a simple Letter of Petition to the President to abolish forced vaccination in the Army and Navy, with a brief outline of reasons for this reform, which letter was commenced before the President sailed for Europe to attend the World Peace Conference. But the importance and scope of the subject grew as I worked on it, and I concluded to expand the letter into a full illustration and demonstration of the Horrors of Compulsory Vaccination, its failures, falsehoods, futilities and fatalities, which would be so thorough and convincing that it could not be disregarded. This enlarged work has required nearly twelve months to complete and make ready for the consideration of the President after his return from the Peace Conference, and its publication has been much delayed by several unavoidable conditions, including the recent great strike in the printing trades.
I might further state in conclusion that I have spent a lifetime and a fortune in the study and investigation of this subject and in efforts for the repeal of all unwise laws for forcing vaccination upon the people, which repeal is now being agitated and is progressing all over the civilized world. And as I probably shall not be able to work many more years in this great cause of Medical Freedom, and as this may be my last contribution to the cause, I have concluded to make the case against Compulsory Vaccination so full and complete in this Exposure that there can be no question of its medical malpractice and its dangerous, deadly and illegal nature.
For these reasons I have also thought it my duty to give to the public the benefit of my studies of a lifetime and the accumulation of the many shocking facts, proofs and exhibits which I have been collecting for years, and which, as now massed in the Petition and its Illustrated Supplement, can, I think, leave no doubt in the mind of any reasonable man or woman—not professionally interested in vaccination—that all Compulsory Vaccination should be immediately abolished, and that its continuation, with these proofs against it, would be a most gross medical blunder and malpractice and a grave violation of the basic American principle of Inherent Individual Rights, in being a serious menace to human health and life, a frequent cause of wide-spread epidemics and demonstrably more fatal in many instances than natural disease itself, and therefore a shocking violation of all true medical ethics and a disgrace alike to modern medicine and modern legislation which should no longer tolerate the practice.
Chas. M. Higgins.
Dated at 271 Ninth St., Brooklyn, N. Y.,
December 1, 1919.