Dissolving Illusions
Disease, Vaccines, and the Forgotten History

Suzanne Humphries, MD
andRoman Bystrianyk

Rally of the Anti-Vaccination League of Canada, Old City Hall
November 13, 1919
Photographer: William James
Thanks to the City of Toronto Archives© 2015, 2013 Suzanne Humphries, MD, and Roman Bystrianyk
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 1480216895
ISBN-13: 978-1480216891

Those who have had to take detailed notice of theimmunisation accidents of the past few years know thatto get the truth of what really went wrong generally calls
for the resources of something like the secret service.
– Charles Cyril Okell, MC, MA, ScD, FRCP, 1938

Often have I wished that this work, for its own sake and thegreat issues involved, had been in more competent and lessoccupied hands, but the results of any investigations as to theeffects of vaccination are given with the fervent hope that at least,
they may promote inquiry, induce impartial consideration, and elucidate the truth on so important a question affecting the public health.
– J. T. Biggs, Member of the Leicester Town Council and its
Sanitary Committee for more than 22 years. 1912

The fatal tendency of mankind to leave off thinking about a thing
when it is no longer doubtful, is the cause of half their errors.
– John Stuart Mill (1806–1873)

Authors’ Notes
The format of this book is somewhat unconventional, as it is filledwith many direct quotes from a wide variety of historical andmedical sources. We decided on this format to give you unfilteredinformation that will help you gain better insight into the true
history of disease and vaccination. Oftentimes each quote tells aunique, self-contained story that can draw the reality of the past intoview much better than a distilled summary would.

The book contains more than 50 graphs that are based on meticulously researched data. Each graph lists the references upon which
the data is based. The graphs provide—in most cases—a neverbefore-seen view of the history of disease from the 1800s into the
1900s. They provide foundational evidence for the points presented
in the text.

The book also includes many photographs extracted from numerous
historic sources. Most of the photographs are presented with theexact captions that appeared in the original work.

Throughout the book, bold text indicates something that we think
warrants special attention.

For more information related to the book, please visit
www.dissolvingillusions.com. There you can see photos, full-color
graphs, and other information that appears in this book.

Dedications
To Bryan, Kyle, and Dylan, whose entry into this worldinspired this investigation, and to Meryl, whose steadfast
support, help, and love kept this project moving forward.
– Roman Bystrianyk

To all who continue to move forward with
the Truth, despite tyranny nipping at their heels.
– Suzanne Humphries, MDAcknowledgments
Foreword: Dr. Jayne L. M. Donegan
Editor: Jennifer Hutchinson
Cover Design: Valerie Lovelace, Thunderbunny Designs,
www.thunderbunnydesigns.com
Cover Photo: Arthur Smith, Jr. August 1915
(approximately 1 year after vaccination)

Special Thanks
Our thanks go to a great many people, including the following:
The staff of the New York Academy of Medicine Rare Book and History of Medicine Collections for providing some extremely valuable
documents.
The Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale forits outstanding historical books and wealth of statistical information.
Gary Null, who inspired Roman to think independently and to “pursue the truth no matter where it may take you.”
Clifford G. Miller, who supplied some excellent historical documents.
John Scudamore for providing some of the original raw mortality
data for England and Wales.
Heather H. Georghiou, a local history librarian, and others at
the Newburgh Free Library, who helped acquire some historicalinformation.
Joseph Lieby for his meticulous research on Arthur Smith Jr.
To our many friends who helped make this book into what it is, including Sandy Lefebvre; Alisa Hunt, PhD; Marshall P. Johnson; andRobert Mariano.
Cindy M. Nicholas, RN, for her outstanding vetting of information andher words of wisdom and support.
Suzanne’s dear friends Serena and Petros for their wisdom andguidance.
Dr. Jennifer Craig and Dr. J. F. for all their invaluable help.

J. T. Biggs, whose dedication to public health and dogged pursuit of
the truth culminated in his 784-page book written in 1912 on thequestion of vaccination and sanitation.
The scientists and researchers who, throughout the years, have donea great deal of important work that we were able to reference.
The few scientists in academia today who take the risks involved inreporting the truth about vaccines and vaccine components.
The countless souls who acquired, compiled, and maintained anenormous amount of statistical information.
Roman’s parents, who were always there when he needed them.
Meryl Barr’s seemingly infinite inspiration and support.
All parents who dedicate long hours of self-education in order tocare for the precious lives that have been bestowed upon them.

Contents

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17

Foreword
Introduction
Terminology

i
vii
xvii

The Not So Good Ol’ Days
Suffer the Little Children
Disease—A Way of Life
Smallpox and the First Vaccine
Contaminated Vaccines
The Great Demonstration
The Rebel Experiment
The Power of the StateThe Case of Arthur Smith Jr.
The Health Revolution
The Amazing Decline
The “Disappearance” of Polio
Whooping Cough
Measles
Starvation, Scurvy, and Vitamin C
Lost Remedies
Belief and Fear

1
18
35
59
96
113
124
141
161
167
184
222
293
337
405
427
445

List of Photographs
List of Graphs
List of Figures
Index
About the Authors

480
486
496
498
504

Foreword by Dr. Jayne L. M. Donegan

Vaccination is regarded as the most important health advance inthe 20th century by most health professionals and laypeople.
Although the dramatic decreases in morbidity and mortality from
diseases that occurred in the course of the 20th century have beencredited to the introduction of specific vaccines, scant acknowledgment has been given to improving social conditions.
Despite questioning the safety and efficacy of vaccination by
reputable medical men since its introduction, debate has been, andis, increasingly discouraged.
Information published in scientific journals is used to support thisposition, other views being regarded as “unscientific.”
It was a received “article of faith” for me and my contemporaries,that vaccination was the single most useful health intervention that
had ever been introduced. Along with all my medical and nursing
colleagues, I was taught that vaccines were the reason children andadults stopped dying from diseases for which there are vaccines.
We were told that other diseases, such as scarlet fever, rheumatic
fever, typhus, typhoid, cholera, and so on, for which there are no vaccines at the time, diminished both in incidence and mortality (ability
to kill) due to better social conditions.
You would think—as medical students who are supposed to be moderately intelligent—that some of us would have asked, “But if deaths
from these diseases decreased due to improved social conditions,mightn’t the ones for which there are vaccines also have decreased
at the same time, for the same reason?” But we didn’t.
The medical curriculum is so overloaded with information that you
just have to learn what you hear, as you hear it: nonvaccinatableidiseases into the social conditions box and vaccinatable diseases into
the vaccines box and then on to the next subject.
Everything I was taught and read in textbooks, both before I qualified as a doctor and through all my post-graduate training, reinforced this view.
Along with most doctors, I regarded parents who would not vaccinate their children as ignorant or, if not ignorant, sociopathic, forwithholding what I believed was a lifesaving intervention and putting everybody else at risk by reducing herd immunity.
Indeed, at special clinics in the 1980s, I used to counsel parents who
wouldn’t vaccinate their children against whooping cough—which
was regarded as the problematic vaccine in those days. I acknowledged that there were dangers associated with the vaccine. I was atruthful doctor, but I told them the official line: that the disease was
10 times more likely to cause death or disability than the vaccine, so
any sane person would choose to vaccinate.
What changed?
In 1994 there was a massive measles/rubella vaccination campaign
in the UK. Seven million schoolchildren were vaccinated against
measles and rubella to protect them from an epidemic of measles,
which was said to be imminent.
In those days, there was only one measles shot in the schedule—it isa live viral vaccine and was supposed to be like the wild measles virus. We were told, “One dose and you are immune for life.” I did realize that one shot, however, might not protect every child—novaccine is one hundred percent effective—but the chief medical officer said that even two shots of this “one-shot vaccine” would notnecessarily protect children when the epidemic came and that theywould need a third. He also said that the best way to vaccinate children was en masse to “break the chain of transmission.”

ii

This left me in a quandary. Obviously, the risk-to-benefit ratio of thevaccine was in favor of the vaccine if it was safer than the disease
and if it stopped your child from getting the disease. This is whatmost parents expect to happen and certainly what they are encouraged to believe.
But if children can have the one-shot vaccine twice and still get thedisease so they need to have a third shot, this means they can be exposed to all the risks of the vaccine two or three times . . . and at thesame time, all the risks of the disease as well. Did I need to reevaluate what I had been saying to parents?
Also, if the best way of “breaking the chain of transmission” of an
infectious disease was to vaccinate en masse, why did we vaccinate
babies with all those different vaccines at two, three, and fourmonths of age (UK schedule)? Why didn’t we just wait for two or
three years and then vaccinate all those who had been born in theinterim en masse to break the chain of transmission?
This was the start of my long, slow journey researching vaccinationand disease ecology and learning about other models and philosophies of health and natural hygiene such as those used by the great
pioneers who cleaned up our cities and built clean water supplies
and sewage systems.
I spent hours in libraries looking at archived journals and textbooks
and the Office for National Statistics (ONS) getting out dusty volumes
from the middle of the 19th century to make graphs of death rates
from diseases for which we have vaccines but which, for some reason, have not been drawn—or made available to doctors or parents
by the ONS or the Department of Health.
I read what prominent men of science, medical officers for health,and doctors wrote about vaccination and its sequelae that nevermade it into today’s textbooks, and found out what anyone with evena passing acquaintance with disease figures of the 19th and 20thiii

century knew. For example, by the 1950s when the whooping coughvaccine was introduced, data showed that whooping cough was killing only 1 percent of the numbers of people who used to die in England and Wales 50 years before.
Official data showed that the same happened with measles. Indeed,
when the measles vaccine was introduced to the UK in 1968, thedeath rate continued to drop steadily, even though the initial uptakeof the vaccine was only 30 percent and didn’t get above 50 percent
until the 1980s.
Even the much-heralded success story of smallpox vaccination was
not what it seemed. The enforcement of the compulsory smallpox
vaccination law in 1867, when the death rate was already falling,
was accompanied by an increase in the deaths from 100 to 400
deaths per million.
After overcoming an awful lot of fear, I came to the gradual realization that it was true what people on the outside had been telling me,that “health is the only immunity.” We don’t need protecting from out
there.
We get infectious diseases when our bodies need to have a periodic
cleanout. Children, especially, benefit from childhood spotty rashes,or “exanthems” as they are called, at appropriate times in order tomake developmental leaps, so long as they are treated appropriately.
In my experience, the worst complications of childhood infections
are caused by standard medical treatment, which involves suppression of all the symptoms.
Has this knowledge helped my career? It has certainly enabled me togive better advice to parents about treating childhood illness and to
be able to provide parents with enough information to give truly informed consent for medical interventions such as vaccination.
My research also led me to being asked, in 2002, to act as an expert
witness for the mothers of two unvaccinated children whose absentivfathers were applying to the court for a vaccination enforcement
order. I wrote a report based on my research, fully referenced, carefully using the methods and results of the studies I quoted to give my
opinion, rather than the conclusions of the authors, which are often
not supported by their results.
The experts for the fathers and the children were members of the
Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI). They recommended vaccination for both children. If they had advised thatvaccination was not necessary for these individual children, theywould have been seen to be contradicting government health policy
based on JCVI recommendations, which is a conflict of interest thatwas not explored in the case.
The judge decided that my opinion was less valid than theirs, and themothers lost their case. When it went to appeal, one of the appeal
judges called my evidence “junk science,” and on this basis I wascharged with Serious Professional Misconduct by the General Medical Council (GMC) of the UK, which could have resulted in being
struck off the Medical Register, banned from practicing as a doctor,
and losing my livelihood.
In 2007, after a long, drawn-out case lasting three and a half years,
the GMC panel completely exonerated me. They did not merely acquit me, but said they were “sure that in the reports you provided
you did not fail to be objective, independent and unbiased.”
The successful outcome notwithstanding, the case took an inevitable
and heavy toll on my children, our family, and my professional life.
In their meticulously researched book, Dr. Suzanne Humphries and
Mr. Roman Bystrianyk take you right back to the roots of disease andthe connection between living conditions, nutrition, and health.
They systematically piece together the information you need topierce the myth that vaccination is what saved us from the infective
scourges of the past. More worryingly, they also show how vaccinesv

may be instrumental in creating a many-headed hydra of overt andcovert disease, which is hardly recognised, barely understood, andmay well be of immense consequence to our children and future
generations.
With all this information there, waiting to be found, why don’t more
doctors go and look for it?
Why do doctors not even entertain the possibility that the Universal
Childhood Vaccination Program may not be the unmitigated successthat it is portrayed to be?
Why do doctors not even consider that there may be other ways ofachieving health that are better and longer lasting?
In my opinion, the biggest obstacle to independent research andthinking is the professional consequence of stepping out of line andbeing seen to be different—as I know to my cost. As George Bernard
Shaw says in his preface to “The Doctor's Dilemma” 1906:
Doctors are just like other Englishmen: most of them have nohonour and no conscience: what they commonly mistake forthese is sentimentality and an intense dread of doing anythingthat everybody else does not do, or omitting to do anythingthat everybody else does.
So next time you are in your doctor’s office and you say, “I’m worried
about the safety of vaccination,” and you are told, “You don’t
understand, you’re not a doctor . . .” remember that, if you area doctor and say, “I’m worried about the safety of vaccination,” youwill be told, “We’re charging you with serious professional
misconduct . . .”Dr. Jayne L. M. Donegan, MBBS, DRCOG, DFFP, DCH, MRCGP, MFHom
13 June 2013, London, UK
jaynelmdonegan@yahoo.com
www.jayne-donegan.co.ukviAuthors’ Introduction

