Boston: Smallpox Vaccination An Unmitigated Failure

I am convinced that Vaccination is the greatest mistake and delusion in the science of medicine; a fanciful illusion in the mind of the discoverer; a phenomenal apparition devoid of scientific foundation, and wanting in all the conditions of scientific possibility.[1]

— Dr. Joseph Hermann, Head Physician to the Imperial Wiede Hospital,
Vienna, Austria, from 1858 to 1864

[Quincy Market, North Market Street, looking toward Faneuil Hall Square, Boston, 1880s]

In the eyes of health experts and the general public, vaccination is one of the most important health breakthroughs of the 20th century. From its inception, medical professionals and legislators worldwide championed its unparalleled efficacy in eradicating smallpox. However, what does the statistical evidence reveal about the true impact of vaccination? Consider the case of smallpox mortality in Boston, Massachusetts. In the United States, Massachusetts created a set of comprehensive vaccination laws in 1855 that would ensure that virtually everyone would be vaccinated.

...in 1855 Massachusetts took the most advanced stand ever taken by any of the states and enacted a law which required parents or guardians to cause the vaccination of all children before they were two years old, and forbade the admission of all children to the public schools of any child who had not been duly vaccinated. The selectmen of towns, mayors and aldermen of cities were to “enforce the vaccination of all the inhabitants” and to require re-vaccination whenever they judged the public health to require it; all employees of manufacturing companies, all inmates of almshouses, reform schools, lunatic asylums, and other places where the poor and the sick are received, or houses of correction, jails, prisons, of all institutions supported wholly or partly by the state were to furnish the means of vaccination to such persons as were unable to pay.[2]

Lemuel Shattuck was a prominent public health pioneer and social reformer in 19th-century Boston. Shattuck emphasized the need for vaccination and pushed for house-to-house vaccination to be enforced by the authority of the City of Boston, as stated in an 1856 report.

Is there an effectual remedy which can be applied for the removal of this great evil [smallpox]? In the judgment of the undersigned there is; and that remedy is compulsory vaccination. The City has already provided that no unvaccinated child shall be admitted into the public schools; and for the class of persons interested it is a most excellent regulation. It has also provided for the gratuitous vaccination of such persons as may apply to the City Physician for that purpose.[3]

Massachusetts and the city of Boston implemented robust legal frameworks to enforce widespread vaccination among the population. According to expectations, the mortality data following the 1855 laws should have exhibited a significant decline or complete cessation of smallpox deaths. However, upon examination, the data does not align with the anticipated outcomes envisioned by experts and policymakers alike.

Boston data begins in 1811 and shows that starting around 1837, there were periodic smallpox epidemics. Following the 1855 mandates, there were smallpox epidemics in 1859–1860, 1864–1865, and 1867, culminating with the infamous epidemic in 1872–1873, as seen in the chart.[4]

...small-pox, after having almost wholly disappeared from our community during the thirty or forty years which followed the introduction of vaccination in 1800, gradually regained its foothold in Boston, where it continued to prevail almost uninterruptedly, although with varying intensity, from 1839, when the disease for the first time assumed the form of a distinct epidemic, up to 1873. During this period of thirty-five years the course of small-pox has been marked by a succession of epidemic paroxysms [outbreaks], generally by intervals of several years, during which a varying number of sporadic cases has testified to the more or less constant presence of the disease. The latest epidemic that of 1872-1873, having proved fatal to 1040 persons, was the most severe that has been experienced in Boston since the introduction of vaccination.[5]

These repeat smallpox epidemics showed that the strict vaccination laws instituted by Massachusetts did nothing to curb the problem of smallpox. In fact, more people died from smallpox in the 20 years after the strict compulsory laws than in the 20 years prior. Over those 20 years after the stringent compulsory laws, the total number of deaths had increased by 85%.

The same pattern of more severe epidemics and failure of vaccination to stop smallpox was to be repeated throughout highly vaccinated populations in the Western world.

...Bavaria [Germany] in 1871 of 30,742 cases 29,429 were in vaccinated persons, or 95.7 per cent, and 1313 in the unvaccinated, or 4.3 per cent. In some of the small local outbreaks of recent years the victims have been nearly all vaccinated (e.g., at Bromley [England] in 1881, a total of 43 cases, including sixteen confluent, all vaccinated).[6]

By the end of 1868, more than 95 percent of the inhabitants of Chicago had been vaccinated. After the Great Fire of 1871, which leveled the city, vaccination was made a condition of receiving relief supplies.[7] Despite the passing of strict vaccination laws, Chicago was hit with a devastating smallpox epidemic in 1872. The idea of vaccinating most of the population (which would later be termed herd immunity) did not protect the population from the scourge of smallpox.

But despite these measures, the death rate rose ominously in the aftermath of the fire. Over two thousand persons contracted smallpox in 1872, and more than a fourth of these died. The fatality among children under five was the highest ever recorded.[8]

The desecration of the vaccinated people in France, Germany, and England was graphically illustrated in a 1900 medical article:

Every recruit that enters the French army is vaccinated. During the Franco-Prussian war there were twenty-three thousand four hundred and sixty-nine [23,469] cases of small-pox in that army.

The London Lancet of July 15, 1871, said: Of nine thousand three hundred and ninety-two [9,392] small-pox patients in London hospitals, six thousand eight hundred and fifty-four [6,854] had been vaccinated. Seventeen and one-half per cent [17.5%] of those attacked died.

