Menagerie Roulette

It is a convenient habit of vaccinators to speak of vaccinations as uniform, as if the virus of the rite were as definite as a drop of water, a pinch of salt, or a grain of gold. Nothing could be further from the truth. The virus called vaccine is not one but various, not uniform but multiform, not certain but uncertain with an uncertainty which in transit from body to body, ad infinitum, can be predicted nor ascertained… The matter of his lancet he cannot define and its effects he cannot foresee... To these Jennerian stocks have been added Smallpox Cowpox obtained by inoculating cows with the virus or pus of human smallpox. Thus we have virus derived from horsegrease cowpox, from natural or spontaneous cowpox, from horsepox, and from smallpox cowpox, plus the constitutional taints of the generations of vaccinifers through which these diverse poxes have been passed; and which is which, and how modified for better or for worse in the course of travel none can tell.

— Dr. T. V. Gifford, 1888 (Dr. T. V. Gifford, “What is Vaccination,” Journal of Hygeio-therapy, August 1888, vol. II, no. 8, p. 178.)

We all have heard the term vaccination. It’s embedded into our cultural and societal consciousness as something miraculous to prevent disease. But who thought of this idea? And what was this first vaccine made of?

It was noticed that the dirty hands of farm laborers who touched the teats or other sensitive parts of the cow produced the disorder which was named cow-pox. Some people noticed that milkmaids or others who came down with cow-pox were not, as a rule, subject to smallpox during epidemics. Consequently, it became a matter of country-side gossip that cow-pox was a preventative against getting small-pox.

Edward Jenner heard and believed these rumors despite many reported cases of smallpox after cowpox.[1] Edward Jenner did his famous experiment using pus obtained from a cow. Actually, he took material from a pus-filled sore on the hand of a dairymaid that Jenner claimed had been infected from milking cows. Then, he inserted that pus into two incisions on the arm of an eight-year-old boy.

He selected a healthy boy about eight years old, with a view to inoculate him with Cow Pox. On the 14th of May, 1796, matter was taken from a “suppurated [discharging pus] sore on the hand of a dairymaid” and inserted by means of two superficial incisions in the arm, each about three-quarters of an inch long.[2]

The child was later deliberately exposed to smallpox to test the protective property of the cowpox inoculation. When the boy did not contract clinical smallpox, Jenner claimed that the cowpox vaccination was successful and would provide lifelong protection against smallpox.[3] Jenner named his product after the Latin name for cow, vacca, and the idea of vaccination was born.

Vaccine material could be saved by placing numerous pox scabs into a container, filling it with water, and shaking it. That diluted pox scab mixture would be used to vaccinate others.

From the beginning, Edward Jenner thought that genuine cowpox disease originated from the running sores of sick horse’s heels, a condition called the grease, also known as horse-pox. So, Jenner used horse-pox to vaccinate and supplied it to others as a source of vaccine. Jenner also thought that smallpox, swine-pox, cow-pox, and horse-pox were merely varieties of the same disease. Jenner also approved the use of goat-pox, which was used to vaccinate children.

Jenner believed that smallpox, swine-pox, cow-pox and grease [horse-pox] were merely varieties of the same disease… He employed the grease-virus (horse-pox) in a large number of cases, and furnished it to other vaccinators... Acting on his [Jenner’s] suggestion, the King of Spain, in 1804, ordered all the children in the Foundling Hospital of Madrid to be vaccinated with goat-pox.[4]

The lymph which Dr. Jenner then used, and which he had kept in circulation three or four years about Berkeley, had been taken by him, not from the cow, but the horse, and never subsequently passed through the constitution. In fact, the disease is an equine, not a vaccine [cow] pox.[5]

In 1789 Jenner had inoculated his eighteen-month-old son with swine-pox. Between that year and 1792, he repeatedly inoculated his son with small-pox. Possibly due to these experiments, his son was always delicate in health and died of pulmonary consumption [now known as tuberculosis] at the young age of twenty-one.