Roman Bystrianyk
My journey began many years ago with the birth of my children. I
always wanted to make sure they had the best I could provide:
healthy food, a secure place to live, lots of toys, and plenty of caring,laughing, and love. When it came time to have them vaccinated I had
assumed, like most parents, that it was a good idea. It had to be—
governments, medical professionals, and just about everyone agreed
that vaccines were one of the greatest medical discoveries of all time.
Measles, whooping cough, smallpox, and all sorts of other horrible
infectious diseases were nowhere to be seen, thanks to vaccines.
I’m by nature an inquisitive and questioning person, and something
didn’t sit right with me about vaccination. A nagging inner voice kept
telling me that I should know more about these injections going into
my family. Somehow I knew I shouldn’t completely and blindly accept that vaccines were safe and effective. At this point, I knew almost nothing about vaccines, but as I began to do some reading I
found some disturbing bits of information that built upon my baseline apprehension.
But because of the amount of pressure from doctors and my wife at
the time, my children had received some vaccines. In the past, I felt
enormously guilty after agreeing to allow my sons to be injected, andI hoped no terrible side effects would occur. I remember staying up
at night, feeling distraught after agreeing to give them an injection
and hoping nothing major would happen to them. I was overwhelmed with worry, wondering if I had done the right thing by succumbing to the pressure to have them vaccinated. Nothing overt
appeared to happen, and they seemed to emerge basically unscathed.
Despite being told that vaccines were harmless, I was still left with afeeling that maybe I had done the wrong thing.

vii

I started keeping files with the information I was finding in an attempt to make sense of it all. Eventually, I ran across a book by Neil
Z. Miller. In it, Miller showed a graph of deaths from measles that had
declined by 95 percent before the measles vaccine was put into general use. I couldn’t believe it! Wasn’t the decline of deaths from disease the claim to fame for vaccines? Wasn’t this the main reason for
vaccinating? Could this graph be correct?
That graph left me with an irksome, yet simple, question: Were vaccines really responsible for the decline in mortality from infectious
diseases and the eradication of certain diseases? It was important to
me to remain objective. My goal was to get to the truth. It seemedthat this obvious question should be easy to answer. After all, vaccines have been around for more than one hundred years. Surely the
CDC or some medical organization would have a large database of
mortality and disease rates available. I was amazed that this wasn’t
the case. Data that I sought wasn’t that easy to find. I thought it wasstrange that the data wasn’t on public display for the world to see,
especially if vaccines had defeated the deadly infectious diseases ofthe past. Where was the proof?
I continued to research vaccination and spent countless hours at the
Yale Medical Library as well as other research libraries. I locatedsome mortality data and started gathering statistics from different
sources and entered it all into a computer spreadsheet program. Few
medical journals referenced historic mortality data, and those that
did made no mention of something that now became clear to me.
Looking at the data from the United States starting from 1900, themeasles mortality rate had declined by more than 98 percent before
the introduction of the vaccine! Even more shocking was that thesame data revealed that whooping cough mortality had declined bymore than 90 percent before the DTP vaccine was introduced! I was
stunned that no one I knew, including my sons’ doctors, had carefully
examined this fundamental belief that vaccines were responsible forthe massive decline in deaths from measles and whooping cough.

viii

I now realized that the belief that vaccines were essential in eliminating the threat of at least these two diseases was based on a myth.
There must have been other factors that led to such a dramatic decline in mortality before vaccine introduction.
I presented a great deal of information to the mother of my children.
Even though she was an educated nurse, she found it impossible
to accept what I showed her. On a weekend not long after, I noticed
that all three of my children were very sick. I examined them moreclosely and saw that they all had high fevers and extremely red eyes.
I couldn’t imagine why they were all so sick. I called their motherand found out that they had, without my knowledge or consent, gotten the DTP, MMR, and polio shots all in one visit. A rush of emotions
swept over me. I was angry, upset, worried, and devastated. One of
the most important health decisions involving my children had been
stripped away from me. The children were very ill all weekend. One
of my boys kept having sporadic shooting pains in one eye that recurred intermittently for a couple of months and ultimately seemed
to resolve.
By this time, I had accumulated a vast amount of information andhard data. It seemed more likely that we had been misled to believethat vaccination was responsible for eliminating the notorious diseases and devastation of the past. I wondered how statistics and information from medical journals were completely disregarded. Thatbrought me to an understanding of how easily people can be ensnared in a faulty belief system. Assurances from medical authorities
that, out of love and responsibility, parents should vaccinate theirchildren were all most people needed to hear. I gained clarity that
there was an underlying societal belief in vaccines that was notbased on history or evidence. That belief is maintained by a publicthat remains foundationally subservient and obedient to governmental and medical hierarchies that may not deserve their trust.
Several years after my children had that vaccine reaction, one ofthem collapsed. Subsequent EEG (electroencephalogram) tracingsixreflected abnormal brain waves consistent with seizures. From myresearch, I couldn’t help but suspect that the vaccines had caused
neurological damage. The neurologist told me that nothing nutritionally could be done to help with the seizures. Unwilling to accept
this, I did my own research and found studies in medical journals
that showed certain nutrients could make a significant difference. I
put my son on a protocol of omega-3 fatty acids, B-complex, magnesium, and other nutrients and an organic diet. Happily, after a few
months, the EEG revealed no seizure activity! Not only was I thrilledthat my son’s condition had improved, but the experience had again
shown me the power of belief systems. In this case, the belief thatnutrients and diet had no effect on brain health was absolutely
wrong. Conventional medical journals contained the information on
using nutrients to stop seizures, but shockingly, the information just
was not being used by the medical profession.
Each one of these experiences propelled me to continue my research.
I obtained data from many sources that led me to solidify and roundout my hypothesis that vaccines were not responsible for the decline
in deaths from infectious diseases. Now I was left with new questions. What did cause the decline of infectious diseases? Why was
there such a rock-solid belief that vaccines were responsible? What
was the true history?
I continued to pour through hundreds of medical journals and longoverlooked books, magazines, and newspapers from the 1800s andearly 1900s. I found thousands of pages that painted a new picture. I
was astonished that an amazing and exciting history had all been
tossed in the basements of libraries and possibly lost forever. This
new information revealed to me a radically different view of life in
the 1800s.
I also discovered how science can go horribly wrong. We can easily
become captured by a belief system that is built on a shaky andflawed foundation. How often do we believe in something, notbecause we have done in-depth research on it, but because authorityxfigures tell us it is the truth? What if what we believe is just an
illusion?
I hope that you find the information in this book—graphs, quotefilled chapters, and more—an interesting addition to what you believe. I think the pages of each chapter will provide a unique insightand shine a different light on what really is a hidden past.
For some of you, this might be a starting point to begin questioning
what you may have innocently accepted as the truth. For others,
the information might fill in large gaps and answer questions you
may have had but never knew where to look. For me, it has beena rewarding process of dissolving illusions that I’d like to sharewith you.

xiSuzanne Humphries, MD
It may seem odd that a medical doctor with 19 years of experiencehas passionately turned away from the practice of vaccination. It
may seem even stranger that, with a successful career as a nephrologist, she would pack her medical bags and leave the hospital withoutlooking back. At the top of her game, she left a very lucrative practiceand a shining reputation behind. Here’s what happened:
Like most doctors, I received a cursory summary of the childhood
and adult vaccine schedules and was told that vaccines are safe andeffective and to give them on schedule. I never questioned the vaccine schedule and was largely agnostic about it.
After nearly two decades of working in the conventional medical system, several things converged to launch me into a new way of thinking. I never would have predicted that the medical establishment
would present itself to me as a blatant violator of life or conflict withmy moral and spiritual principles . . . but it did.
The most memorable event was during the winter of 2009 when the
H1N1 flu vaccine was given as a separate injection from the seasonal
flu vaccine. Many doctors were skeptical of the practice of influenza
vaccination, and many of my hospital colleagues signed the exemption form and dodged the vaccine for themselves. However, there
were trusting patients who did not have the discernment to refuse,and I got to see the potential result of vaccination on their kidneys.
That winter, three patients in close succession were wheeled into theemergency room of my hospital with total kidney shutdown. When I
arrived to talk to them, each one volunteered to me, “I was fine until
I had that vaccine.” All three had normal kidney function at baseline,
as per their outpatient records. All three required acute dialysis, twoeventually recovered, and one died of complications several months
later, supposedly from his other illnesses. After this series of events,xii

I began to take vaccine histories on each of my patients and was startled at the connections that could be made just by asking, “Whenwas your last vaccine?” In my opinion, many cases of supposedly
idiopathic (a medical term for unknown) kidney disease are not idiopathic at all.
During the weeks of dialyzing the three kidney-failure patients, I
passed the chief of internal medicine in the hallway. He was someone
I had always had a good relationship with, and we were on excellent
terms. He asked me the usual, “How are you doing? How is the nephrology practice going?” I decided to tell him what was happening andhow I thought the flu vaccine was causing problems. After conveying
a small bit of my observations, he became stiff, his face tightened, hisbody language changed, and he asked me why I was blaming the vaccine. “They just got the flu, and the vaccine didn’t have time to work,”
was his curt response. I replied by pointing out the fact that I had
never, in my career as a nephrologist and an internist, seen a case of
the flu present with kidney failure unless the patient had become
severely dehydrated and/or taken copious amounts of ibuprofen,
neither of which these patients had done. Even more striking wasthat the patients under discussion did not have symptoms of influenza prior to developing kidney failure.
The conversation continued. We ended up discussing the meningitis
problem in teenagers and college students. I suggested that thedrugs, vaccines, lack of rest, and poor diets of these children may
make them vulnerable to bacteria they would otherwise havedefense against. After all, I knew that meningococcal bacteria were
often found in completely healthy people. Something else must be
contributing to the situation in those who get sick. He laughed at me
and said, “So you think the diet is causing meningitis?” He went on toremind me that “smallpox was eradicated by vaccines, and polio waseradicated in the United States by vaccines.” At that time, I was ignorant of the history of smallpox and polio except that, six years prior, I
was asked to be vaccinated for smallpox in order to be a firstxiii

responder. These first responders would be ready in the case of aterrorist attack or if a person developed smallpox from the vaccine.
As for polio, the images of crippled children, iron lungs, and the terrible days of the vicious poliovirus attacks were branded into myconsciousness like most other people’s. I thought Jonas Salk was agreat American hero. Funny how the events of 1954 were programmed into me, since I was born in 1964. I wouldn’t have beenable to even think about polio until 1969 at the earliest. So when this
doctor made his final comments to me, I was speechless and unable
to respond. I felt lambasted.
Later, several patients were admitted with normal kidneys and had
their health decline within 24 hours of vaccination. Even these welldefined and documented cases were denied as vaccine-induced bymost of my colleagues. There was the rare doctor who would concurwith me in private or the nurse who would come and thank me andagree with me while nobody was listening.
Over the following months, I first made it my business to find out
everything I could about safety trials for vaccines in kidney patients.
I was shocked to find that there were no trials on these types of patients. I was told they could tolerate vaccines because they are “safeand effective.” On seeing that safety of vaccines in acutely ill (active
heart failure, sepsis, cancer, autoimmune disease) and chronic nephrology patients was a myth, I decided to research the chief of internal
medicine’s assumptions about the flu vaccine, smallpox, and polio
history. What I encountered threw me into a tailspin that ultimately
led me to become a full time researcher on the immune system andvaccination.
I came to realize that the guidelines, evidence, and opinions of theleaders were unsound and were NOT leading the herds to authentic
health. What was most puzzling to me was how I was treated when
I tried to protect my own kidney-failure patients from being vaccinated—especially when they were ill.

xiv

After an attempt to get the hospital to defer vaccinating for pneumonia and influenza until the day of hospital discharge instead ofadmission, I was told not to interfere with the vaccination protocol.
Even more outrageously, I was continuously told that if I wanted
credibility for my views I should conduct my own study to prove thatthe vaccines were causing kidney failure. The burden of proof wassomehow placed upon me to obtain IRB (Institutional Review Board)
approval and funding and conduct a statistically significant study
that those who doubted my evidence of harm would believe.
Shouldn’t the burden of proof rest upon vaccine manufacturers andthose who tout their safety? After all, there was no data to support
the belief that vaccines did not cause kidney failure and there wasplenty of reason to believe they could. To me, it was obvious that nobody was looking, and thus the connections were not made.
This was the first time in my career that my opinion regarding kidney failure was not respected. Any other time I suggested that a drug
was responsible for kidney damage, that drug was immediately discontinued—no questions asked. This happens routinely with certain
blood pressure drugs, antibiotics, pain killers, etc. Sometimes kidneys can react to drugs in an allergic fashion—to any drug at any
time—and that drug would have been stopped. Some drugs cause
direct toxicity to the kidneys, and in the past if I suggested to stop or
avoid them, they were always avoided. But now I was unable to protect my own kidney-failure patients from vaccinations given in thehospital.
Questioning the vaccines seemed to open an entire Pandora’s box
that apparently had yellow tape over the lock, along with the message, “Do not cross.” I was met with doublespeak—permitted towrite an order to stop a vaccine that was to be given if I got there intime, but I was also told that I was doing it too often and that I should
not interfere with the hospital’s vaccination policy.
When I pointed out the connection between vaccines and worseningor new-onset kidney failure to a couple of open-minded colleagues,

xvthey understood, started taking vaccine histories, and saw what was
happening. Yet they remained silent. Most doctors continue to practice with comfortable indifference. Some see the errors, damage, andlimits of their practices but still walk lockstep with the herd and protect the brotherhood. I don’t know what it will take to get these doctors to resist the dictates who rule over them. I’ve had far more
success reasoning with parents and intelligent people who are notattached to traditions that are damaging, unscientific, and not evensupported by our own medical literature. This book is for those whowant to read what I have discovered, after years of research, to be amuch more accurate depiction of vaccination history.

xvi

Terminology
Inoculation: The act of introducing an antigenic substance (stimulates the production of antibodies) into the body to produce an immune system reaction to a specific disease.
Variolation: A procedure that entails inoculating a susceptible person with material taken from a vesicle (a blister formed in or beneath the skin) of someone who has smallpox (orthopox variola
virus), to try to prevent smallpox in the susceptible person.
Vaccination:a) From vacca, the Latin word for cow: Inoculation of cowpox
virus (orthopox vaccinia virus) with the intention of protecting against smallpox virus. Also known as cowpoxing.
b) Today the term has been used to describe many othertypes of inoculations: A preparation of a weakened or killed
pathogen, such as a bacterium or a virus, or of a portion of
the pathogen’s structure that, upon administration, stimulates antibody production or humoral immunity against thepathogen.
Immunization: A process that induces an immune response to a specific disease by exposing the individual to a natural or laboratoryderived antigen. The goal of the process is to raise antibodies to a
specific antigen.
You can be vaccinated, but if there is no immunity, you are not immunized. You can be unvaccinated, but if you have had the disease
and have protection, you are immune; therefore you are immunized.