In the whole country more than one hundred and twenty-two thousand [122,000] vaccinated persons have suffered from small-pox... Official returns from Germany show that between 1870 and 1885 one million [1,000,000] vaccinated persons died from small-pox.[9]

Despite Massachusetts enacting strict vaccination mandates in 1855, including compulsory vaccination for children and re-vaccination when necessary, smallpox epidemics persisted. Similar patterns emerged in other highly vaccinated regions, such as Bavaria, Bromley, and Chicago, where high vaccination rates did not prevent devastating smallpox outbreaks.

The data and historical record suggest that vaccination laws and high vaccination rates did not prevent smallpox outbreaks or reduce mortality as expected. In many cases, vaccinated populations experienced severe epidemics, which raises questions about the entire notion of vaccination.

Parts of this article are from our new books available at https://dissolvingillusions.com

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[1] Anti-vaccination. The Statistics Exposed and Refuted, Leeds, 1876, p. 2.

[2] Susan Wade Peabody, “Historical Study of Legislation Regarding Public Health in the State of New York and Massachusetts,” The Journal of Infectious Diseases, suppl. no. 4, February 1909, pp. 50–51.

[3] Memorial in Relation to the Small Pox, no. 30, 1856, City of Boston, p. 10.

[4] Boston (Mass.). Registry Dept., Title Bills of mortality, 1810-1849, city of Boston : With an essay on the vital statistics of Boston from 1810 to 1841 / By Lemuel Shattuck, Published Boston : Printed for the Registry Department, 1893 ; Curtis, Josiah, 1816-1883., Title Report of the joint special committee on the census of Boston, May, 1855 : including the report of the censors, with analytical and sanitary observations / by Josiah Curtis, M.D., Published Boston : Moore & Crosby, City Printers, 1856. ;  Report by the City Registrar of the Births, Marriages and Deaths, in the City of Boston for the Year 1849, Boston 1850 J.H. Eastburn, City Printer, pp. 18, 19 ; Report by the City Registrar of the Births, Marriages and Deaths, in the City of Boston for the Year 1850, Boston 1851 J.H. Eastburn, City Printer, pp. 20, 21 ; Report by the City Registrar of the Births, Marriages and Deaths, in the City of Boston for the Year 1851, Boston 1852 J.H. Eastburn, City Printer, pp. 15, 16 ; Report by the City Registrar of the Births, Marriages and Deaths, in the City of Boston for the Year 1852, Boston 1853 J.H. Eastburn, City Printer, pp. 13, 14 ; Report by the City Registrar of the Births, Marriages and Deaths, in the City of Boston for the Year 1853, Boston 1854 J.H. Eastburn, City Printer, pp. 17, 18 ; Report by the City Registrar of the Births, Marriages and Deaths, in the City of Boston for the Year 1854, Boston 1855 J.H. Eastburn, City Printer, pp. 15, 16 ; Report by the City Registrar of the Births, Marriages and Deaths, in the City of Boston for the Year 1859, Boston 1860 J.H. Eastburn, City Printer, pp. 25, 27, 28 ; Report by the City Registrar of the Births, Marriages and Deaths, in the City of Boston for the Year 1862, Boston 1863 J.H. Eastburn, City Printer, pp. 18, 19 ; Report by the City Registrar of the Births, Marriages and Deaths, in the City of Boston for the Year 1868, Boston 1869 J.H. Eastburn, City Printer, pp. 25 ; Report by the City Registrar of the Births, Marriages and Deaths, in the City of Boston for the Year 1871, Boston 1872 J.H. Eastburn, City Printer, pp. 21, 22, 23, 25 ; City Document - No. 84, City of Boston, First Annual Report of the Board of Health of the City of Boston 1873, p. 50 ; Nineteenth Annual Report of the Health Department of the City of Boston for the year 1890, Boston - Rockwell and Churchill, City Printers, 1891, pp. 8, 20, 30, 31-36 ; Twenty-ninth Annual Report 1900 City of Boston, Boston - Municipal Printing Office, 1901, pp. 5, 17 ; Thirty-eighth Annual Report 1909 City of Boston, City of Boston Printing Office, 1910, pp. 127, 130 ; Forty-fourth Annual Report 1915 City of Boston, City of Boston Printing Office, 1916, pp. 86, 87 ; Forty-ninth Annual Report 1920 City of Boston, City of Boston Printing Office, 1921, pp. 2, 6

[5] “Small-Pox and Revaccination,” Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, vol. CIV, no. 6, February 10, 1881, p. 137.

[6] “Vaccination,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, vol. 24, 1891, Chicago, R. S. Peale Company, p. 29.

[7] Thomas Neville Bonner, Medicine in Chicago 1850–1950: A Chapter in the Social and Scientific Development of a City, 1957, American History Research Center, Madison, Wisconsin, pp. 181–182.

[8] Thomas Neville Bonner, Medicine in Chicago 1850–1950: A Chapter in the Social and Scientific Development of a City, 1957, American History Research Center, Madison, Wisconsin, p. 182.

[9] G. W. Harman, MD, “A Physician’s Argument Against the Efficacy of Virus Inoculation,” Medical Brief: A Monthly Journal of Scientific Medicine and Surgery, vol. 28, no. 1, 1900, p. 84.