PASTEUR AND JENNER. An Example and a Warning. BY J. J. GARTH WILKINSON.

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PASTEUR AND JENNER.
An Example and a Warning.

BY J. J. GARTH WILKINSON.
WILLIAM YOUNG, 114, Victoria Street, Westminster, S.W.
1883.
[Whale 19 May 2006. 8 page booklet.]

Mons. Pasteur is well known for his prolonged and elaborate experiments in the inoculation of sheep with diluted anthracoid virus to prevent them from taking splenic fever. Out of honour to Jenner, he calls this inoculation, Vaccination. He says: "Fifty sheep were placed at my disposal, of which 25 were vaccinated, and the remaining 25 underwent no treatment. A fortnight after, the 50 sheep were inoculated with the most virulent anthracoid microbe. The 25 vaccinated sheep resisted the infection; the 25 unvaccinated died of splenic fever within 50 hours. Since that time, the capabilities of my laboratory have been inadequate to meet the demands of farmers for supplies of this vaccine. In 15 days we have vaccinated in the departments surrounding Paris more than 20,000 sheep, and a large number of cattle and horses."

The Local Government Board has printed and translated M. Pasteur's paper, as "Ordered by the House of Commons." It is thought to be a demonstration of the value of the particular inoculation which he introduces.

What is that value? If his facts be strictly reported, and it is not necessary to impugn them here, the value is that sheep inoculated with his diluted anthracoid, and afterwards inoculated with fully virulent anthracoid, do not die from the latter inoculation. They are "protected" against it. Whereas sheep not inoculated with the diluted anthracoid, but inoculated with the virulent anthracoid, do die to a sheep. This is the value. Does this demonstrate that sheep exposed to the natural contagion of anthracoid or splenic fever will be protected from catching it by inoculation previously with diluted anthracoid? No one can say that the foregoing experiments afford that demonstration, or ever can afford it. They may raise a strong presumption that way; but this is not demonstration.

Jenner fell upon this line of experiment, and took its results for such demonstration. He vaccinated against small-pox, and afterwards inoculated his vaccinees with small-pox, and, he says, they did not take it. From this he argued that they could not in the course of nature take small-pox. He thought he had "demonstrated" this. The history of small-pox epidemics since Jenner's time comments back upon him, and shows that he was mistaken. We must await the history of splenic fever in the future, when it may be found that Pasteur's logic is subject to the same revision by epidemical nature that has befallen Jenner's logic.

Jenner's line of procedure, and Pasteur's, are so identical, that they shed light upon each other; and we may venture without arrogance to prophecy from the one to the other. In both, at the outset, there is the same plausibility. There is Vaccination preventing the subsequent effects of inoculation, But the doom of Jenner is before us: the judgment on Pasteur has yet to come. The doom of Jenner is, that almost all who take small-pox have been vaccinated; and that the Vaccination has not prevented the natural disease; though it is not possible to say that it might not have prevented the inoculated disease. The doom of Jenner also is, that in Hospital exactly the same per centage of small-pox patients dies now as before Vaccination,1 which physically demonstrates that, in Hospital, Vaccination does not save one single life.

1 It is demonstrable that Vaccination has no influence whatever over the small-pox death rate. For the whole hospital death rate now of vaccinated and unvaccinated is just about 18 per cent. ; almost exactly what it was before Vaccination existed. The tables of Jurin in the last century, and of Marson now, attest this. There is, then, no difference in the hospital mortality of small-pox since Vaccination. The difference is, that Vaccination has sorted the deaths into two classes, and that the unvaccinated are from the necessity of the case, the rotten sheep of health, rotten before they were sorted, and afterwards. A thousand other factors, which cannot be causative, would, as sorters, produce the same effect as non-vaccination. Thus, the people who wear best black and employ fashionable tailors, die of small-pox at a vastly less rate than those who wear fustian ; and these again, than those who are in rags. The drinkers of the best port die less in the case than the drinkers of the cheapest beer. Any circumstance that shows condition and social quality, as Vaccination also does, is attended with a smaller death rate from zymotic diseases; anything that demonstrates weak persons and sordid surroundings, which non-vaccination does, is attended with the greater death rate. But the sifting process produced by a thousand circumstances is of no consequence. For put the two heaps of deaths together, and they come to just the same figure now, as before Vaccination existed.—Eastern Daily Press, Sept. 2nd, 1881.

The doom of Jenner is that in consequence of Vaccination and varioloid vaccination each epidemic of small-pox is greater in dimension and more mortal than the one which preceded it.1 The doom of Jenner is, that doing no good, his Vaccination sows broadcast many diseases, and tends to adulterate and empoison the life blood of the human family.

1 Vaccination was made compulsory by Act of Parliament in the year l853, again in 1867, and more compulsory in 1871. Since 1853 we have had three epidemics of small-pox.
Date. Deaths from Small-pox.
1st. 1857-58-59 .... 14,244
2nd. 1803-64-65 .... 20,059
3rd. 1870-71-72 .... 44,840
Increase of population from 1 st to 2nd epidemic 7 Per cent.
Increase of small-pox in the same period nearly 50 per cent.
Increase of population from 2nd to 3rd epidemic 10 per cent.
Increase of small-pox in the same period 120 per cent.
Deaths from small-pox in the first ten years after the enforcement of
Vaccination, 1854 to 1863...................................................... 33,515
In the second ten years, 1864 to 1873 .... 70,458
—From a Letter to the Right Hon. G. Sclater-Booth, M.P., February 1877, by C. T. Pearce, M.R.C.S.