xvii

DTP: Diphtheria, Tetanus, Pertussis vaccine that used the whole bacterial cell after it was killed. This was the original version of the pertussis vaccine that was highly antigenic but more problematic from asafety standpoint. This vaccine is often termed the whole cell vaccine.
It is still used in developing countries.
DTaP: Diphtheria, Tetanus, acellular Pertussis vaccine. The pertussis
portion of these vaccines does not use the whole cell but contains thepertussis toxin either alone or in combination with pieces of othervirulence factors from the cell. These are the vaccines used in the
United States, the United Kingdom, and most of Europe today. They
are thought to be much safer but are far less antigenic. They are also
more expensive.

xviii

~1~
THE NOT SO GOOD OL’ DAYSAs we passed along the reeking banks of the sewer the sun shone upona narrow slip of the water. In the bright light it appeared the colourof strong green tea, and positively looked as solid as black marble inthe shadow—indeed it was more like watery mud than muddy water;and yet we were assured this was the only water the wretched inhabitants had to drink. As we gazed in horror at it, we saw drains andsewers emptying their filthy contents into it; we saw a whole tier ofdoorless privies in the open road, common to men and women, built
over it; we heard bucket after bucket of filth splash into it . . .
– Henry Mayhew (1812–1887), September 24, 1849
Passing along a rough bank, among stakes and washing lines,
one penetrates into this chaos of small one-storied, one-roomed
huts, in most of which there is no artificial floor; kitchen, living,and sleeping-room all in one . . . Everywhere before the doors
residue and offal [waste]; that any sort of pavement lay underneathcould not be seen but only felt, here and there, with the feet.
– Friedrich Engels (1820–1895), 1844

Many of us have a picture of the 1800s colored by a myriad of filtersthat impart a nostalgic and romantic view of that era. You may
picture a time when gentleman callers arrived to meet a welldressed lady in a finely furnished parlor. A time where people
leisurely drifted down a river on a paddlewheel riverboat while sipping mint juleps. A time of more elegant travel aboard a steam train
passing through the beautiful countryside, or a stylish woman
dressed in a long, flowing gown, descending from a sleek horsedrawn carriage with the aid of a dapper companion in a top hat. You
1

The Not So Good Ol’ Days
may think of those times where life was simple and ordered—aseeming utopia, free of the many woes that plague modern society.
But if those filters are removed and a more objective light is castupon that time, a different picture emerges. Instead, imagine a world
where workplaces had no health, safety, or minimum-wage laws. The
1800s was a century when people put in 12 to 16 hours a day at themost tedious menial labor. Imagine bands of children roaming thestreets out of control because their parents were laboring long days.
Children were also involved in dangerous and demoralizing work.
Picture the city of New York surrounded not by suburbs but by ringsof smoldering garbage dumps and shantytowns. Cities where hogs,
horses, and dogs and their refuse were commonplace in the streets.
Many infectious diseases were rampant throughout the world,
particularly in the larger cities. This is not a description of the Third
World, but a large portion of what the United States and othercivilized Western countries used to be only a century or so ago.

Photo 1.1: Syracuse, NY—Shanties Back to an Open Sewer. (1901)

The “good old days,” when everything, in particularly humanhealth, was supposedly better than it is today, are a myth. The
2

The Not So Good Ol’ Days
documented history of Western civilization describes anendless and unromantic struggle with sickness and death,
tragically high infant mortality, and the premature deathof young adults. Death-dealing epidemics attacked helpless
communities nearly as often as summer and winter came topass, and were followed every few years by major catastrophes.
In Victorian England, the average age of death among theurban poor was 15 to 16 years.1
During the 1800s, the number of factories grew along with a rapidly
increasing population, which resulted in a flood of people from thecountryside into the towns and cities looking for work. The population of the city of London, England, increased by almost ninefold during the 19th century. Industrialization rapidly multiplied threats tohealth because of the enormous simultaneous growth of towns.
In 1750, about 15 per cent of the population lived in towns; by1880 a staggering 80 per cent was urban. In 1801 one in five
workers was employed in manufacturing and linked occupations; by 1871 that had climbed to two in three. The largest
city in the Western world, London had about 800,000 inhabitants in 1801; by 1841 its population had grown by a further
million, and at the death of Queen Victoria in 1901 the heart ofthe empire [London] contained seven million inhabitants.2
Hazardous housing
Housing could not accommodate the population explosion, which
resulted in overcrowding and a remarkable buildup of human andanimal waste. In some cases, large buildings, originally built for
breweries or sugar refineries, were later divided into numerous

1

Velv W. Greene, PhD, MPH, “Personal Hygiene and Life Expectancy
Improvements Since 1850: Historic and Epidemiologic Associations,” American
Journal of Infection Control, August 2001, p. 203.
2
Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind, Harper Collins, New York,
1997, p. 398.
3

The Not So Good Ol’ Days
small, dark rooms for families to live in.3 These conditions contributed to high disease and death rates.
The stenches from the “horribly foul cellars” with their “infernal system of sewerage” must needs poison the tenants all theway up to the fifth story . . . the well-worn rut of the deadwagon and the ambulance to the gate, for the tenants died
there like flies in all seasons, and a tenth of its population
was always in hospital.4
The Tenement House
Commission long afterward called the worstof the barracks “infantslaughter houses,” andshowed, by reference tothe mortality lists, thatthey killed one in every
five babies born inthem.5Photo 1.2: Jefferson Street. The shedbarn at right contains three horses.
The barn next in view contains six
horses and two goats. The house in
the center of the picture is full of
Italian families and presents noredeeming feature. On the left areother tenements full of families.
(1911)

If there is an open
space between them[tenements], it is nevermore than a slit a footor so wide, and gets tobe the receptacle ofgarbage and filth of every kind; so that any opening made forthe purposes of ventilation becomes a source of greater danger
than if there were none.6

3

Henry E. Sigerist, Civilization and Disease, Cornell University Press, New
York, 1943, pp. 38–39.
4
Jacob A. Riis, The Battle with the Slum, Macmillan, New York, 1902,
pp. 23–25.
5
Ibid., pp. 36–37.
6Ibid., p. 115.
4

The Not So Good Ol’ Days
Although advances had been made by the early 1900s, many still
lived in abysmal sanitary conditions. Some tenements were
furnished with indoor facilities,
but they were often shared bymultiple families. Tales ofdespair and suffering werecommonplace
among
the
working poor. Struggle forsurvival was a daily affair.
People were often close tofinancial and physical collapse.7
Poor planning with the ever- Photo 1.3: A so-called room of aincreasing number of busi- three-room tenement, but it ismerely a large size closet with anesses and population led tohaphazard city organization. slanting ceiling, located under theBusinesses of all types, includ- main entrance stairs of the building. Here, in a three-quartering any of their hazardous envibed, sleep the father and motherronmental by-products, wereand a little child. The rest of thebuilt alongside crowded livingfamily sleep in the front room
quarters. The lack of health reg- and kitchen. This “room” has absoulations and zoning rules re- lutely no light or ventilation.
sulted in a dangerous and (1916)
demoralizing environment for
the working-class people. An 1861 article on US cities and parks in
the Atlantic Monthly described the situation in cities.
Narrow and crooked streets, want of proper sewerage andventilation, the absence of forethought in providing open
spaces for the recreation of the people, the allowance of intramural [within the walls of a building] burials, and of fetid
nuisances, such as slaughter-houses and manufactories of offensive stuffs, have converted cities into pestilential enclosures,

7

Andrew Mearns, ‘Light and Shade’, A Sequel to ‘The Bitter Cry of Outcast
London,’ 1885, p. 7.
5

The Not So Good Ol’ Days
and kept Jefferson’s saying—“Great cities are great sores”—
true in the most literal and mortifying sense.8
Large numbers of families dwelled within poorly constructedhouses. There was no running water and no toilet. An entire street
would share an outdoor pump and a couple of outside privy vaults orouthouses.
In 1934 Professor Arthur Coledescribed how some inhabitantsof New York and Boston in the
1850s lived in dark cellars overrun with vermin.
While the larger cities
possessed handsome residential districts in which
Photo 1.4: The general insanitary
the streets were paved
conditions which surround theand kept clean and thehouses on both sides of the alley.
sewage was properly The first house on the right is acared for, there was also
small dilapidated frame house.
crowded foreign quar- Beyond it are three larger teneters, veritable hives of ments. The outbuildings at the left
humanity lacking ordi- are all dilapidated, and contain
nary comforts and often privies which are in a foul condieven necessities. New tion. There are not enough garbage boxes to supply the needs,
York in 1850 had 8,141
and the ones provided are so selcellars sheltering 18,456
dom cleaned that the families
persons. There, as in Bos- dump their slops and garbage inton, about a twentieth of the alley. (1901)
the population lived indamp, dark, ill-ventilated, vermin-infested underground rooms.
By the end of the war [US Civil War] fifteen thousand tenement

8

Henry W. Bellows, “Cities and Parks: With Special Reference to the New
York Central Park,” Atlantic Monthly, vol. VII, April 1861, p. 416.
6

The Not So Good Ol’ Days
houses had been built in New York, many of them hardly morethan “fever nests.”9The working classes inhabited the most deplorable housing, which
was described by Friedrich Engels in 1844. Engels visited the slums
while in Manchester, England, and noted the horrors he observed. He
described the people he encountered in London and other towns in
England.
. . . these pale, lank, narrow-chested hollow-eyed ghosts, whom
one passes at every step, these languid flabby faces, incapableof the slightest energetic expression, I have seen in such startling numbers.10
Hordes of people crowded beneathsmoldering, water-rotted roofs, orburrowed among the rats ofclammy cellars.11 Roy Porter, aBritish historian noted for his
work on the history of medicine,
wrote about the plight of millions
of people in the newly industrialized cities.

Photo 1.5: The conditions of
the filth-strewn alleys, ofcourts and yards littered withrubbish, of ill-smelling stables
and manure boxes find theirclimax and in part their cause
in the accumulation of garbage.
(1901)For millions, entire lives—
albeit often very shortones—were passed in new
industrial cities of dreadfulnight with an all too typicalsocio-pathology: foul housing, often in flooded cellars, gross overcrowding, atmospheric and water-supply

9

Arthur Charles Cole, The Irrepressible Conflict 1850–1865, A History ofAmerican Life Volume VII, Macmillan, New York, 1934, p. 181.
10Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844,
Otto Wigand, Leipzig, p. 98.
11
Jacob A. Riis, The Battle with the Slum, Macmillan, New York, 1902, p. 13.
7

The Not So Good Ol’ Days
pollution, overflowing cesspools, contaminated pumps,
poverty, hunger, fatigue and abjection everywhere. Such
conditions, comparable to today’s Third World shanty town or
refugee camps, bred rampant sickness of every kind. Appalling
neo-natal, infant and child mortality accompanied the abomination of child labour in mines and factories; life expectations
were exceedingly low—often under twenty years among theworking classes—and everywhere sickness precipitated family
breakdown, pauperization and social crisis.12
Contemporary writers of the time tried to call attention to the plightof the wretched poor and their terrible living conditions. Andrew
Mearns and William C. Preston wrote about the poor in their 1883
book The Bitter Cry of Outcast London: An Inquiry into the Conditionof the Abject Poor.
Few who will read these pages have any conception of whatthese pestilential human rookeries are, where tens of thousands are crowded together amidst horrors which call to mind
what we have heard of the middle passage of the slave ship. To
get to them you have to penetrate courts reeking with poisonous gases arising from accumulation of sewage and refuse
scattered in all directions and often flowing beneath your feet;courts, many of them which the sun never penetrates, which
are never visited by a breath of fresh air, and which rarely
know the virtues of a drop of cleansing water. You have to ascend rotten staircases, which threaten to give way beneathevery step, leaving gaps that imperil the limbs and lives of theunwary. You have to grope your way along dark and filthy passages swarming with vermin. Then, if you are not driven backby the intolerable stench, you may gain admittance to the dens

12

Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind, Harper Collins, New York,
1997, p. 399.
8

The Not So Good Ol’ Days
in which these thousands of beings who belong, as much as
you, to the race for whom Christ died, herd together.13
The extremely stressful conditions rapidly aged the poor workingclass people. Those who escaped death from disease or disability at
an early age often only lived into their thirties or forties.
Among the laboring classes, life expectation remained everywhere low—little more than thirty years—and from the 1830s
photographs show working people looking old by their thirties
and forties, as poor nutrition, illness, bad living conditions andgross overwork took their toll.14
Water and sewage and everything offal
Clean water, proper sewage treatment, and fresh air did not exist inthese areas. Without any sanitary
infrastructure, human and animal
waste would flow into the streets,
ending up in the local streams andrivers, which happened to also be thepeople’s primary water supply. Sanitary facilities designed for smaller
populations failed. Cesspools overflowed and seeped into the local water supplies.
The manner in which thegreat multitude of the poor
is treated by society to-day
is revolting. They are drawn
into the large cities where

13

Photo 1.6: Water-closet usedby fourteen families. (1916)

Andrew Mearns and William C. Preston, The Bitter Cry of Outcast London:
An Inquiry into the Condition of the Abject Poor, James Clarke & Co., London,
1883, p. 4.
14
Ibid., p. 425.
9

The Not So Good Ol’ Days
they breathe a poorer atmosphere than in the country; they
are relegated to districts which, by reason of the methodof construction, are worse ventilated than any others; they
are deprived of all means of cleanliness, of water itself,
since pipes are laid only when paid for, and the rivers so
polluted that they are useless for such purposes; they are
obliged to throw all offal and garbage, all dirty water, often all disgusting drainage and excrement into the streets,
being without other means of disposing them; they are thus
compelled to infect the region of their own dwellings.15
In the mid-1800s, public
water supplies in McLean
County, Illinois, and Chicago
were described as being
contaminated with humanand animal waste. The
Chicago Medical Society
frequently criticized thecity’s water supply, which
after 1853 was drawn from
Lake Michigan by means of acrude wooden inlet 600 feetlong, close to where thesewage-filled Chicago River
emptied.16
Before the 1870s,
all kinds of garbage
and human and animal waste had been
thrown into what

