PETITION,
from Chas. M. Higgins
of Brooklyn, N. Y.
a citizen of the United States

TO
The President of the United States
Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy
Washington, D. C.

Mr. President:

American History, as you well know, tells us that our first President, the illustrious George Washington, died in 1799 as the result of a medical malpractice common at that time, viz., the barbarous and dangerous practice of indiscriminate bleeding to cure disease. While suffering from an attack of acute sore throat or laryngitis, the patient was so weakened by the great loss of vital fluid in repeated bleeding operations that he was not able to endure this loss and overcome also the effects of the disease. Our great Washington thus gave up his glorious life—glorious in the establishment of American Liberty and the principles of Inalienable Natural Rights of the Individual as a basis for all Government—on the altar of medical barbarism and malpractice.

HISTORIC WARNING IN THE DEATH OF OUR FIRST PRESIDENT FROM MEDICAL MALPRACTICE

Let us now take this warning from the medical barbarism of the past, even over such a long interval of time, as a fit warning against the medical malpractices and barbarisms of to-day, which are even more irrational and dangerous to human right and safety, health and life than the malpractice of the past which destroyed the life of our first President.

COMPULSORY VACCINATION THE GREAT MEDICAL MALPRACTICE OF TO-DAY WHICH KILLS MANY WHERE BLEEDING KILLED ONE

Now the most barbarous and dangerous medical practice of to-day is the gross evil of compulsory vaccination, which is doubtless the greatest violation of common sense, medical propriety and the unalienable natural rights of the individual guaranteed in our basic American Charters, that any dogmatic, presumptuous profession or class of men has ever been guilty of. And it is to this serious violation of American principle forced on our soldiers and sailors by medical dogmatism that I now wish to ask your most careful attention as one having the supreme commanding and pardoning power in Army and Navy, with the earnest prayer that in the exercise of that exalted wisdom and power possessed by your great American Office and Personality, which has now made itself felt around the whole world, that this medical barbarism of compulsory disease may be abolished in our Army and Navy, and that all men condemned by Court Martial for refusing the infliction on their bodies of compulsory disease shall be fully pardoned and restored to their proper and honorable status as loyal American soldiers and sailors. And I now wish to present to you in the following pages an abundant array of facts and evidence which prove, I think, beyond doubt, the great evil and danger of vaccination, its fatality, and futility, and clearly justify the rational reform suggested for the abolishment of all forced or compulsory vaccination.

THE MODERN MEDICAL BARBARISM POISONS THE BLOOD IN THE BODY INSTEAD OF DRAINING THE BLOOD OUT OF THE BODY

In this medical malpractice of to-day the doctors do not open the veins and drain out the life blood of the patient, ostensibly to cure his disease, as in the mistaken past, but they now keep this blood in the body and inject into it directly or indirectly various more or less virulent diseases, blood poisons, or disease germs, cultures or products, either living or dead, with the idea of curing or preventing some natural disease. These practices are called, respectively, “vaccination” and “serum treatment.” In vaccination an actual living or dead disease germ, or virus, is injected into the blood, lymph, skin or muscle; whereas, in serum or antitoxin treatment a disease product or culture is so injected.

VACCINATION THE MOST DANGEROUS AND REPULSIVE SYSTEM OF MEDICATION EVER DEVISED

Now, whatever merits or demerits this system of disease inoculation may have, either in preventing or curing or immunizing against natural disease, I will not here say and do not need to here discuss, except to state that such curative or preventive power has been much exaggerated and is very limited and uncertain. But whatever these merits or demerits may be, it is obvious on fundamental principles of medical and civic ethics, that such a dangerous and repugnant practice of disease inoculation and blood poisoning should not be made compulsory on any person for any excuse whatever. It must be here remembered that it was admitted that the old smallpox inoculation had a certain preventive power and yet it was finally condemned and abandoned for reasons of its great danger as causing more disease and death than it prevented. Disregarding, therefore, the question of preventive merits or demerits, I think I can now say with perfect truth and soberness, and without fear of refutation, that this modern system of compulsory vaccination is the most violent and dangerous and most immoral or unethical system of medication that has ever been devised by a most honorable yet most presumptuous profession which has been proved guilty of the most gigantic medical mistakes in its past history of the centuries, one of which—indiscriminate bleeding—as we have already seen, killed our first President and many other victims of that period. To this gigantic and abandoned mistake we might now add the two horrible practices of smallpox inoculation and arm-to-arm vaccination, both of which were once used and approved by the highest medical authority as safe and infallible preventives of natural disease, yet both were finally abandoned as great medical mistakes and were prohibited by penal law as most risky methods of propagating and extending disease and more dangerous to human health and life than the natural disease itself.

VACCINATION IS BLOOD POISONING WITH INFLICTED DISEASE AND IS OFTEN MORE FATAL THAN NATURAL DISEASE

For these former medical mistakes there is now substituted the modern medical mistake of compulsory bovine and serum vaccinations of various kinds and multiple repetitions which are in many instances as dangerous to human health and life as the former prohibited malpractices, or more so, and will, doubtless, in due time, be publicly condemned and abandoned as equal mistakes, like their predecessors.