The original promoter of vaccination, Dr. Edward Jenner, made his first experiment in 1789, upon his son Edward, his first-born, and infant of eighteen months, inoculating the child with swine-pox – a disease which, by the way, had nothing to do with swine, but was a variety of smallpox that left no marks. The subject of this experiment never became robust and developed a rather defective understanding, and after the lapse of twenty years, died of pulmonary consumption.[6]

Over the years and decades, whatever vaccine material was used seemed to lose its potency. So, many believed to “regenerate” and increase the “virulence” of the virus stock was to pass it through humans or animals other than a cow, such as a horse, donkey, mule, goat, sheep, or rabbit. Even buffalo was used to create vaccine material.

...he concludes as to the necessity of regeneration after the third sub-passage, either through the agency of the human subject or by using some other animal than the calf (horse, donkey, goat, sheep or rabbit) or by obtaining a new strain of vaccine from a variolous [smallpox] case-a variola vaccine. In the Punjab [India], I found that alternation from cow calf to buffalo calf, and vice versa, served to keep the stock lymph virulent… A number of children with well-developed vesicles are collected together and vaccination done directly from arm-to-calf. The result of this inoculation is not very productive, but when the small amount of material so obtained is transferred to another calf, the eruption is less scanty and the lymph becomes regenerated. The rabbit, although a small animal, can be satisfactorily used for regeneration of lymph.[7]

In Punjab [India], the buffalo has served the purpose of vaccinifer for many years. The results have been excellent both as regards quality and quantity, although it would be going too far to say that they showed a marked superiority over those given by the cow calf. Chauveau asserts that the horse is the animal most suited for the production of vaccine lymph. Huon of Marseilles concludes strongly in favour of an asinine vaccine… He argues that the potency of a bovine vaccine is greatest when the strain used for inoculation is donkey lymph: that on the donkey itself bovine vaccine gives as a rule excellent results; and that still better are obtained where donkey lymph is used to inoculate donkeys.[8]

Also, over many decades, cows were directly inoculated with smallpox from someone that had died of smallpox to make smallpox-cow vaccine material. In addition, the blankets from people who died from smallpox were hung around cows’ heads to make vaccine material. The ulcerated udder of a cow subject to this procedure was then scraped to get the vaccine material.

As early as 1801, Gassner, of Günsburg inoculated with variolous virus [smallpox] eleven cows, producing on one of the vesicles having all the characteristics of vaccinal vesicles, and from which “a stock of genuine vaccine lymph was obtained.” With this smallpox-cow vaccine four children were inoculated, and from them seventeen other children were in turn vaccinated. In the following year (1802) a number of cows were successfully variolated [smallpox] at the Veterinary College in Berlin.

In 1830, Dr. Sonderland, of Barmen, by enveloping cattle in blankets taken from the bed of a patient who had died of smallpox, and by hanging the blankets up around their heads, and thus forcing them to breathe the effluvia from them, succeeded in variolating several poor animals. The cows, he says, “in a few days manifested the symptoms of cow-pox, and lymph taken from them produced genuine vaccine vesicles in the human subject.

In 1836, by inoculation of variolous virus [smallpox], Dr. Thiele, of Kasan, produced “the genuine vaccine disease.” With this he vaccinated, through seventy-five transmissions, more that three thousand human beings.

In 1839, Ceely, of England, induced “vaccine vesicles in two young heifers… by inoculation of variolous lymph [smallpox],” and thus established vaccine-stock, which formed the basis of thousands of vaccinations.

In 1840, Mr. Badcock, of Brighton, England, succeeded in small-poxing a cow, and derived therefrom a stock of “genuine vaccine lymph.” He has since repeated the experiment about six hundred times, succeeding in thirty-seven cases. The vaccine virus thus obtained has been supplied to many hundreds of practitioners, and tens of thousands of vaccinations have been performed with it.[9]

The notion of regenerating supposedly fading vaccine material became known as retro-vaccination. The pus would be taken from humans and then to animals and then back to humans again. Children and young animals were preferred because they were seen as healthier and producing better vaccine material.