Photo 1.7: Public hall and sink. Sink
supported only by string and flimsy
wooden props. Hall floor covered
with fecal matter and sewage. (1903)

15

Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844,
Otto Wigand, Leipzig, p. 97.
16
Thomas Neville Bonner, Medicine in Chicago 1850–1950: A Chapter in theSocial and Scientific Development of a City, American History Research Center,
Madison, Wisconsin, 1957, p. 179.
10

The Not So Good Ol’ Days
became known as the “North and South Sloughs,” originallysmall streams running into Sugar Creek. Over the years the
Sloughs “became a . . . sodden pool of stench that was thebreeding places for disease . . . because it drained sewage into
the community’s primary water source, Sugar Creek.”17
Poor waste management continued in Paris even after World War I,
with many of the city’s cesspools still in use.
Unlike Londoners, most Parisians were still getting their waterin 1870 from fountains or water-sellers, and disposing of waste
in court pits. Paris was a city of 85,000 cesspools; many remained until after the First World War.18
Edwin Chadwick, an English social reformer who worked to improve
sanitary conditions and public health, believed that sickness bredpoverty. He enlisted the aid of three doctors who were sympathetic
to sanitary reforms—Neil Arnott, James Phillip Kay-Shuttleworth,and Thomas Southwood Smith. Their 1838 report revealed thesqualor in London.
“The room of a fever patient, in a small and heated apartment
in London, with no perflation [blowing] of fresh air, is perfectly
analogous to the stagnant pool in Ethiopia full of the bodies ofdead locusts,” declared Southwood Smith. “The poison generated in both cases is the same; the difference is merely in the
degree of its potency.”19

17

Lucinda McCray, A Matter of Life and Death: Health, Illness and Medicine in
McLean County, 1830–1995, Bloomington Offset Process, Inc., 1996,
pp. 54–55.
18
Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind, Harper Collins, New York,
1997, p. 416.
19
Ibid., p. 410.
11

The Not So Good Ol’ Days
Animals: Dead and live, dangerous and diseased
Because there were no environmental laws, industries simply discharged their waste into the air and water. In 1850s London, theenvironment was filled with dirt that spewed from factories. If
human and animal waste in the city streets was not revolting
enough, the people withstood an even worse addition to the loathsome scenario—putrefying corpses of animals.
In manufacturing towns, factory chimneys spewed soot, andeverything was covered with dirt and grime. Smoke was a major ingredient of the famous London fog, which not only reduced visibility, but posed serious health risks. Refuse,including the rotting corpses of dogs and horses, littered city
streets. In 1858, the stench from sewage and other rot in London was so putrid that the British House of Commons wasforced to suspend its sessions.20
Animals were found in great numbers in the cities, either roaming
freely or in slaughterhouses. The Annual Report of the Metropolitan
Board of Health in 1866 describes slaughterhouses that were intermingled with tenement housing.
The suffering caused to animals by the present system ofslaughtering is a source of pain and annoyance to all persons
living near these establishments. The animals are seldom fed
from the time they arrive until they are killed, and constantly
give expression to their suffering. Many slaughter-houses arelocated in the centre of blocks of high tenement-houses, andthe business of slaughtering, as viewed from the adjacent

20

Thomas F. X. Noble, Barry Straus, Duane J. Osheim, Kristen B. Neuschel,Elinor A. Accampo, David D. Roberts, and William B. Choen, Western
Civilization: Beyond Boundaries, volume II, 6th ed., Wadsworth, Boston,
Massachusetts, 2010, p. 579.
12

The Not So Good Ol’ Days
windows, is in the highest degree demoralizing in its effects
upon the young.21
People threw their garbage out onto the city streets, where it was
consumed by scavenging pigs, dogs, and rats. The filth in New York
City streets had amassed to a depth of two to three feet in the winter.
Household refuse and animal waste from horses and the other animals mixed with the muddy streets.
. . . nearly every city—from the national capital to some budding Western porkopolis—had its hog nuisance or some equivalent. The streets, squares and parks amounted to public pens,
hog holes offending the eye and nose at every turn . . . In thefall of 1853 porkers were more numerous on the streets of
Springfield [Illinois] than in the pens at the state fairgrounds.
The near-by town of Urbana had a record of more hogs thanpeople, and they had at least equal rights with citizens upon
the streets.22
With the accumulation of garbage came the inevitable increase in vermin such as rats,
which became an accepted partof city life. Disease-spreading
insects of all types, including
cockroaches, were commonplace in tenements.
Prisons, dock-yards, and wharves
have been celebrated for themultitude and magnitude of the

Photo 1.8: Kill Rats Poster. (1917)

21

Annual Report of the Metropolitan Board of Health, 1866, C.S. Wescott &Co.’s Printing House, New York, 1987, p. 34.
22
Arthur Charles Cole, The Irrepressible Conflict 1850–1865: A History ofAmerican Life Volume VII, Macmillan, New York, 1934, pp. 179–180.
13

The Not So Good Ol’ Days
rats which infest them, and the cruelty of their voracious
attacks upon the inmates of these receptacles of vermin.23
In 1916 the cities of New York and Boston were infested with millions of rats, causing a huge amount of destruction.
It is estimated by the bacteriological department of the Boston
board of health that $72,000,000 in damage is done yearly by
the 2,000,000 rats that infest Boston. About $91,250,000 indamage is done yearly by rodents in New York City.24
During the mid-1800s, hospitals were unsanitary and overcrowded.
The American public looked upon them with little regard, considering them a place where the sick and poor went to die. An 1860 article
entitled “Rats in the Hospital” published in Harper’s Weekly, a leading
journal of that time, exposed the horrific conditions at Bellevue Hospital in New York. The article was inspired by an incident of a baby
who was eaten by rats at that hospital.
This day, the inquest held on the body of the infant that waseaten by rats in Bellevue Hospital, New York, was concluded.
The evidence of Mary O’Connor, the mother of the child, andthat of numerous other witnesses, was taken . . . and recommended that proper means be taken to rid the hospital of therats that now infest the institution.25
Diseased food
The limited sources of food consumed by the population were often
of poor quality or contaminated. A lack of laws or unenforced laws
and a systemically corrupt food supply chain led to an abysmal
health situation for those eating diseased food. Attempts to improve
the situation were almost always opposed by the individuals andbusinesses engaged in the offenses because it impacted their bottom
23

The American Medical Gazette, vol. XI, Hall, Clayton & Co. Printers, New
York, 1859, p. 387.
24
The Women’s Municipal League of Boston Bulletin, May 1916, p. 20.
25
Vincent’s Semi-Annual United States Register, 1860, p. 346.
14

The Not So Good Ol’ Days
line. In Chicago and New York City, milk was of such poor qualitythat it caused the deaths of thousands of children each year.
. . . milk sold in Chicago came from cows “fed on whiskey
slops with their bodies covered with sores and tails all eat off,”a circumstance which enabled the editorial critic to explain“Why so many children die in Chicago.” New York’s milk supply
was also largely a byproduct of the local distilleries and the milk
dealers were charged
with the serious offense of murdering
annually eight thouPhoto 1.9: A case of Acute Milk
sand children.26
Poisoning

HavingVomiting,[Cows] shut up, without Diarrhoea, Mucous and Bloody
proper exercise or pure Stools, General Emaciation, Acuteair, the milk is neces- Cholera Infantum, and Dysentery.
(1914)
sarily diseased, and is
the cause of extensive
mortality among young children and infants. Besides the unhealthy slops, decayed vegetables, and the sour and putrid
offals and remnants of kitchens, are gathered up for food ofthese animals; the consequence of which is, that they become
diseased . . .27
In 1860s England, city inspectors attempted to control the sale anduse of diseased meats. To avoid financial losses, diseased meat wasmade into sausages, pickled and cured for ham and bacon, to be soldto an unsuspecting public. Meat that was too diseased for even sausage was fed to the pigs, which would later be eaten by humans.

26

Arthur Charles Cole, The Irrepressible Conflict 1850–1865: A History ofAmerican Life Volume VII, Macmillan, New York, 1934, p. 181.
27
Jonathan Pereira, MD, “Milk as Affected by the Diet and Regimen of Cows,”
A Treatise on Food and Diet, J. & H. G. Langley, New York, 1843, p. 287.
15

The Not So Good Ol’ Days
The dead-meat markets are contaminated by the carcasses of
diseased animals from all sources . . . in the City markets alone
his inspectors seize from one to two tons of diseased meat
every week; and similar seizures, but to a less extent, are madein butchers’ shops and slaughter-houses outside the City by
Medical Officers of Health and their assistants. In Edinburgh[England], Mr. Gamgee tells us that 100 to 200 diseased cattle
are sold in the dead-meat market every week, carcasses being
smuggled in by night even from adjoining piggeries. In thisway the best butchers, in ignorance “may and do servediseased meat to the wealthiest in the land.” . . . Pigs arelargely fed upon diseased meat which is too far gone evenfor the sausage-maker, and this is saying a great deal;
and as an universal rule, disease pigs are pickled andcured for bacon, ham, etc.28
People often consumed nutrient-deficient diets and contaminatedfood that left them weak and susceptible to disease. This 1865 report
talks about the deplorable state of food in the city of New York. Decayed and diseased foods were often sold to the working classes,
which left them in a weakened physical condition.
The quality of the food sold at the corner and butchers’ shops
in this neighborhood deserves a more extended notice than it
can receive here. A casual examination shows much of it to be
unfit for human sustenance. Unwholesome meat, particularly
slunk veal [flesh from the fetus of a calf, found during theslaughter of its mother], is constantly vended and consumed.
Piles of pickled herrings are exposed to the air till the mass
approaches a condition of putridity; and this slimy food, withwilted and decayed vegetables, sausages not above suspicion,and horrible pies, composed of stale and unripe fruits, whosedigestion no human stomach can accomplish, all find ready28

The British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review, Quarterly Journal ofPractical Medicine and Surgery, vol. XXXV, John Churchill & Sons, London,
January–April 1865, pp. 32, 33.
16

The Not So Good Ol’ Days
purchasers. These decaying animals and vegetable remains
are daily entombed in the protuberant stomachs ofthousands of children, whose pallid, expressionless faces
and shrunken limbs are the familiar attributes ofchildhood in these localities.29
The glimpse we have just taken of the underside of Western culturein the 1800s to the 1900s is never discussed in terms of the medical
issues and diseases of that notoriously sickened era. Yet those werethe most important aspects of susceptibility and spread of illness.
It was not only the adults who suffered these awful conditions. Frequently, children lived an unthinkable existence too. Their lives were
often beset not only with pitiful living conditions and diseased, rotten food, but also with long hours of arduous and demoralizing labor,
all of which took an enormous toll on their immunity.

29

Report of the Council of Hygiene and Public Health of the Citizens’
Association of New York, 1865, p. 59.
17

~2~
SUFFER THE LITTLE CHILDREN
I have been working below three years on my father’s account:
he takes me down at two in the morning, and I am up at two thenext afternoon. I go to bed at six at night, to be ready for work thenext morning. I have to bear my burthen [burden] four traps or
ladders before I get to the main road, which leads to the pit bottom.
My task is four or five tubs; each tub holds 4 ½ cwt [1 cwt. or
hundredweight = 112 pounds]. I fill five tubs in twenty journeys.
Am very glad when my task is wrought, as it sore fatigues.
– Ellison Jack, 11-year-old girl, coal bearer, 1840s
But the young, young children, O my brothers!
They are weeping bitterly.
They are weeping in the play-time of the others
In the country of the free.
“For oh!” say the children, “we are weary,
And we cannot run or leap.
If we cared for any meadows, it were merely
To drop in them and sleep.”
They look up with their pale and sunken faces,
And their look is dread to see.
– Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861),“Cry of the Children,” 1842

In the Western world, many children enjoy what we have come todefine as a normal childhood. They generally get up in the morningand have a reasonable breakfast, and then, during the majority of theyear, attend school. In public and private schools, they are educatedin math, science, languages, and other areas of study. While in school,
they are fed, and all their basic needs are usually met. They often
18

Suffer the Little Children
have a chance to experience art, music, and physical education andto play games at recess. During the balance of the day, they may interact with their friends, play games, enjoy sports, watch television,play with their pets, or engage in an entire host of other leisure activities. At night they sleep in a relatively safe environment. In thesummer months, they often enjoy long, leisurely days playing andmay even take vacations with their family.
Although this life is not enjoyed by all and may not be perfect, it is far
more common in the developed world than it used to be. During the1800s and into the 1900s, life for many children in the United Statesand England was that of long and brutal hours of hard labor andpoverty. Their lives were not filled with joy and laughter, but oftenwith suffering and crushing misery.
From the late 1700s into the 1800s, machines frequently replaced
manual labor for the production of most manufactured goods. With
the large number of factories, the owners needed sources of cheap
labor, which was often found in the form of children. Many machines
did not need adult strength to operate, so children could be hired
more inexpensively than adults. Factory work for children was abusive and demoralizing.
Children from seven years of age upward, were engaged byhundreds from London and other large cities, and set to workin the cotton spinning factories of the north. Since there wereno other facilities for boarding them, “apprentice houses” werebuilt for them, in the vicinity of the factories, where they wereplaced under the care of the superintendents or matrons . . .
They were remotely situated, apart from the observation of thecommunity, left to the burdens of unrelieved labor under theharshness of small masters or foremen. Their hours of laborwere excessive. When the demands of the trade were active
they were often arranged in two shifts, each shift working
twelve hours, one in the day and another in the night, sothat it was a common saying in the north that “their beds
never got cold,” one set climbing into bed as the other got
19

Suffer the Little Children
out. When there was no night work the day work was thelonger. They were driven at their work and often abused.30
The 1816 report of the SelectCommittee on the state ofchildren employed in manufacturing detailed the distress that children endured.
They labored long hours to
the point of exhaustion.
Those who lived suffered
physical breakdown fromthe harsh conditions they
endured.