Indeed, this modern vaccine system of medicine is so violent and dangerous that it has been frequently known to kill in from ten to fifteen minutes, after injection of the serum, by what is known as “serum sickness,” which is a kind of rapid blood and nerve poisoning affecting vital nerve centers, to which some persons are very susceptible.1 This is, of course, a more violent, rapid and fatal action than occurs in the most virulent and deadly natural diseases and is comparable only to a stroke of lightning or shock of electricity or to the violent action of the most virulent chemical, mineral, animal, or vegetable poisons known in toxicology. In other fatal cases, where the poisoning action is slower, death finally occurs from lockjaw, paralysis, meningitis, or pneumonia, which are frequent results of vaccination. And these fatal results of vaccination are commonly denied and concealed in death certificates by recording the terminal disease of lockjaw, paralysis, meningitis, or pneumonia only as the sole and original cause of death without any record of the inflicted disease—vaccination—as the primary or contributory cause of the death. This evil practice is, of course, a gross falsification of our vital statistics, and is now a frequent offense by some of our vaccinating doctors, as I can legally prove by documentary evidence when required.

In some death certificates, however, the vaccination is more or less clearly and honestly acknowledged as the cause of death, direct or indirect. I have now in hand a recent New York death certificate which records the death of a little child one year old in three days after vaccination from vaccinal septicemia, or blood poisoning, due to the vaccinal infection.

EVERY VACCINATION SORE IS AN INFECTING ABSCESS AND EVERY ACT OF VACCINATION IS A BLOOD INFECTION CAPABLE OF CAUSING SERIOUS DISEASE OR DEATH AT ANY TIME

And let me here say that every vaccination sore is simply a septicemic abscess and focus of infection, more or less dangerous, and is possibly capable of infecting the whole system at any time with fatal effect; and, furthermore, every act of ordinary cowpox vaccination is, of course, an act of septicemic infection or blood poisoning, per se, and pure and simple, and frequently kills in this way in the longer or shorter time of a few days, which is, of course, quicker than the worst forms of natural smallpox ever kill. See Figs. 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6, pages 83 to 88. On this point see also the “Manual of Causes of Death,” by U. S. Census Bureau, page 56, No. 20, and the corresponding Manual of the Registrar General of England, in which vaccination is recorded as a form of septicemia and a serious cause of death.

As further convincing evidence on this head, I have a Brooklyn death certificate showing the death of a woman hospital nurse six months after vaccination, from multiple abscesses which broke out all over the body in successive crops and continued for six months notwithstanding the most skillful medical efforts for cure, and finally resulted in death from general vaccinal septicemia. See Figs. 11, 12 and 13, which show other cases of this kind.

I have an English certificate showing the death of a man from the same cause, multiple abscesses, resulting from vaccination and continuing for seven years, and finally ending in death from this cause.

I have also another English certificate which shows the death of a little infant from vaccinal septicemia in thirty-four hours after vaccination! Of course the worst form of smallpox was never known to kill in such short time.

These shocking facts thus clearly show that an inflicted disease may be far worse and more fatal than a naturally acquired disease, and that vaccination may kill with surprising swiftness in a few days, hours, or minutes, quicker than the most fatal natural diseases or the most virulent poisons, or may continue a most horrible blood infection with internal or external eruptions through an agony of months or years and finally end in death from this infection.

I have also some recent American death certificates which show the deaths of five little children of primary school age, all killed in one week in September, 1915, from vaccination resulting in lockjaw and septicemia. I have now in hand a memorial pamphlet written by an aggrieved father, a very intelligent man, an editor and manufacturer, Mr. James A. Loyster, of Cazenovia, New York, which shows the death of his own son and about thirty other children from vaccination in New York State in 1914. This child slaughter was the result of a general vaccination raid made upon the school children of the State in that year; and this pamphlet gives convincing proof that about thirty, and probable proof that about twice that number, were killed by vaccine infection, while only three persons died from smallpox in the whole State for the same year! See pages 145 to 163, which give several pages of this pamphlet in full.

COMPULSORY VACCINATION AS A CONDITION FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLING OR FOR SERVICE IN ARMY AND NAVY IS MEDICALLY BARBAROUS AND LEGALLY UNCONSTITUTIONAL, AND SHOULD BE ABOLISHED

These deadly vaccinations above cited were almost all performed on school children to satisfy an evil law which has been originated and sustained by a powerful but mistaken part or sect of the medical profession—the vaccine sect—by which law vaccination is forced upon children of school age as a condition for admission to school, thus making the infliction of a dangerous disease on the tender body of the child a condition for the exercise of that most essential, unquestionable, and inalienable right of the child to Education! Such invasion of natural right to life, health, and education is surely the clearest violation of those great American principles of inherent natural rights so distinctly set forth in the Declaration and Constitution which all Governments must respect and defend, as I will show later on.