Following these lines we obtain a rational presumption of what awaits Pasteur, and we see at once what he is doing to the flocks and herds of France and other countries. We are now able to predict post Jenner, Firstly, that anthracoid disease will be steadily increased by Pasteur in subsequent epizootics, as small-pox in its epidemics is ever steadily on the increase since Vaccination. The reason is clear. Anthracoid in its seed and potency will be a part of the very constitution of the flocks and herds and horses of France; and epizootic conditions when they arise will bring it more and more widely into fruit. The larger acreage sown with anthracoid, in anthracoid seasons will yield continually larger crops. This is rational deduction, and what is most to the point, it is historical deduction since Jenner. Secondly, we are able to predict that the per centage of anthracoid deaths will be the same as at present; not one life being saved by Pasteurism ; though the number of deaths will be greater, as there will be more hundreds on which the per centages arise.

With regard then to benefits to be derived, these are the prospects which the old Vaccination of Jenner holds out to the new Vaccination of Pasteur. And as inoculation mania now reigns over Medicine,1 and Physicians are enquiring how to inoculate mankind with all serious diseases in order to save mankind from all serious diseases ; and as Veterinarians follow in the wake of the Physicians, and are marking out the flocks and herds and cavalry and poultry of the world for the experiment of stopping all murrains by giving all murrains,—so we see, from the cardinal instance of Vaccination, how each of these attempts will fare in the future. We see that they will increase all mischief for the animal as for the human races, and that there will be utter irrelevancy and inefficacy excepting for this fatal end.

1 Mr. George R. Jesse says in the Morning Post, October 17th, 1881, "Against the Plague, Boils, the small-pox and vaccinal series, scarlet fever: measles, diphtheria, cholera, and other formidable maladies, says The Times : 'we may hope that special forms of inoculation will before long provide us with safeguards.' Note the expression—'we may hope'— 'before long.' Imagine 'Modern Medicine' inoculating man with bacteria of all contagious diseases under the sun—syphilis included. Imagine children inoculated with Mons. Pasteur's cultivated Parasites, and made a cesspool of diseases. And this craze, this inoculation dream, is put forward at the very time that public faith is becoming more and more weakened and attenuated as to the real efficacy of Vaccination for the small-pox, and men in not a few instances prefer incurring legal penalties to running the risk of infection from the lancet of the Doctor."

It is the one consolation to be gathered from Jenner's practice, that it is, and more and more will be, a beacon against all similar methods of attempting to put an end to natural diseases. Its failure applies all round to every possible instance of animal and human inoculation.

Vaccination-history, as Policeman, also holds its dark lantern into the morbid effects besides smallpox which Vaccination inflicts upon the Human Family. The same lantern has the same light for the effects of Pasteur as an author and fountain of animal diseases. His process deteriorates the constitution of all domestic creatures; it communicates the grave diseases of some animals to others which have them not, just as Vaccination communicates syphilis, &c. This is a plain Physiological certainty: self evident. The ensuing decay is a slow thing, and not to be detected by careless observers at any given moment, but it is wide and visible at last. Such decay, the result of the commixture and co-hospitalling of all diseases in each organisation, will furnish a strong reason for vegetarianism, and for getting rid of domestic animals altogether; and then Pasteur will have no flocks to corrupt. Otherwise, the contaminated animals, if eaten, must give a new subsoil of virus to all human diseases. Unless we choose to hold with Sir Thomas Watson, that calves hugely vaccinated, a whole flank in pustules, are in a few weeks "none the worse," but may be butchered for human food.

In recapitulation, Pasteur's experiments proving as far as they go that sheep inoculated with diluted anthracoid virus do not die when afterwards inoculated with strong anthracoid virus, demonstrate nothing beyond this fact. Jenner's experiments, answered now by a century of experience, forbid Pasteur's from being applied deductively to the treatment of any anthracoid fever but that of his own creating. Like Jenner's experiments also, Pasteur's are incapable of proving any good result even if such exists. For if the whole of the live stock of France were to enjoy immunity from splenic fever now and henceforth, this might, from all we know of epidemics, be owing to natural cessation of the disease. History supplies the record of diseases which go away for a time or altogether; and shews that many epidemic diseases have their orbits, though we cannot calculate them. It is foolish to reason that because the wheel of epidemic disease is not visibly rolling among us at a given time, therefore some poisonous fly, some scientist tzetze, which claims to be sitting as governor upon the absent wheel, is the cause of its disappearance; and that if the fly is not attended to, that neglect will be the cause of its reappearance.

The same remarks apply to Vaccination. If the human race were vaccinated to a man, and if small-pox disappeared from the earth for a time,—and all that is must for aught we know be for a time,—that would not prove that Vaccination produced the result. The cessation of small-pox epidemics, sometimes for ages, occurs after no human process in the way of nature.

On the other hand, supposing that Jennerism and Pasteurism were fully successful in stamping out the diseases which Vaccination at least has failed to touch curatively, we have still to balance the account with the mischief done in attaining this result. And when the British Agriculturist and breeder and importer of stock remember that Pasteur is founded upon Jenner, and that Vaccination gives disease and never prevents it, they will think twice, and more than twice, before they suffer the lancet of Pasteur to poison the blood of the herds and flocks of our country.

One concluding remark. In Pasteurism especially we see Vaccination issuing from the Laboratory of the Vivisectionist, and by all that is human in us we are counselled to oppose it on this higher ground also, as a crowning violation of the Law of Cod in Man.

J. J. GARTH WILKINSON. October 28, 1881.