Photo 2.1: Boy coal miners. (1914)

Children of all ages, down to three and four, were found in
the hardest and most painful labor, while babes of six
were commonly found in large numbers in many factories.
Labor from twelve to thirteen and often sixteen hours a day
was the rule. Children had not a moment free, save to snatch a
hasty meal or sleep as best as they could. From earliest youth
they worked to a point of extreme exhaustion, without open-air
exercise, or any enjoyment whatever, but grew up, if they survived at all, weak, bloodless, miserable, and in many cases
deformed cripples, and victims of almost every disease.31
Some children began work at the age of four. An 1843 report by John
W. Parker detailed the ages of the children employed to work.
That instances occur in which Children are taken into themines to work as early as four years of age, sometimes atfive, and between five and six, not unfrequently between six

30

Edward P. Cheyney, An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History ofEngland, Macmillan, New York, 1920, p. 233.
31
William Franklin Willoughby and Mary Clare de Graffenried, Child Labor,
American Economic Association, Guggenheimer, Weil, & Co., Baltimore,
March 1890, p. 16.
20

Suffer the Little Children
and seven, and often from seven to eight, while from eight tonine is the ordinary age at which employment in these mines
commences. That a very large portion of the persons employedin carrying on the work of these mines is under thirteen yearsof age; and a still larger portion between thirteen and eighteen. That in several districts female Children begin to work inthe mines at the same early age as the males.32
By the mid-1800s, child labor had been recognized as a major problem. In England, a commission was appointed in 1840 to investigate.
This lad is a pitiable specimen of a much enduring class of colliery [underground mine] boys, whose subsistence depends ontheir own exertions, often prematurely stimulated, either frombeing deprived of their fathers by death, or laboring under thecurse of drunken, dissolute, and unfeeling parents, who would
apathetically see their children enslave themselves, rather thancontribute to their comfort by a single act of self-denial. These
neglected beings turn out in the morning, taking with them ascanty bag of provisions, to be eaten in the bowels of the earth,where they toil out their daily dole of eight or ten hours;
then return to a comfortless home, taking their chance ofgood meal, a bad one, or none at all. For a bed they arecontent with an old coal-sack laid upon straw, or occupy
whatever portion they can secure of a family bed, which must
suffice for three or four other inmates.33
A public investigation exposed distressing situations termed bysome as mine slavery.34

32

John W. Parker, Physical and Moral Condition of the Children and Young
Persons Employed in Mines and Manufactures, William Clowes and Sons,
London, 1843, p. 1.
33
Ibid., p. 30.
34
The Universalist Union, vol. VII, August 13, 1842, p. 615.
21

Suffer the Little ChildrenChildren began their life in the coal mines at five, six, orseven years of age. Girls and women worked like boys andmen; they were less than half clothed, and worked alongside men who were stark naked. There were from twelve tofourteen working hours in thetwenty-four, and these were often at night. Little girls of six oreight years of age made ten to
twelve trips a day up steep ladders to the surface, carrying
half a hundred weight of coal inwooden buckets on their backs
at each journey. Young womenappeared before the commissioners when summoned fromtheir work, dressed merely in apair of trousers, dripping wet
from the water of the mine, andalready weary with the labor ofthe day scarcely more than begun. A common form of laborconsisted of drawing on
Photo 2.2: Girl and older
hands and knees over the ingirl using a creel to moveequalities of a passagewaycoal. (1842)
not more than two feet or
twenty-eight inches high a
car or tub filled with three or four hundred weight of coal,attached by a chain and hooked to a leather band aroundthe waist.35

35

Edward P. Cheyney, An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History ofEngland, Macmillan, New York, 1920, pp. 243–244.
22

Suffer the Little Children
The testimony of a young girlnamed Ellison Jack illustrated thehardship of her life as a mine
worker. She would descend a pit
ladder with a basket-like device,or creel, on her back that allowed
the lumps of coal to rest on her
back and shoulders. With thisdevice, she could fill four or fivetubs of coal during her day’swork. Each tub holding roughly
500 pounds meant she moved
between 2,000 and 2,500 poundsof coal a day. Since each tub took
her four trips, each load she carried was about 125 pounds.
Large lumps of coal are thenplaced on the neck, and thenshe commences her journeyto the pit bottom, first hanging her lamp to the cloth
Photo 2.3: Typical passage a coalcrossing her forehead. In thisbearer traversed. (1842)
girl’s case she has first totravel fourteen fathom, eighty-four feet, from the wall face to thefirst ladder; this ladder is eighteen feet high. From this ladder she
proceeds along the main road, that is probably from three feet six
inches to four feet six inches high, and so on to the second ladder,which is eighteen feet high, and so to the third and fourth ladders,
until she reaches the pit bottom, where she casts her load.36

36

The Universalist Union, vol. VII, August 13, 1842, p. 615.
23

Suffer the Little Children
Injuries and disease were commonplace. Many children died of diseases such as typhus, and women also had stillbirths due to thestressful conditions.37
Other mine jobs,
although not as labor intensive, werealso dull and dreary.
One job for boys
was to wait all day
Photo 2.4: Child pulling corve. (1842)
long to open andclose the gates forthe wooden sleds, or corves, which were used for hauling coal.
The trappers sit in a little hole scooped out for them in the sideof the gates behind each door, where they sit with a string intheir hands attached to the door, and pull it open the moment
they hear the corves at hand; and the moment it passes they let
the door fall to, which it does of its own weight . . . They havenothing else to do but as their office must be performed fromthe passing of the first to the passing of the last corve during
the day, they are in the pit during the whole time it is worked,
frequently above twelve hours a day. It is a most painful
thing to contemplate the dull dungeon-like life these little
creatures are doomed to spend—a life, for the most part,
spent in solitude, damp, and darkness. They are allowed nolight—but sometimes a good-natured collier will bestow a bitof candle upon them as a treat.38

37

Parliamentary Papers: Volume 15, Reports from Commissioners—Children
Employment (Mines), February 3–August 12, 1842, p. 93.
38
The Universalist Union, vol. VII, August 13, 1842, p. 615.
24

Suffer the Little Children
In the early 1900s, children
were still being employed by
the mining industry. Even
though children younger than
14 were officially prohibitedfrom working, some as young
as 9 or 10 could be found employed in the mines. Due toimproved machinery, boys Photo 2.5: The Lonely Trapper Boy.
(1914)
were principally employed ascoal breakers, picking out slate from coal as it was dumped into themine cars. In the breakers where coal was dried, the coal dust was so
dense that, even on bright days, light would not penetrate. Breakerboys needed to wear mine lamps on their caps to allow them to see
the coal at their feet. Although safety precautions were taken, children sometimes suffered horrific deaths.
It is true we occasionally hear of a little boy in the mine runover by a coal car, or kicked to death by a mule, or fatally injured by a piece of falling slate. And in the coal breakers little
boys are sometimes ground in large crushers that breakthe coal, caught in the wheels or other machinery, or buried in a stream of coal—the death suffered recently by the little boy in Pittston [Pennsylvania].39
In the 1800s, children employed in glass manufacturing worked longhours in extremely challenging conditions. They suffered from awide variety of physical problems.
In the manufacture of glass . . . the hard labour, theirregularity of the hours, the frequent night-work, andespecially the great heat of the working place (100 to 190
Fahrenheit), engender in children general debility and disease,stunted growth, and especially affections of the eye, bowel
39

Owen R. Lovejoy, Child Labor in the Coal Mines, Child Labor—A Menace toIndustry, Education, and Good Citizenship, Academy of Political and Social
Science, 1906, p. 38.
25

Suffer the Little Children
complaints, and rheumatic, and bronchial affections. Many of
the children are pale, have red eyes, often blind for weeks
at a time, suffer from violent nausea, vomiting, coughs,
colds, and rheumatism . . . The glass-blowers usually die
young of debility or chest infections.40
A 1906 article by Owen R.
Lovejoy spoke about childlabor in the manufacturingof glass. Boys worked near
the blistering heat of thefurnaceandperformed
many jobs. Because glass
manufacturing could continuously operate, boys werealso employed to work atnight. After laboring longhours in excessive heat, they
were sent home early in themorning.

Photo 2.6: Boys in the manufacturingof medicine bottles. (1914)

It is significant that in many glass-houses one hardly finds thechild of a glass-blower. One worker who spent his life in theglass-house when asked the reason replied: “I would rather send my boys straight to hell than send them by wayof the glass-house.” A young friend, whose character andfamily are well known, said recently that of the 175 boys withwhom he worked in an Indiana factory two years ago there
were only ten at the end of the fire who were not confirmed
drinkers of intoxicants.41

40

Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind, Harper Collins, New York,
1997, p. 401.
41
Owen R. Lovejoy, Child Labor in the Glass Industry, Child Labor—A Menace
to Industry, Education, and Good Citizenship, Academy of Political and Social
Science, 1906, p. 44.
26

Suffer the Little Children
In the early 1900s in the state of New York, children worked in thecannery industry for endlesshours. The housing supplied
for these seasonal workers wasinadequate and unsanitary. As
many as eight people were
found living in a small room.
The outhouses were unspeakably filthy. There were noscreens covering the openingsof the windows, permitting
swarms of flies to travel from Photo 2.7: Children snipping beansin Maryland. (1913)
the filth of the outhouses to thesmall rooms that contained exposed food. The canners blamed God
for the terrible plight of the children and women.
“It’s the Lord’s fault; we cannot control the ripening of thecrops,” that canners gave in 1912, as in previous years, as theirexcuse for beginning the work of 12 year old boys at 3 A. M.,
for working 10 year old girls 14½ hours a day, for working women as many as 100 hours a week.42
Eight-year-old girls cappedcans. They placed a small
tin disk that was soldered
to the cover on the filledcans of fruits and vegetables, capping 40 cans aminute. A child was hardpressed to keep up withthat rate.
Photo 2.8: At a Dangerous Capping
Machine. (1913)

42

In other industries, thedifficult and dirty working

The Child Labor Bulletin, vol. 1, no. 4, February 1913, pp. 22–23.
27

Suffer the Little Children
conditions, long hours, and exposure to toxins such as lead created avariety of physical disabilities in many.
. . . women and children in lacemaking were often kept at work
during the busy season till nine, ten, and even twelve o’clock atnight; that the girls in dye-houses who carried wet goods ontheir backs into drying rooms at as high a temperature as 110,
and then out on to the grass fields, were often summoned towork at four or five o’clock in the morning; that there weremore than 2,000 children under ten years of age at workin the Birmingham hardware industry, one-fourth of themunder eight; and that weak-sight, blindness, and lead poisoning were prevalent in the potteries and other industries, which were carried on under shockingly unsanitaryconditions.43
An 1890 book on child labor describes the manufacture of paperboxes. Like other factory work, it involved long, endless hours ofmind-numbing work.
The ceilings were low andbegrimed, the light not
unfrequently inadequate.
Each worker is then provided with an oil-lamp
whose smoke and fumes
combine with the odors of
the glue-pot and neglectedwater-closets to make theclose room more hurtful.
Piles of inflammable paper
Photo 2.9: A child employed as
and stacks of boxes await
a doffer. (1914)
but a spark to kindle a firethat would sweep the building before the dazed inmates could

43

Edward P. Cheyney, An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History ofEngland, Macmillan, New York, 1920, p. 276.
28

Suffer the Little Children
rush to the dark and dangerous stairs, only to find the way
barred by packing-cases. In such death-traps thousands ofchildren labor. The lame and humpbacked choose box-making
as light work permitting them to sit. Their distorted figuresand pain-marked features stand out sadly in the dim light behind long tables piled grotesquely with box-shapes.44
A 1913 article in Good Housekeeping details the labor of children in
the cotton mills.
. . . a majority of the workers in the cotton mills are under
16, and that the ages of them run down to 6 and 7. The
girls are used as “spinners” and for the most part—walking
up and down between the spinning
frames and knotting threads thatbreak; and theboys are employed
as “doffers”—forthe replacement of
the empty bobbins
Photo 2.10: Children 6, 8, and two ofwith full ones. The
12 years making hose supporters byhours that theselamplight. (1913)
children work is
well nigh incredible. Either they toil from six in the morning
until six at night, or from six at night until six in the morning. . . It is also the truth that the day-shift is frequently asked
to work two and three nights a week, so that there aredays when the child works for seventeen hours at astretch.45

44

William Franklin Willoughby and Mary Clare de Graffenried. Child Labor,
American Economic Association, Guggenheimer, Weil, & Co., Baltimore,
March 1890, p. 90.
45
Judge Benjamin B. Lindsey and George Creel, “Children in Bondage: The
Sacrifice of Golden Boys and Girls,” Good Housekeeping, July 1913, pp. 17–18.
29

Suffer the Little ChildrenChildren could also be employed at home, doing tedious work inwhat was known as tenement industries. This work involved the
production of clothing or other products that factories hired out tobe done at home. A 1913 Massachusetts Child Labor Committee report describes the difficult working conditions and the effects onchildren.
It [work] is done in close, poorly-ventilated rooms, often in
dirty kitchens and in unhygienic houses . . . The children work
long hours and often late at night by lamplight. Small childrenof five, seven, and nine years of age work in a bending position
until nine or ten o’clock. This is bad for the eyes, causes nervous
strain, interferes with the child’s schooling. The anemic, tired,
nervous, overworked children are driven until they cry out
against the abuse . . . A girl seven years old had worked
sitting in the hot sun while she was sick with measles. The
lack of care at that time was followed by her death . . .46
The breakdown of healthy family systems and the resultant infant
neglect was a large contributor to disease in the past 200 years.
Women and girls were often forced to work in order to survive.
According to the 1901 English census, of the 13 million females older
than 10, 4 million were working. The difficult working conditions
often resulted in physical breakdown, leaving a population of children who were frequently neglected.
Mothers employed in factories are, save during the dinnerhours, absent from home all day long, and the care of theirinfants during their absence is entrusted to young children,
hired nurse-girls, sometimes not more than eight or ten yearsof age . . .47

46

Child Labor in Massachusetts Tenements, Annual Report of the MassachusettsChild Labor Committee, January 1, 1913, pp. 5–6.
47
Sir George Newman, Infant Mortality: A Continuing Social Problem,
Methueun & Co., London, 1906, p. 95.
30

Suffer the Little Children
Lack of knowledge regarding proper child care, combined with poverty, stressful working conditions, meager nutrition, improper
hygiene, and poor sanitation, led to a large number of child deaths.
Few facts receive more unanimous support from those in intimate touch with this question than the ignorance and carelessness of mothers in respect of infant management. Suchignorance shows itself not only in bad methods of artificial
feeding, but in the exposure of the child to all sorts of injurious
influences, and to uncleanly management and negligence.
Death in infancy is probably more due to such ignorancesand negligence than to almost any other cause, as becomes evident with we remember that epidemic diarrhoea, convulsions,debility, and atrophy,
which are the mostcommon causes ofdeath, are brought
about in large measure owing to improper feeding or illtimed weaning; bronchitis and pneumonia
Photo 2.11: Massachusetts Millare due not infrequentWorkers. (1914)
ly to careless exposure;and death from measles and whooping-cough is largely causedby mismanagement of nursing.48
Due to the extreme working conditions—long hours, revolting environments, little rest, poor nutrition—the resulting health of children
was deplorable. Their weakened constitutions left them extremely
susceptible to diseases of all types.