ABOLISH ALL COMPULSORY VACCINATION IN ARMY AND NAVY AND APPOINT DOCTORS OF VARIOUS SCHOOLS ON ALL MEDICAL AND HEALTH BOARDS

In the same way this dogmatic and dominant part or sect of the medical profession, organized in powerful medical societies and now controlling important public offices, has forced the dangerous practice of general compulsory vaccination upon our Army and Navy, and this practice is, I believe, largely the result of having only one school of medicine—the vaccine school—represented on our Medical Boards and in our Departments of Health and Vital Statistics. To thus have only one school of medicine represented on our Medical Boards of Army and Navy is, I submit, as great a mistake, as unjust, absurd, and un-American, as it would be to have only one school of Religion represented in our Army and Navy chaplains. For, surely, medical tolerance and freedom is as important for national welfare as religious tolerance and freedom. And to this particular point, Mr. President, I would, therefore, now like to ask your first and most careful attention, with the suggestion and hope that, as supreme commander of both arms of the service, you will not only find it just, wise, and proper to abolish all compulsory vaccination in Army and Navy and leave vaccination entirely voluntary with each man, as it now is in the English Army, but that you will also abolish all arrogant monopoly or control of medical practice in Army and Navy by any one school of medicine, and will adopt the reform in the future of having various schools of medicine properly and justly represented on our Medical Boards, from which reform, I believe, a great improvement in medical practice and in public right, health, and comfort is sure to result.

CRUEL AND UNUSUAL, EXCESSIVE AND UNREASONABLE PUNISHMENTS ARE UNCONSTITUTIONAL. MORAL AND MEDICAL MONSTROSITY OF LONG TERMS OF IMPRISONMENT FOR REFUSING VACCINATION

At this point I would like to call your careful attention to a news item which appeared in the New York Times of May 2, 1918, as follows:

“Refused Vaccination, Got Fifteen Years.

This is only one of many similar items which have appeared in the press for the last two years, showing that it has been a practice in the army to try soldiers by court-martial for refusing to be vaccinated against free will and consent; and to degrade them from honorable military service merely for this refusal, and condemn them to long terms of imprisonment such as are given only to dangerous and felonious criminals under the criminal law,—and it is shown in this item that the extraordinary punishment of fifteen years’ imprisonment was thus inflicted for the sole offense of refusing compulsory vaccination! It may be that in some cases other offenses besides mere refusal to be vaccinated were involved, but I understand from several news items that only the act of refusal to submit to forced vaccination was involved in many such condemnations.

In answer to a special request for information on this point, I have been informed by the office of the Judge Advocate General, in a letter dated January 14, 1919, that there was only one instance of court-martial for refusing to be vaccinated in the years 1917 and 1918, that this was held to be a violation of the 96th Article of War, and that the offender in this case was sentenced to be “Dishonorably discharged from the service, to forfeit all pay and allowances due or to become due, and to be confined at hard labor at such place as the convening authority may direct for twenty-five years.”

Now I respectfully submit, Mr. President, that whether there were one or many cases of this kind, they were clearly cases of “cruel and unusual” and excessive and unreasonable punishment and also an “unreasonable search and seizure of the person,” condemned in the Constitution in Articles IV and VIII of the Amendments, as follows:

I therefore think it is perfectly obvious that to thus degrade a loyal and honorable soldier and condemn him like a felonious criminal to the long term of fifteen or twenty-five years’ imprisonment, merely for the act of refusing to have a dangerous medical operation and an inflicted disease forced upon his body against his will and consent, is clearly an “unreasonable seizure” of the person and a “cruel and unusual” and excessive and unreasonable punishment prohibited in the Constitution; and I think that no further argument is necessary to prove this point. Surely to inflict such drastic punishments as above shown—not for any really criminal, immoral, or perfidious act—not for anything that really affects the purely military duties, qualities, or services of any loyal, honorable and healthy soldier—but simply for opposing a dangerous medical dogma and defending his body against an inflicted disease and a dangerous medical operation which frequently sickens and unfits the soldier for a long time afterwards for military service and sometimes actually kills—as already clearly proved—surely, I say, such a punishment is not only legally unconstitutional, but is morally barbarous in both a true military and true medical sense, and should be abolished in both Army and Navy for the several reasons herein submitted.

HARSH MILITARY PUNISHMENTS CONDEMNED BY AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION

In the New York Tribune of January 4, 1919, the President of the American Bar Association, at a meeting in New York City on January 3d, condemned harsh and unjust judgments of military courts-martial, and stated that “our military laws and our systems of administering military justice are unworthy of the name of law or justice.” He also said that our army was still following rules copied from England in 1774, but which were abandoned long ago as better suited “to the armies of feudal times than to the citizen armies of a modern republic.” He also condemned “the outrageous punishments meted out by our courts-martial for comparatively slight breaches of military discipline.” And he further stated that “Punishments are not only grossly harsh, as compared with the penalties imposed for like offences by our criminal courts, but they also differ so widely that we find the same offence punished in one court-martial by twenty-five years in the penitentiary and in another by six months in disciplinary barracks.” ... “The accused soldier has no real legal protection.” ... “The maintenance of military discipline does not require this harsh and arbitrary procedure. The French army is a model of discipline, but an accused soldier has the protection of the law thrown around him at every stage of his trial. That a soldier in our army should have less legal protection challenges the attention of the lawyers of the country. The American people never will stand for Prussian methods even in disciplining the Army.”