Retro-vaccination, or the passage of the virus through children and back from the child to the calf, was found fairly efficient in maintaining the activity of vaccinia.[10]

You may vaccinate from an infant to a heifer to-day and back again indefinitely, or take a series of infants and vaccinate from one to the other, or a series of cows from one to the other; and no evidence is as yet given to show an actual difference in the character of the lymph produced...[11]

Once a person was vaccinated with some type of concoction (made from the pus from a sore on a cow, horse, goat, pig, sheep, mule, ass, buffalo, rabbit, or smallpox from a corpse scratched onto a cow or other animal), that person was then used to vaccinate the next person and then the next and the next in a procedure called arm-to-arm vaccination. Vaccine material would eventually be scratched from animal to animal to reinvigorate the vaccine stock, which was then used to vaccinate more people.

It will thus be seen what slight foundation the whole question of vaccinal virus rests. Millions of vaccinations are made every year, and nobody knows what they are made with. The whole process is a haphazard game with chance. Vaccination was accepted on the simple dictum of Jenner that it would stamp out smallpox. The medical profession of today buys its vaccinal virus of those who make merchandise of it on their simple dictum that it is the right thing to use.[12]

On top of that, we know hygiene was virtually nonexistent during the 1800s. So, every vaccination on every human and every animal was mixed with whatever other microbes and assorted chemicals were on the skin and in the pus of that creature. Even by the relatively more hygienic first half of the 1900s, as many as half a billion organisms (including bacteria, yeast, and fungi) per milliliter might be present in each vaccine.

Vaccination was introduced at the end of the 18th century into a relatively dirty age, using the methods already established for smallpox inoculation (variolation). Vaccine was either inserted without any skin preparation, or perhaps the skin was wiped with a non-too-clean cloth, possibly soaked in equally-dirty water or perhaps spirit.[13]

With the best of care, heavy bacterial contamination of vaccine lymph is inevitable during its preparation, and as many as 500 million organisms per ml. may be present…[14]

By the late 1800s, large vaccine farms were established to produce vaccines. The extracted pus used for vaccination would unavoidably be mixed with blood during the collection process. Collected vaccine points collected from numerous animals would be left out in the open areas to be dried before being sent out for distribution to vaccinate millions.

The method of procedure in charging the points is as follows: The crusts where have formed over the patches are first removed, the patch is then squeezed between the two blades of two pairs of long dressing or polypus forceps, and as soon as the lymph commences to ooze out, the ivory points are charged with this on both sides. A patch has to be squeezed several times before it is exhausted, and it is impossible to prevent the admixture a certain quantity of blood, as the clots which have formed in the small vessels of the granulation tissue are necessarily disturbed each time the patch is squeezed. This gives to the dried film a slightly reddish-yellow look… The points thus prepared are placed upon drying-boards, and are then sent to Roxbury… where they are arranged for distribution.[15]

Even by the 1880s, vaccine farms were often crowded and unhygienic, leaving little doubt that what was termed so-called “pure lymph” that was often claimed by public officials was anything but that.

I visited the establishments for the production of vaccine virus… Dr. Martin [& Son, in Brookline] occupies a large building originally erected for a private stable… The main floor of the building, originally the carriage and harness rooms, is occupied as an operating room. Here the animals are brought for inoculation, and it is here that the [vaccine] points are charged when the vesicles have matured…There is no doubt but that the place is overcrowded at present, owing to the great demand the exists. Thirty animals occupy the space that should accommodate about twenty, and this naturally leads to a little neglect of that absolute cleanliness which, if not essential, is desirable… The New England Vaccine Company… This stable was very poorly ventilated, the animals were too crowded, and cleanliness was not rigorously attended to. The establishment of Messrs. Codman & Shurtleff, at Stoughton, was also visited… Much less attention was paid to the cleanliness of the premises than in the case of the other two establishments visited.[16]

So, in reality, a vaccine was never really a vaccine in the sense of the word where “vacca” means cow. Instead, vaccination was essentially a brand name used to describe pus and blood from an entire menagerie of animals (cows, horses, goats, pigs, sheep, mules, asses, buffalos, rabbits) and humans (including corpses of those that died from smallpox), microbes, and chemicals scratched onto people with the notion of keeping them safe from smallpox. Each scratch a person received would be a haphazard gamble as to what was in that mystery brew.