48

Sir George Newman, Infant Mortality: A Continuing Social Problem,
Methueun & Co., London, 1906, p. 262.
31

Suffer the Little Children
The medical witnesses state that the general health is greatly
deteriorated; that the Children are pale, thin, delicate,
feeble, stunted in growth, more than usually susceptible tocertain formidable diseases, and much less able thancommon to resist the ordinary causes of disease. The
prevailing complaints are general weakness, often amounting
to fainting, pains in the head, side, back, and loins, palpitations,sickness, vomiting, and loss of appetite, curvature of the spine,
scrofula, and consumption. The female health, in particularappears to be constantly and grievously disturbed.49
Children who began work so early in life were subjected tosuch long hours of labor did not grow so rapidly, nor reach
their full stature, nor retain their vigor so late in life, as did the
population outside of
the factories.50
In regard to health,also, there is no occupation which a childcan pursue all day andevery day without injury . . . As a matter of Photo 2.12: Child factory workers.
fact there are a con- (1913)
siderable percentageof accidents in the mills, and a high death rate from tuberculosis. But, we repeat, these incidental dangers might all be done
away without affecting the fact that the mental strain involvedin the noise of the mill, and the sheer muscular strain of any
simple motion repeated past the point of fatigue do seriously
weaken the growing child. Even where there is no immedi-

49

John W. Parker, Physical and Moral Condition of the Children and Young
Persons Employed in Mines and Manufactures, William Clowes and Sons,
London, 1843, pp. 132–133.
50
Edward P. Cheyney, An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History ofEngland, Macmillan, New York, 1920, p. 240.
32

Suffer the Little Children
ate traceable injury, there is always an indirect effectwhereby the child is made more susceptible to infection.51
Children in industries were also exposed to a number of poisonous
materials that impacted their health and immune systems.
. . . crouching down out of sight behind bales of paper wherearsenic is used; exposed to the poison of lead, mercury, phosphorus, copper, and other toxic influences; and the ills of theartificial humidity essential to the spinning of cotton, flax,
wool, and silk. The difficulty is to “catch them at it,” to discoverthem really at work,and then to prove thatthey are under the age
required by law, for, as
these little people saythemselves “It is easy to
fix the Board of Healthcertificate if you only
know how.” Lead poi- Photo 2.13: Only a box for a house,soning, or plumbism, and railroad yard for a playground.
causes loosening and (1919)
dropping out of teeth,frightful colic, blindness, paralysis, and sometimes deathin convulsions. Phosphorous ulcerates the gums, causes
decay of bone, terrible disfigurements, blindness, and paralysis of the wrists, and often death. Mercury gives rise toanemia, or bloodlessness, to spongy gums, loosened teeth,and paresis [impaired movement] of the limbs. Nitric acid,used for cleaning, may cause instant death. The germs of lockjaw reside in hides, wool, and fur.52
Into the early 1900s, many children of the working poor lived incrowded tenements with no yards. When they had free time, their

51
52

The Child Labor Bulletin, vol.1, no. 4, February 1913, pp. 93–94.
The American Journal of Nursing, vol. III, no. 8, May 1903, p. 664.
33

Suffer the Little Children
playgrounds were the city streets or worse. A 1920 article in GoodHousekeeping stated that 250,000 children died each year in the
United States due to poverty.
There is no escape from the conclusion that the United States,
the richest nation in the world, is allowing every year aquarter of a million of her own children to be killed bypoverty. All other causes come back, in the last analysis, tothat one.53
The world we enjoy today is built in part on the ceaseless labors ofchildren of the past. The conditions they worked and lived in were
just as horrifying as they were for the adults of the time. Extreme
working conditions, poor nutrition, and lack of sanitation andhygiene left many children in a terrible state of health.
Unfortunately, many children elsewhere in the world today are
subject to similar working conditions and poverty.

53

Rose Wilder Lane, “Mother No. 22,999,” Good Housekeeping, vol. 70, March
1920, p. 112.
34

~3~
DISEASE—A WAY OF LIFE
Like beasts, like maniacs, the people fell on them . . . There is no
more dreadful sight than such popular anger thirsting for bloodand throttling its defenseless victims . . . In the Rue Vaugirard, where
two men were killed . . . I saw one of these unfortunates when hewas still breathing and the old hags were just pulling the wooden
shoes from their feet and beating him on the head with them till
he was dead. He was quite naked and bloody and mashed; they had
torn off not only his clothes but his hair, his sex, and his nose, and one
ruffian tied a rope to the feet of the corpse and dragging it throughthe streets, shouting constantly, “Voilà le Cholera-morbus!”– Heinrich Hein (1797–1856), 1832 Paris cholera epidemic. . . the cupidity [extreme greed] of landlords had tempted them tobuild up narrow alleys with small wooden tenements, which, costing
but little, and being let to numerous families, yield immense profits.
The alley is often not more than six feet wide, paved with round stones
and with very insufficient means for draining off the water. It is notuncommon in such situations to find one or two apartments in eachhouse entirely under ground. Can we wonder if in such a state of things
we find moral as well as physical disease, vice as well as sickness? Can
we expect men who live thus to be sober and orderly, or women to
be cleanly and domestic? In such situations, during the summer
months, diarrhoea and dysentery are rife, and among children fatal.
– New York physician Benjamin McCready (1813–1892), 1837

Infectious diseases were a constant terror during the 1800s. With
increasingly dense populations, wars, and abject poverty, diseases ofall varieties exacted a horrendous toll. The poverty-stricken masses
carried the brunt of the relentless assaults of these diseases, yet no35

Disease—A Way of Life
class was spared. Periodic epidemics and pandemics swept acrossthe globe, wreaking havoc and killing millions, rivaling the horrors ofwar. Abysmal sanitation, hygiene, nutrition, and working and living
conditions, combined with a sense of utter hopelessness, laid thefoundation for the devastation.
Sanitation was not a new concept. In the time of the Old Testament,
there were clear-cut biblical rules laid out governing the management and disposal of dangerous human waste and rubbish outside
the cities and away from water sources. Greece and Rome also perfected well-regulated public health systems. During the Dark Ages,
these ideas simply dropped out of the collective memory in many
areas of the world.
In the United Kingdom, as a result of the Enclosures Act that pushed
people off common land and the Industrial Revolution, dispossessedpeople suddenly massed into cities. People lived waist deep in theirown midden heaps in overcrowded hovels, drinking filthy polluted
water and eating terrible food. These living conditions were the single common factor that led to rampant disease epidemics.
Dr. French noted the influences of living conditions on disease in anarticle published in 1888.
The depressing influences of extreme poverty, filth in allits forms, and the overcrowding of large cities, are great
promoters of contagion, resulting in epidemics, plagues,
and pestilences; while strict cleanliness, fresh air, purewater, and hygienic living; tend greatly to restrict its
spread and prevent these results . . . The death-rate among
infants and young children is especially influenced by the fiveprincipal acute contagious or infectious diseases—namely,
measles, scarlet fever, small-pox, diphtheria, and whoopingcough.54

54

J. M. French, MD, “Infant Mortality and the Environment,” Popular Science,
vol. 34, no. 10, December 1888, p. 228.
36

Disease—A Way of Life
The gastrointestinal tract is known to contain around 70 percent of aperson’s immunity. With insults to a healthy digestive system fromtoxins, infections, and parasites in water and food, it is easy to see
how myriad diseases were able to take hold.
Typhoid fever
Typhoid fever is caused by food or water that’s contaminated with
Salmonella typhi bacteria. Symptoms of typhoid fever include fever,general ill feeling, and abdominal pain. As the disease progresses, theperson experiences a high fever with severe diarrhea. Like cholera
and dysentery, typhoid fever was a disease that evolved outof improper sanitation and defective civilization.55
But while it is true both historically and as a fact of to-day,that typhoid fever is a disease of civilization, it ought to beclearly understood that it is only a disease of defective civilization, for it has gradually become notorious that the widespread or frequent occurrence of typhoid fever in any
community must be due, somehow, to defective sanitation;and defective sanitation means defective civilization.56
Like other diseases of poor sanitation, typhoid fever killed thousands. In the late 1800s to the early 1900s, it was estimated that
40,000 to 50,000 people died from the disease in the United States
every year.57
From January, 1907, to October, 1911, there occurred in Russia
283,684 cases of Asiatic cholera. This included the appalling
epidemic of 1910. According to a conservative estimate there
occurred in the United States during the same period one million and a quarter cases of typhoid fever, or more than four55

H. Curschmann, MD, Typhoid Fever and Typhus Fever, W.B. Saunders &Company, 1902, p. 42.
56
George Chandler Whipple, Typhoid Fever: Its Causation, Transmission, andPrevention, John Wiley & Sons, London, 1908, pp. xxiii–xxiv.
57
Typhoid Fever: Causation and Prevention, Seventh Biennial Report of theBoard of Health of the State of Iowa, 1893, p. 58.
37

Disease—A Way of Lifecases of typhoid fever in the United States for every case ofcholera in Russia. We heard a great deal of the ravages ofcholera in Italy in 1910-11, yet in these two years there occurred in Italy about 16,000 cases of cholera and about 6,000
deaths and in the United States in the same period we had
more than a half million cases of typhoid fever and 50,000
deaths.58
The disease wreaked havoc on the military and was the major killerof US soldiers during the Spanish-American War. It was epidemic in
the national encampments, accounting for 86.8 percent of the total
deaths from disease during the war.59 The Civil War was also
plagued by typhoid.
Although typhoid had a high mortality rate (36.9 percent)in the Civil War, diarrhea and dysentery—nicknamed the“Tennessee quickstep”—caused more disability and deathamong Union and Confederate soldiers than any otherdisease. Records from Chimborazo Hospital in Richmond, Virginia, and from Confederate army surgeons suggest that atleast 90 percent of the soldiers had diarrhea, and thatthroughout the conflict few ever experienced a normal bowel
movement. Speaking for the Union, Walt Whitman noted thatthe war had been “about nine hundred and ninety-nine parts
diarrhea to one part glory.” As most soldiers realized early,“Good guts were more important to good soldiering than goodbrains.”60
Tainted food was also a source of disease epidemics. In July 1879, ina canton of Zurich, Switzerland, a large number of people came down

58

Sewage Pollution of Interstate and International Waters with Special Reference to the Spread of Typhoid Fever, no. 83, Hygienic Laboratory, March 1912,
p. 18.
59
Vincent J. Cirillo, Bullets and Bacilli: The Spanish-American War and
Military Medicine, 2004, p. 33.
60
Ibid.
38

Disease—A Way of Life
with what was considered to be typhoid fever, referred to by someas sausage poisoning.
513 persons of all ages sat down to a cold collation of veal andham, both of inferior quality. Of that number, 421 were subsequently seized with an acute febrile disease which was at thetime looked upon as typhoid. Thirty-four other persons who
had obtained meat from the same butcher were also attacked
with similar symptoms; and subsequently, a further number of
eleven of fifteen who had also been supplied by the same
butcher. These cases appear to have ushered an epidemic ofwhat was described as typhoid fever. The symptoms were thoseof severe gastro-intestinal irritation, with high fever, delirium,
stupor, congestion of the lungs, and great prostration . . . Withreference to this epidemic, the significant remark occurs—“Butgreat doubts have been expressed as to whether it was reallytyphoid fever, or a form of poisoning resembling sausagepoisoning.”61
CholeraCholera is a disease of poor sanitation and crowding. It is a bacterial
infection of the small intestine that results in copious watery diarrhea and vomiting and leads to death with agonizing cramps and dehydration. Infants, children, and adults were all its victims during
pandemics that resulted in enormous numbers of sick and dead.
The increased commercial trade and travel, combined with atrocious
hygienic conditions worldwide, brought forth six cholera pandemics
in the 1800s. The first pandemic started in 1816, and the last ended
in 1926 (Graph 3.1).

61

Surgeon-General C. A. Gordon, “Remarks on Certain Assigned Causes ofFever,” Medical Times and Gazette, vol. II, J & A Churchill, London, October 1,
1881, p. 409.
39

Graph 3.1: Six cholera pandemics. The first pandemic started in 1816, and the last ended in 1926.