MILITARY OBEDIENCE TO BAD LAW. THE HIGH EXAMPLE OF SOCRATES COMMENDED

Lest some false interpreter should suggest that in here condemning compulsory vaccination in the Army and Navy and urging its abolishment I am attempting “to incite insubordination, disloyalty, or mutiny, or refusal of duty, in the military or naval forces of the United States,” as expressed in the Overman Law, I would now call careful attention to the obvious fact that urging the abolition of a bad law, or petitioning government “for a redress of grievances,” is not urging disobedience to any law, is not inciting mutiny or refusal of duty or disloyalty to the United States, but is a clear constitutional right under Article I of the first amendment, which right, it is there stated, cannot be abridged or denied.

If any loyal soldiers, opposed to forced vaccination, should ask my advice whether they should accept or refuse it, I would advise them to protest against compulsion and ask for its abolition, but I would not advise them to deliberately disobey any legal military rule. And I would further say here that I believe that any soldier who might be injured or killed as a result of any vaccination, to which he was forced to submit by any military law, would suffer and die in the service of his country with just as much honor as if he had died on the battle-field; or with as much honor as in the case of Socrates, the great Grecian soldier and philosopher, who died in obedience to bad law and unjust judgment.

I would further advise all conscientious objectors to forced vaccination to consider the teaching of some strict moralists, that it is better to obey all laws, however bad, than to disobey any of them, and that this obedience and sacrifice is the first duty of the soldier and citizen. And it is also taught that this obedience to bad law, after full and due protest against it, is the best way to bring about its repeal in due time.

This seems to have been the teaching of the great Socrates—the pagan Christ, 399 B.C.—and was the chief lesson of his tragic death. Knowing that he was unjustly and falsely condemned and that his judges acted wrongly, yet within the forms of law, he refused to escape this false and unjust judgment, although he could easily have done so with the help of powerful friends who urged this upon him. Yet he nobly accepted the judgment of law and drank the cup of poison to which he was legally but wrongly sentenced, and thus gave up his life to vindicate what he believed was the sacred duty of the citizen to obey all laws, just or unjust, and the still more sacred duty of the lawmaker and the judge, that all laws and judgments should be absolutely just and true and faithful to all rights of the citizen. If, therefore, it be the first duty of the citizen and soldier to obey all law, good or bad, what a much greater duty is laid upon the lawmaker, the law enforcer, the Judge, and, we might also say, the Commander-in-Chief, that all law and all judgments be absolutely right, just and true, and in no way destructive to the rights of the citizen or soldier who has to obey these laws, good or bad! This was the grand lesson intended by Socrates in the sacrifice of his life as a protest and indictment against bad law and unjust judgment, and we may here, properly, apply this great Socratic lesson, which has morally thundered down “the corridors of time” for the past twenty-four centuries, to all the evil laws for compulsory vaccination which now exist and which should be immediately repealed and replaced by just and equitable rules for voluntary vaccination only as proved by the many reasons already given.—“Every law not based on wisdom is a menace to the State.” See page v.

VOICE OF THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF TO OUR SOLDIERS, “YOU HAVE COMMANDERS, BUT YOU HAVE NO MASTERS.” RIGHTS AND DIGNITIES OF SOLDIERS ASSERTED. MILITARY AND MEDICAL DESPOTISM CONDEMNED

At this point, Mr. President, I want to remind you of the rich American thought you expressed in your address to the American soldiers on the battle-field in France, at Chaumont, on Christmas Day, 1918. You were reported to have there said:

Now, the true American thought in this quotation, as I take it, is that, as American soldiers and citizens, they are free men and members of a free state, with American rights and dignities that cannot be invaded, and are not “slaves,” “chattels,” or “subjects” to any one, and, therefore, are not to be treated by any form of military despotism or arbitrary medical dictation, as slaves, hogs, or cattle might be so treated. And as the hog or cattle doctor might properly force any medicine down the throat of the helpless beast without being required to say “by your leave” to his humble patient, or might perform on the body of the helpless animal any operation that he or the owner might decide upon, yet I think that neither of us would admit that any man calling himself a human doctor could, with any decency, propriety, or legality, follow this crude but necessary code of ethics of the animal doctor on the human subject by attempting to perform any medical service on the human body by any intimidation or force or without full approval and consent of the patient. Yet what have we seen? We have seen men, calling themselves doctors, claiming the right to force dangerous medical operations on school children and soldiers without their free will and consent, and with some form of barbarous intimidation or coercion, as they might do with dangerous beasts. We have seen loyal soldiers, conscientiously objecting to unnecessary and dangerous operations on their bodies against their approval or consent, who were tried by court-martial and condemned to imprisonment at hard labor for twenty-five years! And this outrageous sentence was inflicted for nothing more than for asserting one of the most obvious and unalienable rights of every American—the right to the medical sanctity of his own body, the right to medical freedom, choice, and consent in any medical treatment of that body!

Is it not time, therefore, Mr. President, that this clear American principle expressed in your address just quoted should now be applied in this matter, and that this Medical Hoggery of compulsory vaccination should be abolished in our Army and Navy? And is it not time also that the members of that “Divine” profession of Human Healing, in all its schools and sects, should now take action at the earliest possible day to purge their great profession from the deep disgrace of this Medical Hoggery, which they have originated and too long practiced, and which is involved in all forms of dictatorial and compulsory medicine on the human subject?