Yet, this worldwide experiment attempting to protect people from a single disease continued for over a hundred years. And despite countless vaccine injuries and deaths and repeated and massive vaccination failures, astonishingly, vaccination was mythologized as nothing more than a cowpox virus used to conquer smallpox.

Knowing what this concoction called a vaccine was really made of, does it make sense to you that it could have possibly been responsible for eradicating any disease?

This madness—first filtered through the brain of Jenner by the superstitious old women of Berkeley and its neighbourhood, who had long secretly practised vaccination upon children—was, after some few years of hard fighting, transmitted to Sir Gilbert Blane and a few of his class; and as these were the great 'medicine men,' whose wisdom excelled all others, the delusion was soon shared by the King. From the King it passed to the Court, from the Court to the Government, from the Government to the profession, and from the profession to all who readily move by example in high places. In this way, not England alone, but every part of the civilized world, more or less, went mad; and humanity is now reaping its reward—not in the extirpation of small-pox, as promised by these fanatics, but in the increase of diseases more frightful in their character, and in their general results more fatal.

— Dr. Skelton, Licentiate in Medicine and Surgery, London and Edinburgh (Vaccination Tracts. Letters and Opinions of Medical Men, 1892, Province: Snow & Farnham, p. 14.)

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[1] Walter Hadwen, MD, The Case Against Vaccination, Goddard’s Assembly Rooms, Gloucester, January 25, 1896, p. 12.

[2] History and Pathology of Vaccination, Edgar R. Crookshank, 1889, p. 255.

[3] John Baron, The Life of Edward Jenner, pp. 490-491.

[4] George William Winterburn, PhD, MD, The Value of Vaccination: A Non-partisan Review of Its History and Results, 1886, pp. 36-37.

[5] “Observations by Mr. Fosbroke,” The Lancet, vol. II, 1829, pp. 583–584.

[6] International Anti-Vivisection and Animal Protection Congress, December 8-11, 1913, pp. 136-137.

[7] W. F. Harvey, “Vaccine Lymph Production, Preparation, and Preservation,” The Indian Journal of Medical Research, vol. VIII, 1920-1921, p. 265.

[8] W. F. Harvey, “Vaccine Lymph Production, Preparation, and Preservation,” The Indian Journal of Medical Research, vol. VIII, 1920-1921, p. 258.

[9] George William Winterburn, PhD, MD, The Value of Vaccination: A Non-partisan Review of Its History and Results, 1886, pp. 37-38.

[10] R. W. Fisher, “The Vaccine Institute, Belgaum. A Record of its History and Work,” The Indian Journal of Medical Research, vol. VIII, 1920-1921, p. 239.

[11] “Massachusetts Medical Society, Suffolk District, Section for Clinical Medicine, Pathology and Hygiene – Regular meeting, Wednesday, February 21, 1894,” Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, May 3, 1894, vol. CXXX, no. 18, pp. 447-450.

[12] George William Winterburn, PhD, MD, The Value of Vaccination: A Non-partisan Review of Its History and Results, 1886, pp. 42-43.

[13] Derrick Baxby, “Smallpox Vaccination Techniques 2. Accessories and Aftercare,” Vaccine, vol. 24, nos. 13–14, March 28, 2003, pp. 1382–1383.

[14] V. N. Krishnamurthy, “Effects of Penicillin and Streptomycin on Vaccine Lymph,” BMJ, vol. 2, no. 4687, November 4, 1950, pp. 1035–1047.

[15] “Inspection of Vaccine Farms,” National Board of Health Bulletin, March 4, 1882, vol. 3, no. 36, Washington, D.C., pp. 333-334.

[16] “Inspection of Vaccine Farms,” National Board of Health Bulletin, March 4, 1882, vol. 3, no. 36, Washington, D.C., pp. 333-334.