Disease—A Way of Life

40

Disease—A Way of Life
More than 15 million cholera deaths in India are estimated to have occurred between 1817 and 1860 . . . The
disease reaches Russia, causing Cholera Riots in the streets ofmajor urban centers . . . In 1849, a second cholera wave occurred in Paris and London. It was the worst outbreak in London’s history, claiming 14,137 lives, more than twice as manyas the 1832 outbreak. The 1849 cholera outbreak in Ireland isestimated to have killed as many people as died during the
Irish Famine. Cholera also followed along with the settlers
heading to the California gold rush, with 6,000 to 12,000 dying
in 1849. Russia was affected early in this cholera pandemic(3rd pandemic), with more than 1 million deaths . . . In North
America, 3,500 people (5.5% of Chicago’s population) died ofcholera in 1854, with up to 150,000 Americans dying of cholera between 1832 and 1860 . . . London’s epidemic in 18521854 killed 10,738 . . . By 1866, the outbreak reached North
America, causing up to 50,000 deaths . . . The 1883-1887 epidemic claimed 250,000 lives in Europe and, in spreading, killed
at least 50,000 in America, 267,890 in Russia, 120,000 in Spain,
90,000 in Japan, 60,000 in Persia, and more than 58,000 in
Egypt . . . The major Russian cities reported more than
500,000 cholera deaths during the first quarter of the20th century.62
In 1832 cholera prevailed in France, and within the year
caused 120,000 deaths, 7,000 of which occurred in Paris in thespace of eighteen days.63
Cholera struck the United States in 1849, leaving a wide path of devastation. The disease appeared in the South in early spring andspread quickly throughout the country, causing scores of deaths inmany towns and villages. In an attempt to stop the epidemic and62

David L. Streiner, Douglas W. MacPherson, and Brian D. Gushulak, PDQ
Public Health, 2010, p. 198.
63
Alfred Stillé, MD, Cholera: Its Origin, History, Causation, Symptoms,
Lesions, Prevention, and Treatment, Lea Brothers & Co., Philadelphia, 1885,
p. 19.
41

Disease—A Way of Life
purify the atmosphere, huge piles of wood were burned. The smokehung low in the heavy midsummer air.
Thousands fled panic-stricken before the scourge, while days offasting, humiliation, and prayer were appointed in view of its
probable advent . . . The streets were empty except for the doctors rushing from victim to victim, and the coffin makers andundertakers following closely on their heels.64
Human and animal waste continuously emptied into the only sourceof water for the people. Lack of knowledge in basic hygiene andprimitive or nonexistent sanitation fueled these almost unbroken
pandemics of cholera during the 1800s and into the early 1900s.65
People were under siege from chemicals and toxins that left theirbattered immune systems at a huge disadvantage.
. . . drinking water presented a growing problem. The spill-off
from the slaughterhouses and the glue factories, thechemicals of the commercial manufacturers, and all ofChicago’s raw sewage had begun to contaminate thedrinking water. Chicagoans had endured the cholera
epidemic of 1848, an epidemic caused by polluted water;
nearby Lake Michigan was far more contaminated in the
1850s.66
Dysentery
Dysentery is an inflammation of the intestine caused by bacteria oran ameba. It is characterized by severe diarrhea with blood andmucus in the feces. Like cholera, dysentery is spread by fecal contamination of food and water, usually in impoverished areas with

64

Arthur Charles Cole, The Irrepressible Conflict 1850–1865: A History ofAmerican Life Volume VII, Macmillan, New York, 1934, p. 183.
65
William Buckingham Canfield, MD, Hygiene of the Sick-Room, P. Blakiston,
Son & Co., Philadelphia,1892, pp. 87–88.
66
Jane Byrne, My Chicago, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, Illinois,
1992, p. 32.
42

Disease—A Way of Life
poor sanitation. These diseases of poor sanitation resulted in a monstrous loss of life.
The Union army in the Civil War (1861-65) lost 186,216
men to disease, twice the number killed in action; nearly
half were claimed by typhoid and dysentery.67
During the US Civil War, life within the prison stockades was frightful. Those who died were often buried without coffins in mass
graves. Conditions for the sick prisoners were appalling, with “hospitals” supplying little comfort or any hope of help.
The hospital itself was a group of worn-out tents, many ofthem leaky and some of them without sides. There were nobunks and but little straw. Hundreds of patients lay upon thebare ground. Their food differed little from that of the prisoners within the stockade though the surgeon in charge was able
to obtain small quantities of flour and arrowroot. The prevalent diseases were scurvy, diarrhea, dysentery, and hospital gangrene.68
Typhus fever
Typhus fever is different than typhoid fever and is caused by arickettsial bacterium most commonly transmitted by the bite of the
body louse, which feeds on the blood of humans as it spreads disease. It is considered a filth disease and occurs where there is poor
hygiene and sanitation. The vitality of the germs increases in direct
proportion to overcrowding and inadequate ventilation.69 Typhus
was another disease that killed enormous numbers of people at different times and places in history.

67

Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind, Harper Collins, New York,
1997, p. 399.
68
Francis Miller and Robert Lanier, The Photographic History of the Civil War:
Prisons and Hospitals, Review of Reviews Co., New York, 1911, p. 82.
69
H. Curschmann, MD, Typhoid Fever and Typhus Fever, W. B. Saunders &Company, 1902, p. 499.
43

Disease—A Way of Life
Like the war itself, typhus began in Serbia, with 10,000 cases
as early as November 1914; within six months, deaths had
leapt to 150,000. With the revolution of 1917 and the civil war,
typhus ran riot in Russia: between 1917 and 1921 Russia
had 25 million cases with up to 3 million deaths.70. . . Henry P. Davison, Chairman of the League of Red Cross
Association, who declared there were 230,000 cases of typhus
fever in Poland . . . According to information sent by Colonel E.
R. Gilchrist, head of the United States Medical Unit in Poland,
95 per cent of the population has been or is now sufferingwith typhus. The mortality has run from 15 to 60 per cent.71
Sir David Henderson, Director General of the newly createdLeague of Red Cross Societies, with headquarters in Geneva,
Switzerland, said last night that the league, at the beginning of
its organization was confronted with one of the most serious
scourges since the Middle Ages—the typhus epidemic in Eastern Europe . . . There were more than 120,000 cases in Poland
alone in July, and conditions are growing worse. We
are approaching the worst season for typhus now. Typhus
goes with dirt, and our chief difficulty is in keeping thepeople clean. We sent soap, but then there was no coal to heat
the water. We have sent fresh clothes, but we have been unable
to supply enough. There is a great lack of materials, hospitals
are unequipped, and there is only one doctor to every 10,000.72

70

Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind, Harper Collins, New York,
1997, p. 399.
71
“All Poland Ravaged by Typhus Epidemic, American Medical Experts Report
95 Per Cent. of the People Victims of Disease,” New York Times, March 25,
1920.
72“Typhus in Europe a World Problem, Director of Red Cross League Admits
Inability to Cope with It Alone, Worst Since Middle Ages,” New York Times,
November 11, 1919.
44

Disease—A Way of Life
Diphtheria
Diphtheria is a term used to describe a particular type of upperrespiratory illness. The determinant of clinical diphtherial disease is
not the bacteria Corynebacterium diphtheriae, but rather a toxigenic
virus (bacteriophage) that infects some of the bacteria. The vast majority of diphtheria bacteria are actually never invaded by a bacteriophage. However when the bacteria are invaded, there is apossibility of serious clinical disease. The virus switches on bacterial
toxin genes, which lead to symptoms such as the leathery thickparchment-like secretion that can cover the back of the throat andobstruct breathing and swallowing.
In severe cases, the toxin is distributed to distant organs by the circulatory system and can cause paralysis and congestive heart failure.
In the era of slum living and poor nutrition, as with other infectious
diseases, considerable numbers of people died with diphtheria.
Diphtheria cases are averaging sixty a day, according to statistics to the Department of Health. Health Commissioner Royal S.
Copeland said yesterday that an epidemic stage is being
approached. Since the beginning of the year there have been
2,773 cases of the disease and 274 deaths . . . “A death fromdiphtheria should be condemned just as severely as adeath from typhoid fever,” said the statement. “Both areentirely unnecessary and represent what is in effect a sanitary crime . . .”73
An infectious disease, dreaded in childhood, but also affecting
adults, is diphtheria. The number of deaths, caused by it[diphtheria] among the ten million inhabitants of thelarger towns in Germany during the ten years 1882-1891
amounted to 111,021 and of every thousand deaths 45 are

73“Reports 60 Cases of Diphtheria Daily, Dr. Copeland Plans Campaign Against
Disease Approaching Epidemic Stage, 274 Deaths This Year,” New York Times,
February 25, 1920.
45

Disease—A Way of Lifedue to the disease. In 1892 the death-rate from diphtheria
was 12,361 or 41 per 1,000.74
Seldom has a community been so alarmed as are the country
people along the line of Berks and Lehigh Counties, where
two counties join and where diphtheria rages in such a violent
epidemic form. Nothing like it has ever affected a similar
stretch of country in this section with such fatal results. Many
families have lost their children. An estimate made to-day of
the number of funerals held places the deaths within the confines of 10 square miles at not less than 60 and probably
more.75
Pertussis
Pertussis, commonly called whooping cough, is a toxin-mediatedbacterial disease that can cause uncontrollable and violent coughing,which is far worse in the undernourished. Whooping cough begins
like a common cold, with hoarseness; watering eyes and nose; ashort, dry cough; and fever. The fever gives way, and the short, dry
cough can be followed by a whoop-sounding cough that often,
though not always, characterizes this disease.
Whooping cough is epidemic in every portion of Philadelphia,
and tens of thousands of little children are suffering from thedisease. It is in the homes of both rich and poor, and as soon as
one child in a square is attacked all the children on the same
street become affected. Pneumonia and bronchitis often follow
in its train, and in severe cases which have been neglected thelungs are so weakened that the patient offers fruitful groundfor the seeds of consumption [tuberculosis].76

74

Hygiene and Sanitation: A Popular Manual to Hygiene, Imperial Board of
Health, Berlin, 1904, p. 199.
75
“Ravages by Diphtheria, A Large Number of Deaths in Berks and LehighCounties,” New York Times, January 5, 1889.
76“Whooping Cough in Philadelphia,” New York Times, July 24, 1893.
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Disease—A Way of Life
Significant figures concerning children’s diseases were given
by Dr. Royal S. Haynes . . . “Whooping cough,” said Dr. Haynes,“kills more babies under one year of age than any other contagious disease. There are almost as many deaths from whooping
cough as from typhoid.” He gave startling statistics showing
the “harmless” diseases. The deaths in New York in 1910 frommeasles were 785; scarlet fever, 953; whooping cough, 461;
diphtheria, 1,715; and smallpox only 5 . . . In the same year thedreaded typhoid caused only 558 deaths.77
Scarlet fever
Scarlet fever is another toxin-mediated bacterial disease. The bacteria involved are Streptococcus pyogenes, also known as group A
strep. The disease got its name from the red rash that appears on theskin, mostly on the chest and abdomen, which can then spread to theentire body. In susceptible individuals, symptoms are caused by toxins that the bacteria produce as a result of a specific bacteriophage(virus) that can integrate into the Streptococcal genome, instructing
the bacteria to produce the toxin.
In some people, serious complications such as heart and kidney disease can arise. These complications are actually the result of an autoimmune reaction from the antibody produced in response to theinfection. Antibodies are thought to be good, but in reality they cancause problems whether induced by a vaccine or an infection.
The idea that antibiotics have eliminated the disease is a fallacy.
Scarlet fever still exists, yet the mortality is nothing like it used to be
and declined long before antibiotics. In fact, antibiotics actually seemto increase the toxin release from the bacteria.78 In the 1800s and77“Beware of Whooping Cough, Kills More Babies Than Any Other Disease,
Says Dr. Haynes,” New York Times, February 16, 1912.
78
M. Tanaka, T. Hasegawa, A. Okamoto, K. Torii, and M. Ohta, “Effect of
Antibiotics on Group A Streptococcus Exoprotein Production Analyzed by
Two-Dimensional Gel Electrophoresis,” Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, vol. 49, no. 1, January 2005, pp. 88–96.
47

Disease—A Way of Life
early 1900s, when people were undernourished and sickly, scarlet
fever resulted in a great many deaths.
During the fifteen years 1847-1861 inclusive, the deaths
from scarlatina and diphtheria in England and Walesamounted to 262,429, and in London alone to 38,890. In
other words, one out of every twenty-three deaths occurring in London was due to scarlatina . . . The reader whose
own family has been visited by the fell destroyer, can figure tohimself the vast amount of human misery which these figures
imply. Although not uncommonly the disease runs such a mildcourse that medical treatment is almost unnecessary, it is, on
the other hand, but too true, that very many cases are amenable to no treatment whatever.79
Hempstead, Long Island, Nov. 20, 1884—Scarlet fever is raging
in Smithville South and vicinity to such an extent that theschools have been closed on that account. Three deaths fromthe disease have occurred . . .80
Canandaigua, N.Y., April 29, 1884—There have been 16 deaths
from scarlet fever in this village within eight days. The Boardof Health has issued an order prohibiting public funerals andcommending the adoption of other sanitary regulations as the
epidemic continues.81
Measles
Unlike the diseases discussed so far, measles is a viral infection. Initial symptoms include runny nose, hacking cough, high fever, andaches and pains. Measles is characterized by small red, irregularly
shaped spots with white centers that appear on the skin. Like otherdiseases, measles epidemics resulted in many deaths.