Of course, in anything I say here I make no reflection on the veterinary doctors whose work, in its own sphere, I regard just as honorable as the work of any other doctors in their sphere.

COMPULSORY VACCINATION NOT NECESSARY AND NOT EFFECTIVE FOR THE HEALTH OF ARMIES OR POPULATIONS. FAILURE OF VACCINATION IN U. S. ARMY OFFICIALLY ADMITTED

There is another strong consideration which I think should move you, Mr. President, toward abolishing this evil of compulsory vaccination with “cruel and unusual” punishment, and that is: That this compulsion and punishment is not really necessary for any military purpose or efficiency, as is proved by several facts in the past and present practice and experience of our own and other armies, for example: First: In the Russian-Japanese war the Japanese adopted for almost the first time the modern, effective system of general military sanitation and hygiene, but used no typhoid vaccination, and yet the army suffered very little from typhoid fever. Second: Per contra, in the Gallipoli expedition in the recent war the English soldiers were generally inoculated with typhoid vaccines, but at the same time the most unsanitary conditions prevailed in camp and field, and the result was a great loss from typhoid and other fevers among the vaccinated. Third: In the U. S. Army in France in 1918, in several camps where sanitation and hygiene were grossly neglected, typhoid vaccination proved to be little or no protection, and it has been officially admitted to be a great failure, as typhoid epidemics prevailed extensively in said camps with a high death-rate among the well vaccinated men. See official report on this subject from the Chief Surgeon of the A. E. F. in U. S. Public Health Reports of March 28, 1919, entitled, “Typhoid Vaccination no Substitute for Sanitary Precautions.” See also page 207 in the annexed Supplement. Fourth: Vaccination is now voluntary in the English Army, and it is estimated that from five to ten per cent. of the Army is unvaccinated. Fifth: There is no court-martial or punishment for refusing vaccination in the English Army, as is shown by a recent inquiry in the English Parliament, reported as follows:

Now, in these facts I think it is distinctly proved that compulsory vaccination is neither necessary nor surely effective as a protective remedy, but is of doubtful value as a preventive, and is not necessary where efficient sanitation and hygiene are used, as is now the practice in modern armies; and, hence, vaccination should not be forced on any soldier or sailor under penalty of drastic punishments for refusal, but should be left to the free and voluntary assent of each man, as it now is in the English Army. Furthermore, it is believed that, instead of forcing wholesale compulsory disease upon the Army, with the vain idea of increasing health, equal effort and expense devoted to true sanitation and hygiene would surely produce better results, as emphatically proved by recent critical experience in our own Army, as just cited. See also page 210.

MEDICAL AND OTHER AUTHORITIES ADMIT DANGERS OF VACCINATION AND CONDEMN COMPULSION

Surely the example of the English Army, as above given, is a good enough precedent and authority to justify abolishing all compulsion and penalties and making all vaccination voluntary in our American Army and Navy, but if any other authorities are required for this reform, I might cite for a second example the advice from one of the highest medical authorities of to-day, viz., Osler’s “Modern Medicine,” new edition, 1913, Volume I, page 848, which admits the dangers of vaccination and condemns compulsion in these words:

I will now ask your attention to a third authority against compulsion, which is of the highest significance and force, viz., the great English Commission on Vaccination appointed by Queen Victoria in 1889, which sat for about seven years, made a most exhaustive examination of the subject, and rendered its voluminous reports in 1896. This Commission was composed of five of the leading doctors and eight of the leading laymen of England, and their majority and minority reports differed on the merits of vaccination, but both admitted its dangers and both agreed in advising the repeal or modification of the English compulsory law, which, however, did not apply to adults, but only to infants under one year, which form the most susceptible part of the population. After this recommendation a law was passed, now in force, called the “conscientious clause,” whereby parents can exempt their children from vaccination by filing a statement of conscientious objection; and under this law vaccination has so greatly declined in England that to-day it is estimated that over sixty per cent. of the children born are unvaccinated, and yet, contrary to the contentions of the vaccinators, smallpox has not increased, but has greatly declined, corresponding to the decline in vaccination and to the increase in general sanitation and hygiene, as England is now one of the most sanitary countries in the world. This beneficial effect on public health resulting from repealing compulsion and making vaccination voluntary has been so positive that the English Minister of Health, Hon. John Burns, made this significant public declaration in the House of Commons on April 12, 1911, viz.: “Just in proportion as, in recent years, exemptions [from vaccination] have gone up from four per cent. to thirty per cent., so deaths from smallpox have declined.”

I will now add a fourth and last example in which I think you will find a full justification for suppressing all compulsory vaccination as both evil and unnecessary, and this is the advice of one of the latest English books on “The Vaccination Question” by Dr. Millard, London, 1914. Dr. Millard, although a strong pro-vaccinist, has been for the past ten years the health officer of the unvaccinated city of Leicester, which has a population of about 300,000, and for the last thirty years has relied on sanitation and hygiene without vaccination to protect and improve the public health, and this is the gist of what Dr. Millard says of the success of this method:

DEATHS FROM VACCINATION GREATER THAN DEATHS FROM SMALLPOX. SHOCKING DENIAL AND CONCEALMENT OF VACCINATION DEATHS BY OUR DEPARTMENTS OF HEALTH AND VITAL STATISTICS

It will be seen from the last quotation that Dr. Millard is one of those honest doctors who are not afraid to tell the truth about vaccination, its great dangers and frequent fatalities, the evils and barbarities of compulsion, the superior value of sanitation, and the stinging fact that the inflicted disease, vaccinia, frequently causes more deaths per year than the natural disease, smallpox! To confirm these startling facts I will now quote a few figures, during the period to which Dr. Millard refers, from the record of the Registrar General of England which, as you know, is one of the highest statistical authorities in the world.