79“Scarlatina Epidemics,” British Medical Journal, September 12, 1863,
pp. 285–286.
80“Scarlet Fever on Long Island,” New York Times, November 21, 1884.
81“A Scarlet Fever Epidemic,” New York Times, April 30, 1884.
48

Disease—A Way of Life
The startling mortality among children from the littleregarded ailment of measles was indicated to-day by a statement issued by the State Department of Health, showing thatin 1906 there were 1,463 deaths from it, 1,240 being of children under 5 years of age. In December alone 2,807 cases ofthe disease were reported, and a search of the records showsthat it kills 2½ times more children than does scarlet fever.82
Thousands of natives of Herschel Island are along the Arctic
coast are dying of measles . . . They are dying off like rabbits,
and there seems to be nothing to check the death rate.
The march of civilization has increased the death rate from
Nome north. Two years ago the devastation began, and it hascontinued since. When the natives began to wear civilized
man’s clothing, and drink white man’s whisky, then began
their decline. Pneumonia, rheumatism, grip, and every
conceivable malady made their appearance among themand spread along the coast with appalling results.83
Yellow fever
Yellow fever is an acute viral disease transmitted by infected mosquitoes. In 1855 yellow fever devastated the towns of Norfolk,
Portsmouth, and Gosport, Virginia, and the surrounding areas. The
plague was unrelenting, killing thousands and leaving cities with thehighest mortality rates nearly deserted.
. . . the main business street of the city was utterly silent. Not astore was open; only two druggists’ shops gave evidence of life.
Thoroughfares lately vocal with the bustle of Trade, are now
silent as midnight, their stillness broken only by the footfalls ofnurses hurrying to the apothecary for medicines. A very few
weeks have sufficed to turn a population of a least Twenty
82“Measles Kills1,463, And 1,240 Were Children Under 5 Years—
Pennsylvania’s 1906 Record,” New York Times, January 19, 1908.
83“Thousands Die from Measles—The Disease Reported to Be Carrying Off
Arctic Coast Natives at Rapid Rate,” New York Times, November 4, 1902.
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Disease—A Way of Life
Thousand, lately residing in Norfolk and its suburbs, scarcely
Three Thousand remains . . . A common spectacle in the streetsis a cart laden with coffins, which are deposited at some convenient street-corner, and removed hence by the undertakers
as occasion demands. Three or four of these coffins often stand
together. The dead are immediately taken out of the houses
and placed upon the sidewalks: a strip or parchment inscribedwith the name, age and date of the decease of the victim, being
nailed upon the lid of each coffin . . . The deaths here have been
recently numbered fifty, sixty, seventy—aye, very nearly eighty
per day in our remnant of a population of about six thousand,at most, seven thousand! The rich, the poor—old and young,white and colored, all have been indiscriminately leveled downby the disease which now holds fearful sway in our once happy
city, throughout whose streets, avenues and squares there
reign a silence and a desolation that are sickening and oppressive beyond description.84
The article in the New York Times describes a scene of swarming
insects covering coffins, which reads more like a modern-day horror
novel than a news report.
Soon after the attack, the skin of the white patient takes on ayellowish tinge, similar to that of a lemon or orange. Blackpatients undergo a similar metamorphosis—their hue changes
to bronze. In all cases, the progress of the fever is very rapid
and very often fatal . . . Since the fatal epidemic has prevailed
in our city, a most singular looking fly has made its appearance. . . its body is about the size of the common fly, of a yellowish
color . . . They fly together in swarms, and may be seen in large
numbers on the fig trees—but their great point of attraction
seems to be the coffins in which repose the ill-fated victims of“Yellow Jack.” We took a stroll out to that Golgotha of burial
grounds, Potters Field, yesterday, and was intensely horrified
84“Yellow Fever—Fearful Progress of the Disease at Norfolk,” New YorkTimes, September 11, 1855.
50

Disease—A Way of Lifeat the seeing many of the coffins that lay on the ground, scattered around, awaiting internment, literally black with theseloathsome little insects, that squirmed themselves upon one
another so thick as to exclude the coffin entirely from sight.85
Cities in the southern United States were accustomed to frequent
epidemics and were sometimes stricken with multiple illnesses atthe same time, causing widespread panic.
Memphis in 1873 was attacked from three quarters at once—by yellow fever, smallpox and cholera. The people fled in apanic, leaving half the houses vacant.86
Consumption
Many other diseases plagued the people of the 1800s and the early
1900s. Tuberculosis is a bacterial infection that affects the lungs. It
was once known as “consumption” because it wasted away, or consumed, its victims.
One of the most potent factors in the production of consumption, and especially in tenements, is overcrowding and consequent foulness of the air. “The respiration of impure air,” says
one great authority on tuberculosis, “directly debilitates thevital powers, enfeebles the nervous system, depresses theappetite, deranges the secretions, and leads to the retention ofeffete matters in the blood.”87
Together, pneumonia and tuberculosis were by far the biggest killersof the time.
. . . tuberculosis and pneumonia are in the lead, causing,respectively, death-rates of 1.16 and 1.02 per 1,000 living, with85

“Yellow Fever—Fearful Progress of the Disease at Norfolk,” New YorkTimes, September 11, 1855.
86
Allan Nevins, The Emergence of Modern America 1865–1878: A History ofAmerican Life Volume VIII, Macmillan, New York, 1927, p. 323.
87
Arthur R. Guerard, MD, The Relation of Tuberculosis to the Tenement House
Problem, Macmillan, New York, 1903, p. 462.
51

Disease—A Way of Life
deaths by violence, heart disease, and carcinoma in the next
places . . . Consumption and pneumonia are far in the lead,causing together about one-fifth of the total deaths.88
The bare statements that no less than 700,000 men andwomen of working age in this country are afflicted by a preventable and curable disease and more than 92,000 of themdie annually from the disease, sound startling. This is the case,and tuberculosis is the disease. Yet the 92,000 or more workers
who die from tuberculosis are only 70 per cent of the total
death toll from this disease. During the past year 132,000
persons of all ages died from tuberculosis in the UnitedStates.89
Although these infectious diseases are often considered as separate
illnesses, they could strike together or shortly after each other.
Diphtheria, when epidemic, also frequently complicates measles. Much of the mortality from measles in this city, since theyear 1858, was due to this cause.90
At the Eurana Schwab Home near Huguenot, S. I., at first
known as St. Joseph’s-by-the-Sea, an epidemic of measles withscarlet fever and pneumonia, has existed among the 300 young
children, during which twenty have died of more than 150 who
have been affected . . . “The children that come to us, you
should remember, are the unwelcome children of the world,”
said she [Sister Teresa]. “They do not get proper care. They are

88

Publications of the American Statistical Association, vol. 9, nos. 65–72,
1904–1905, pp. 260, 261.
89
“Increasing Output by Preventing Tuberculosis,” The American Contractor,
October 29, 1921, p. 30.
90
J. Lewis Smith, MD, A Treatise on the Diseases of Infancy and Childhood,
Lea Brothers & Co., Philadelphia, 1886, p. 193.
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Disease—A Way of Life
always weak and frail when we get them. It is not strange thatwhen disease breaks out, 20 out of 150 should perish.”91. . . one of the most serious combinations is that of measles withdiphtheria. I cannot escape the impression that the organism
attacked by measles off less resistance to the intoxication andinfection from diphtheria . . . when measles follows diphtheria
with an almost simultaneous infection, both diseases may
influence each other in a very ominous manner. A strong boy
aged seven years, in good circumstances, taken ill upon February 18th, from diphtheria, which rapidly assumed dimensions
in the pharynx. On February 20th he received 600 antitoxin
units, and on February 21st, after I visited him for the firsttime, he at once received 1,500 more . . . Upon March 2d aneruption of measles appeared, at once severe apathy and highgraded asthenia [loss of strength] occurred; gallop rhythm . . .
During the night, from March 8th to 9th, death occurred. In
this case the periods of infection with the contagium of measles
and diphtheria were close together.92
Puerperal fever
One of the ugliest, most tragic, and most avoidable chapters in thehistory of medicine is that of puerperal fever. Puerperal fever is thename given to a deadly infection that affected many mothers in theimmediate post-partum period. Severe pain, pelvic abscesses, sepsis,
high fever, and agonizing death were brought about by an ascending
infection introduced by the contaminated hands of doctors and unsterile medical instruments. There is no single type of microorganism responsible, though the most common bacteria isolated after thegerm theory was developed was Beta haemolytic streptococcus,
Lancefield Group A.
91“Many City Waifs Die in St. Joseph’s Home, Scarlet Fever, Measles, andPneumonia Affect 143 of the 300 Inmates, Twenty Fail to Recover,” New YorkTimes, July 6, 1911.
92
J. C. Wilson, MD, Infectious Disease, D. Appleton and Company, New York,
1911, pp. 338, 339.
53

Disease—A Way of LifeIn the United States, Europe, New Zealand, Sweden, and whereverconventional midwifery was abandoned and taken over by the newmale midwives known as obstetricians and medical students, puerperal fever followed.
Man-midwifery was an uncertain but increasingly fashionable and sometimes quite lucrative area of practice for physicians; it may, for this reason, have been a field in which ideas
about theory and practice were particularly strongly contested. Midwifery, formerly the preserve of women, was receiving increasing attention from medical men—bothphysicians and surgeons—during the eighteenth century.
Prominent within this area of practice were the surgeons, forwhom midwifery was seen as a natural extension of their activities. Surgeons had traditionally been called in to difficult
births by midwives, usually when there was a need to extract
an already dead foetus from the womb in order to save amother’s life. During the eighteenth century, surgeons wereincreasingly finding ways to extend their practice into thearea of normal childbirth. Men-midwives, although recognized by society as holding respectable positions and possessing expertise, found their status limited by the “handson” nature of their work. Nevertheless, within broader social
terms, man-midwifery could be seen as a field of financial
and career opportunity. These ambiguities and uncertainties
within the status of men-midwives may have contributed tothe intensity and competitiveness of the debates which canbe found in their writings.93
Puerperal fever, also known as childbed fever, was a disease mediated by doctor arrogance. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes of the UnitedStates and Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis of Austria were prominent,
long-suffering advocates for women, who tried to get the medical
93

Christine Hallett, PhD, “The Attempt to Understand Puerperal Fever in the
Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries: The Influence of Inflammation
Theory,” Medical History, vol. 49, no. 1, January 1, 2005, pp. 1–28.
54

Disease—A Way of Life
profession to wash their hands and practice more like the traditional
midwives did. Both were ignored and even professionally attacked
for their views. After years of mental anguish, watching women
die needlessly, they left the field of medicine in disgust. Dr. Holmes
became a writer. In 1865 Dr. Semmelweis was deceived into entering
an insane asylum and when he tried to escape, he was severely
beaten by guards. A gangrenous wound to his hand, probably causedby the beating, led to his untimely death two weeks later.
The reason it is important to never forget the history of puerperal
fever is because the massive loss of maternal life impacted husbands,
surviving infants, older surviving children, the family unit, society . . .
and the statistics on life expectancy. Yet we rarely hear the words“puerperal fever” mentioned or discussed.
The epidemic of women and babies dying is documented from records as early as 1746, where more than 50 percent of mothers who
gave birth in a Paris hospital died.94 However, the best and mostcomprehensive writing on the problem came from Dr. Ignaz
Semmelweis in his book, Etiology, Concept, and Prophylaxis of Childbed Fever. After noting that the mothers who were tended by medical
doctors had more than three times the rate of death than those who
were tended by midwives, and that those who were not internally
examined lived, he suspected a contagious agent. Doctors often wentfrom touching infected corpses in the cadaver dissection lab, to thematernity ward, where they examined women and delivered babies
without handwashing.
Dr. Semmelweis directed the doctors of his hospital to use a chlorinated lime solution on their hands prior to touching women. When
doctors and medical students complied, the maternal mortality
rate went from a high of 32 percent down to zero. Using a similar

94

Christine Hallett, PhD, “The Attempt to Understand Puerperal Fever in the
Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries: The Influence of Inflammation
Theory,” Medical History, vol. 49, no. 1, January 1, 2005, pp. 1–28.
55

Disease—A Way of Lifeantiseptic technique, Dr. Breisky of Prague reported in 1882 that hedelivered 1,100 women in succession without a single death.95
Dr. Semmelweis held several sequential staff positions, and wherever his hygiene method was followed, maternal mortality rates
dropped. But most of his contemporaries ignored such outrageousand offensive “nonsense.”
Doctors were insulted at the suggestion that their hands weredirty96, and many had the arrogance to continue to ignore factual
evidence showing that they were the cause of maternal suffering anddeath up until the 1940s when antibiotics were invented.
After the invention of antibiotics, puerperal fever dropped significantly, but Semmelweis’ and Breisky’s records proved that doctors
could have stopped almost all the puerperal fever deaths from occurring in the 1700s if they had only washed their hands and theirinstruments and stopped using unnecessarily invasive birthing techniques.
Another example, from Britain, was the widespread use ofchloroform and forceps by general practitioners in uncomplicated deliveries between 1870 and the 1940s. This was described by one observer as a tendency a “little short of murder”
and accounted for many unnecessary deaths.97
Considering that one-fifth of the population consisted of women ofchildbearing age and that a higher than 30 percent maternal mortality rate was not uncommon, the impact on society, life expectancy
statistics, and the infectious disease rate (infants whose mothers
died around childbirth had a four times higher risk of dying,
95

Frederick C. Irving, MD, “Oliver Wendell Holmes and Puerperal Fever,” New
England Journal of Medicine, vol. 229, no. 4, July 22, 1943, pp. 133–137.
96
Richard W. Wertz and Dorothy C. Weritz, Lying-In: A History of Childbirthin America, Yale University Press, 1989, p. 122.
97
Irvine Loudon, “Maternal Mortality in the Past and Its Relevance to Developing Countries Today,”American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, vol. 72, suppl. 1,
July 2000, pp. 241S–246S.
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Disease—A Way of Life
most commonly from infections) was enormous. Yet vaccine enthusiasts never mention this tragedy in their assessment of history andinfectious disease. Instead, vaccines are lauded as the great gift tohumanity when, in fact, had doctors simply washed their hands,
they would have prevented countless millions of deaths andraised the life expectancy curve markedly.
The end result of puerperal fever was millions of motherlesschildren relegated to die, or to live a life of malnutrition and disease,often forced to work in mines, factories, and sweat shops. Puerperal
fever fueled a social bonfire that left enormous damage in its path. If
those infants had mothers toPreventable medical error is wellbreastfeed them and love
documented all throughout the world
them and the older siblings
and is the third leading cause of
had a mother at home to tend
death in the United States (225,000
deaths per year*), with similar numto their needs, the disease
bers wherever the same medical parand misery of the 1700s to
adigms are implemented.
1900s would have been far
Yet every time an unvaccinated perless prominent. Doctors
son enters their office, zealously protoday believe that vaccines
vaccine doctors arrogantly overlook
would have reduced those
the truth that a person’s risk of dying
diseases, while they ignore
or being maimed from accepted medical practice they offer, is far, far
the fact that their own
higher than any possible death orpredecessors created one ofmaiming from a supposedly vaccinethe situations which resulted
preventable disease.
in high disease rates and low*Barbara Starfield, MD, MPH, “Is US
life expectancy.
Health Really the Best in the World?”
Journal of the American Medical Association, vol. 284, no. 4, July 26, 2000,
pp. 483–485.

There are numerous reputable sources that clearly
demonstrate how improved
living conditions, more nutritious food, better obstetric care, andother non-vaccine elements were responsible for the decline in infectious disease death rates. Despite this clear evidence, today’s vaccine proponents continuously and falsely claim that vaccines are theprincipal reason for the increase in life expectancy we enjoy today.

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Disease—A Way of LifeIn the pages that follow, you will be able to decide for yourself whatmakes more sense. Was it the vaccines? Or were there other factorsthat corresponded with the timing of decline in death rates? If so, arethey to thank for our longer life expectancy? If the answer is that itwas not the vaccines, should the World Health Organization (WHO)be working in a different direction today, in poor countries that mirror the conditions of our past?

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