Data from Reports of Registrar General of England showing deaths from vaccination compared with deaths from smallpox:

From these remarkable figures we will see that for the six years from 1905 to 1910, in England and Wales, the total deaths from vaccination for all ages were about half the total deaths from smallpox, but that in the same period the total deaths from vaccination, in the child ages of five years and under, were nearly four times the deaths from smallpox in the same age group!

The report of the English Registrar General for the three years, 1911, 1912, and 1913, tell a similar story of vaccinal fatality, as follows:

Here it will be noted that for the three years stated the total deaths from vaccination are three-quarters of the total deaths from smallpox, whereas the deaths from vaccination in children five years old and under are over three times more than the deaths from smallpox in the same age group! I have not examined the Reports later than 1913, having confined myself to the decade to which Dr. Millard refers.

This awful record of fatal vaccinations thus speaks very clearly for itself and forms a strong indictment of the whole barbarous and dangerous system of compulsory vaccination, whether for child or adult, and must condemn the evil practice in every rational mind.

It can be further proved that an equal or greater fatality from vaccination, as compared with the English records, occurs in our own country and in our own State of New York, but these fatalities are denied and concealed in our death certificates and yearly reports by our vaccinating doctors and health officials of city and State, as I have repeatedly and publicly charged, and have challenged these doctors and officials to deny or disprove this charge if they can, and I now hereby renew this public challenge on this most serious point. See challenge on page vi.

For further data on this point, see my pamphlets, “The Crime Against the School Child,” “Open Your Eyes,” “Serious Warning,” and “Vaccination and Lockjaw.”

GREAT EPIDEMICS OF DEADLY DISEASE, IN ANIMALS AND MANKIND, CAUSED BY VACCINATION

Now, not only is vaccination very dangerous to health and life in many individual cases and frequently causes more deaths every year than smallpox, particularly in little children, as already clearly proved, but another shocking fact is that vaccination has been proved to be the cause of several great epidemics of deadly disease among mankind and domestic animals, and has probably also been the cause of many other serious epidemics whose origin has not yet been proved.

This shocking fact of vaccine epidemics in recent times is readily proved by current medical works, by Government Reports, and by notorious public facts occurring within the last few years, as I will now show.

I may first refer on this point to one of the strongest pro-vaccination works now published, viz., “Acute Contagious Diseases,” by Drs. Welch and Schamberg, Lea Brothers & Co., Philadelphia, 1905. On page 65, in this work, the following serious admission is made:

These epidemics are shown to have caused many deaths in children and adults, the fatal effect being very rapid, the deaths occurring in one or a few days after vaccination.

On page 74, in the same work, this clear admission of an epidemic of that most awful and fatal disease, lockjaw, caused by vaccination, is made as follows:

It is to be here noted, however, that, bad as this last admission is, the pro-vaccinators did not give the public the whole truth in this last statement, but which I will now add here, viz., that in these epidemics the deaths from the lockjaw infection in the vaccination wounds exceeded by manifold the deaths from smallpox in the same time and locality! Here is another great proof of the medical and statistical truth to which I have repeatedly called attention, viz., that vaccination is frequently a much more dangerous and fatal disease than natural smallpox, and, therefore, obviously, for this reason alone, should not be forced on any person against free will and consent.

VACCINATION BOTH A THEORETICAL AND A PROVED CAUSE OF EPIDEMICS

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.

EPIDEMICS ACTUALLY CAUSED BY VACCINATION

That the hypothetical condition suggested in the preceding paragraph, viz., that the wholesale and world-wide vaccine infection going on for the past few years had possibly escaped from its usual bounds and has been overflowing and running wild and thus causing epidemics in mankind, or animals,—that this, I say, may be no mere hypothesis or theory, but rather a hard fact, is proved by the frightful epidemics of “foot and mouth disease” in the United States in 1902, 1908, and 1914, some of which originated from two of the largest vaccine factories in this country, one in Philadelphia and the other in Detroit, and were widely distributed to cattle and mankind in several of our States. See reports of U. S. Bureau of Animal Industry, 1902 and 1908. Also Year Book of U. S. Department of Agriculture, 1914, page 20. See also page 96 in Supplement.

It is clearly shown in these reports that vaccine infection was the direct cause of these epidemics in 1902 and 1908; but the cause of the epidemic of 1914 and 1915 is not so clearly proven, although there is a strong suspicion that it was caused by vaccine infection, like the two others, and, as a matter of fact, it originated in the same State—Michigan—where the epidemic of 1908 originated and where one of the largest vaccine factories in the country is located. See page 98 in Supplement.

These vaccine epidemics caused the destruction of hundreds of thousands of cattle and other domestic animals in over a score of States, at a loss of many millions of dollars to the Government and people of this country. See page 102. Surely, Mr. President, any medical operation so inherently dangerous and capable of inflicting such injury on animals or man should not be forced on any person against conscientious objection or without free will and consent and should not be required by our enlightened democratic Government in our Army or Navy in any form except purely voluntary, like all other medical remedies and operations.

There is an attempt made in some of the official reports to deny that these epidemics of “foot and mouth disease” caused by vaccination could be or were transmitted to mankind in virus and were limited to domestic animals, but this I believe to be a grave mistake, as I have the most convincing evidence that this disease was so transmitted to many human victims, both child and adult, with most awful effects in 1902 and 1908, and is frequently transmitted to mankind in vaccine virus. See Supplement, page 111.

VACCINE FACTORIES A POSSIBLE AND PROVED SOURCE OF EPIDEMICS AND SHOULD BE INVESTIGATED BY CONGRESS AND THE GOVERNMENT

This foot and mouth disease is a horrible eruptive fever, a kind of “cowpox,” or something like a mongrel smallpox and diphtheria combined, or also like a very bad chickenpox, with successive crops of vesicles, blisters or blotches, something like cold sores, large and small, breaking out all over the body, but chiefly on the hoofs, or hands and feet, lips and nostrils, also inside the mouth and throat as is common in smallpox. Sometimes these blotches become confluent and pustular and continue for months, but, usually, the eruption ends in a few weeks in recovery or death. In the worst cases, with internal eruptions and pus infection, affecting vital nerve centers, the end comes in a few days by the victim choking to death from paralysis of the heart and breathing organs like what happens in infant paralysis, rabies and lockjaw. For effects on cattle and mankind, see Figs. 7, 8, 9, 11, 12 and 13 in Supplement.

Now here we see that at least two and probably three great epidemics of fatal disease have originated from vaccine factories and this raises the serious question as to how far other epidemics, or even the recent epidemic of influenza, and pneumonia, may have originated from some vaccine factory or from some of their products extensively or carelessly used. Surely the places where dangerous infectious diseases are constantly propagated on a gigantic scale, and disseminated therefrom into the bodies of millions of animals and mankind, should be the very possible or probable source of epidemic disease. Obviously, therefore, this entire subject of the present extensive manufacture and distribution of diseases or disease cultures or products and its relation to epidemics and public health should be thoroughly investigated by Congress and the Government at an early date. To show you what a gigantic and dangerous medical interest this vaccine manufacture has become, it may be sufficient to state that there are now about 100 concerns licensed by the U. S. Government to manufacture vaccines and serums for animal and human uses. This is one of the great medical interests supporting compulsory vaccination, which is a grave medical malpractice, and should be abolished wherever it exists and replaced by wholly voluntary vaccination as already shown.

EPIDEMICS AND HIGH DEATH RATES IN THE ARMY PROBABLY CAUSED BY WHOLESALE AND REPEATED VACCINATIONS. DEATH RATE OF ARMY FROM DISEASE MUCH GREATER THAN THAT OF CIVIL POPULATION

After careful study of this subject for years I firmly believe that, with the excellent sanitary and hygienic conditions now used in our Army, the dangerous system of disease inoculations, whereby the blood of every man is impregnated with multiple and repeated vaccinations of several diseases, such as smallpox, typhoid, paratyphoid, etc., is a system, to say the least, that is neither necessary nor ultimately useful for army health. And it is probable that this system produces far more disease than it prevents. For example: For one death which naturally occurs in the whole population from smallpox or typhoid fever, ten to one hundred deaths occur from the far more frequent and fatal diseases of tuberculosis, measles, pneumonia and meningitis. And let us here ask, what is the use of having soldiers forced to submit to a whole series of disease infections, if these infections, at best, give immunity only for a little while from such diseases as smallpox and typhoid and make the system more susceptible to the far worse diseases of measles, pneumonia and meningitis, which actually seems to be the possible effects of vaccination from the recurring epidemics of these dangerous diseases in our heavily vaccinated camps?

As a matter of fact, my studies of deaths from vaccination for many years past show that meningitis and pneumonia are some of the most frequent complications; and these two diseases seem to have a certain relation to vaccination and seem to be very fatal where vaccination precedes them, and thus acts in what is called a “double” or “mixed infection,” which is known to be very dangerous to health and life. See Osler’s “Modern Medicine,” 1913, Vol. I, pages 32 and 33. See also Osler’s “Principles and Practice of Medicine,” 8th edition, 1918, page 330, on the “Influence of Vaccination on Other Diseases.” See also pages 135 and 139 in the Supplement.

Another most significant fact in this connection is the high death-rate from disease in the Army, as compared with the civil population, which I will now consider.

On page 18 in the Report of the Secretary of War for 1918 the death rate of the Army in the United States from disease for the year ending August 30, 1918, is given as 6.4; that is, about 6½ deaths for every thousand men in the Army. The age-groups composing the Army are, of course, on the general average, between twenty and forty, inclusive. In the same Report it is admitted that the male civilian death-rate for the same ages as in the Army (twenty to forty) was about 4.7, which is a difference of 1.7 or nearly 2 per 1000 in favor of the civil population or civilian males! This civil death-rate is thus, actually and relatively, much lower than the army death-rate, and this fact is very significant as positively indicating some serious cause at work to lower greatly the vitality and resistance and increase the death-rate in the army! Now what is that cause?

The figures 6.4 per thousand for the Army and 4.7 per thousand for the civil population of the same ages is a great actual difference, but, of course, means, relatively, a much greater total difference against the Army because the army population is made up of “hand-picked” men selected for their nearly perfect health and physique and the absence of all serious constitutional diseases such as tuberculosis and others, which are all excluded from the army group. On the other hand, the civil population of the same age group of twenty to forty includes the healthy and diseased, and particularly those afflicted with tuberculosis, which constitute a big fraction, and which disease is most prevalent and fatal in this very age group of twenty to forty! Yet this civil population, containing all the diseased at the most fatal adult ages, has a much lower death-rate than the “hand-picked” physically perfect army group! Now what is the cause of this much higher death-rate in men of the most physically perfect class, and who are now treated with the best sanitary and hygienic living conditions, and where the death-rate should be the lowest? What is the cause of this difference if it is not that extraordinary medical practice, or malpractice, which deliberately impregnates the bodies of these exceptionally healthy and “hand-picked” men with a whole series of the worst type of disease infections known—that is, septicemic infections, like the typhoids and the variolas, etc.? And should anyone wonder, therefore, if the death lists of the army should show plainly in the blood poisoning diseases of pneumonia, meningitis, etc., which are known to follow frequently after vaccination? See pages 139 to 142 for a convincing proof of this point. Surely no person of ordinary sense—not even an extreme vaccinator—can presume to seriously tell us that impregnating the human body and blood with several disease cultures and infections is a purely healthy practice per se. And surely no person of ordinary sense can come to any other conclusion except this: that such operations must be dangerous and unhealthy per se.

In all this contention, Mr. President, there is, surely, something which is very important, which should be most carefully considered and fully investigated by the Commander-in-Chief, by Congress and the Departments, at an early day.

WONDERFUL WORK OF THE WAR AND NAVY DEPARTMENTS GRATEFULLY ACKNOWLEDGED

Before closing I must here express to you, as Commander-in-Chief, my full appreciation of the wonderful work done by the War and Navy Departments and by the officers of the Army and Navy in raising, encamping, training and equipping our great Army and Navy and putting them into the fighting field so quickly and so potently, with the result of immediately turning the tide of warfare against the brutal enemy, for which majestic result these Departments, and the officers of the Army and Navy, most fully deserve, as they undoubtedly have, the unstinted thanks and congratulations of our whole citizenry, civil and military, man and woman.

No army or navy in field, camp or ship has ever been taken better care of in a general sanitary, hygienic and medical sense than our Army and Navy in this gruelling war. The able and liberal way in which the physical, moral, mental, religious and recreational needs of the men have been covered by various bodies, military, medical, civic, and religious, has been the wonder of all our citizens who have visited our camps. And to this was undoubtedly due the cheerful and high spirits, the wonderful morale and fighting power which made themselves instantly felt on the battle-fields of Europe and so quickly brought the barbarous enemy to his knees in the glorious climax of Victory and Peace which we are now enjoying, and which we all firmly hope and believe will soon be followed by a Permanent and International Peace coextensive with the civilized world, for which great end, Mr. President, you have been working so ably, energetically and devotedly. And I feel sure that your master efforts with our own people and with our victorious Allies will soon bring about that League of Nations for the government of the world based on the eternal principles of reciprocal right and justice and the basic principles of American Institutions—Equality, Consent of the Governed, and Rational Liberty—for all persons in their inherent natural rights.

I, therefore, regret that I have had any criticism to make on this glorious record of our Army and Navy, but this criticism really concerns only a part of the medical profession in the Army and Navy, and one of its medical dogmas, and does not reflect on the rank and file of the military and naval forces of our country, a majority of which does not, I believe, approve this dangerous medical practice, or malpractice, of compulsory vaccination which has been forced by medical dogmatism on the Army and Navy, and which, I believe, clearly violates fundamental American principles and also stultifies our proud claim that this is a government of “Liberty and Justice for all.”

COMPULSORY VACCINATION CONDEMNED AS UN-AMERICAN

In compulsory vaccination there is obviously neither “liberty” nor “justice” and it is utterly opposed to the fundamental American principle of inherent human right to medical liberty and choice, and to sanctity of body, and it therefore fits properly only with some code of Prussianism—from which it has been in fact copied.

I would, therefore, now like to show by appeal to our great basic American Documents of Rights and Liberties that all forms of medical compulsion and dictation and compulsory vaccination are illegal and unconstitutional and also violate all true civic and medical ethics.

THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, OUR BASIC CHARTER OF AMERICAN RIGHTS, CONDEMNS ALL VIOLATIONS OF INHERENT NATURAL RIGHTS

The Declaration of Independence is, I believe, the greatest ethical and political document ever penned by human hand or human wisdom—the greatest document of Human Rights and Liberties, Basic Ethics, Civic Religion and Democratic Government ever written—and all expressed in its one essential paragraph, as follows: