Three Medical Mavericks

Dispelling the Illusion of Smallpox Vaccination

The medical profession holds a most false relation to society. Its honors and emoluments are measured, not by the good, but by the evil it does. The physician who keeps some member of the family of his rich neighbor on a bed of sickness for months or years, may secure to himself thereby both fame and fortune; while the one who would restore the patient to health in a week or two, will be neither appreciated nor understood.[1]

— Russell Thacher Trall, MD, 1872

[Dr. Charles Creighton, professor University of Cambridge]

Over the many decades since its inception, vaccination has become firmly entrenched within the medical field, the legal system, and society. Yet, as new doctors began their careers and started administering vaccinations, many encountered troubling complications associated with the procedure. These doctors, who gradually awakened to the realities at hand, initially embraced the concept of vaccination with unwavering conviction. Their upbringing in society and education within medical institutions instilled the belief that vaccination was a safe and life-preserving practice. They had all been indoctrinated with Edward Jenner’s false assertion of absolute safety and efficacy in preventing smallpox.

In a notable 1875 example, a newly graduated young physician, Dr. William Jefferson Guernsey from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, embarked on his medical career by assuming responsibility for his physician-father’s smallpox cases.[2] He treated many people, rich and poor, old and young, black and white. Driven by his deeply held beliefs and guided by the prevailing norms of the time, Dr. Guernsey, like countless other physicians, carried out vaccinations as a matter of course, noting, “He [Dr. Guernsey] vaccinated, of course. Every physician did. They didn’t know any better.” However, over time, Dr. Guernsey began to observe discrepancies between what he had been told and the outcomes he witnessed firsthand. Evidently, the prevailing narrative did not align with the realities he encountered in his medical practice. “…it took a good many sore arms and sick bodies and cow-pox patients and failures to protect to arouse an opposition to the practice of vaccination.”

He slowly realized that it was far easier and more profitable to “do what the numerous Health Boards require and to pocket the fee” than to summon the courage, forfeit the money, and acquire the reputation of being a “crank.” Doctor Guernsey eventually realized that it was a horrific situation to be forced by law to perform this medical operation and, even worse, “that one’s patients shall not attend a school for which they are taxed to support without submitting to a practice of doubtful efficiency and offensive to reason.”

Many other medical professionals encountered the medical and legal trap of vaccination. They faced the daunting prospect of being ensnared by stringent laws, financial repercussions from diminished profits, and the risk of being professionally discredited. This trifecta of pressures left most in a position of vaccinating regardless of their instincts. Yet, through their own integrity and tenacity, there have always been some doctors who overcame the pressure from on high and opposed the medical procedure.

Like most, Robert A. Gunn, MD, graduated in 1866 and did not question vaccination; he “was a believer in vaccination, and practiced the same until 1872.”[3] From 1870 to 1872, there was a massive worldwide spike in smallpox, including in New York City (despite the city being pronounced thoroughly protected by vaccination). Dr. Gunn was appointed to a committee to investigate. He found that official reports proved the number of cases of smallpox and the mortality was greater than at any time during the entire century despite a vaccination rate of 95 percent, with vaccination having been practiced for 72 years and compulsory in most countries for 35 years.

I at once began a careful study and investigation of the entire subject. I read Jenner’s own published account of his pretended discovery, “Baron’s Life of Jenner,” “Seaton’s Handbook on Vaccination,” and the published report of the Registrar General of England, I also examined the reports of the Board of Health of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago and St. Louis, and I investigated all cases reported in New York City. I found that almost every smallpox patient had been vaccinated and many of them recently vaccinated.[4]

Dr. Gunn obtained a reputation as a critic of vaccination and thus had hundreds of children brought to him every year with “swollen and inflamed arms, large sloughing ulcers, erysipelas, inflamed eyes, enlarged glands, and various skin eruptions.” In hundreds of cases, the health of these children was ruined for life.

For the next 30 years, he became a careful student of the vaccination question. He found that the average physician blindly accepted the safety and efficacy of vaccination and never researched the subject for themselves. After many years of investigation, he concluded:

Of these dogmas I believe the practice known as vaccination to be the most absurd and the most pernicious. I do not believe that a single person has ever been protected from smallpox by it, while I know that many serious bodily evils and even deaths have resulted from its employment. The whole theory is founded upon assumption, contrary to common sense, and entirely opposed to all known principles of physiology. Every physician of experience has met with numerous cases of cutaneous eruptions, erysipelas, and syphilis, which were directly traceable to vaccination, and if these cases could be collected and presented in one report, they would form a more terrible picture than the worst that has ever been drawn of the horrors of smallpox.[5]

Another true believer in vaccination was Montague R. Leverson, MD. He had been taught from his childhood and in medical schools that vaccination was protection against smallpox and a harmless operation.[6] In January 1894, he encountered a case that encouraged him to conduct a study on vaccination. For the next 8 years, he did a deep dive into the pathology of vaccination and smallpox for, on average, 4 hours a day and sometimes as many as 16 hours a day. At the end of his studies, he had to conclude that:

Of all the innumerable fads which have beset the medical profession I know of none more hideous than this of thrusting into the blood of healthy human beings the putrefying matter of a beast’s disease! And mark you well, gentlemen of the Medico-Legal Society, there never has been the smallest evidence deserving the attention of a rational being, that vaccination does prevent or ever has prevented an attack of small pox, except by killing the patient before small pox reached him.

We owe a solemn duty to humanity. For one hundred and seventy years our profession has imposed upon mankind a vile superstition and an odious tyranny. For one hundred and seventy years—seventy-two by inoculation and eighty-nine by vaccination—we have been engaged in poisoning the blood of the race, to gratify the lust of power of its most unworthy members; of the ignorant, of the greedy and of the conscienceless; and in all that period, though illuminated by the names and labors of some true physicians, our existence as a profession has been a curse to mankind.[7]

Dr. Charles Creighton, a distinguished professor at the esteemed University of Cambridge, is widely recognized as the pioneer of British epidemiology. He emerged as one of the most highly educated medical scholars in 19th-century Britain, embodying a profound influence on the intellectual landscape of his generation.[8] A deep researcher and author of numerous writings, he practically lived in the British Museum, where he collected material for his work History of Epidemics in Britain, which was described as a “classic of unimpeachable accuracy.”

In around 1884, Dr. Creighton was invited to author an article on vaccination for the 9th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.[9] Rather than settling for ordinary stock statements, he extensively explored pro- and anti-vaccination literature from various countries. Initially aligning with the prevailing views on vaccination, as did most medical professionals of his time, Dr. Creighton’s rigorous investigation gradually led him to diverge from the conventional wisdom held by his peers.

When I began it [research into vaccination] in 1886 I had no other prepossessions than those which nearly all medical men have in favour of an established doctrine and practice. It was not until I had spent some months in a search among the authorities, pathological and other, at first hand, that I felt constrained to modify the opinions which I had hitherto [before] implicitly accepted.[10]

Dr. Creighton’s work on vaccination appeared in the Encyclopedia Britannica in 1888. He also published The Natural History of Cow-pox and Vaccinal Syphilis and Jenner and Vaccination: A Strange Chapter of Medical History around the same time. These meticulously crafted publications presented detailed evidence that challenged the prevailing views on vaccination, ultimately leading Dr. Creighton to conclude that it was a “grotesque superstition.” His bold conclusions clashed with the medical community, revealing the deeply ingrained nature of beliefs passed down through generations. Dr. Creighton came to understand the powerful influence of ancestral pledges as present-day individuals continued to rely on the assurances of their predecessors.

So long as the Jennerian doctrine and practice of vaccination remains with us, we can hardly be said to have got entirely away from the eighteenth century. In nothing else has the profession of to-day shown so much loyalty to the pledges given by its predecessors. The history of vaccination from its beginning to its present position is a refreshing illustration of the truth that medical science is human first and scientific afterwards... The refusal of the professional leaders to go back upon their mistake, when it was abundantly proved to be a mistake, has become an inherited obligation of hard swearing to successive generations. Things have now come to such a pass that anyone who undertakes to answer for Jenner and his theories, must shatter his own reputation for scientific and historical knowledge. Most of those who have a reputation to lose decline the challenge.[11]

Additionally, Dr. Creighton realized that the public’s steadfast belief in vaccination persisted primarily due to their reluctance to accept the possibility that an esteemed and ostensibly science-driven profession could be mistaken, especially over such an extended period.

The public at large cannot believe that a great profession should have been so perseveringly in the wrong. The present attitude of the public may be said to illustrate the truth of a maxim of Carlyle’s: “That no error is fully confuted [refuted] till we have seen not only that it is an error, but how it became one.” The task which I set before me when I began this book was to explain to myself how the medical profession in various countries could have come to fall under the enchantment of an illusion. I believe that they were misled most of all by the name of “smallpox of the cow,” under which the new protective was first brought to their notice. For that grand initial error, blameworthy in its inception, and still more so in the furtive [sneaky] manner of its publication, the sole responsibility rests with Jenner. The profession as a whole has been committed before now to erroneous doctrines and injurious practices, which have been upheld by its solid authority for generations.[12]

Dr. Creighton’s profound awakening brought him to the sobering realization that challenging the deeply ingrained belief in vaccination would come at a great personal cost. Despite his impeccable credentials, intellect, meticulous research, and esteemed professional standing, his comments foreshadowed that both he and his groundbreaking work would ultimately be disregarded and consigned to the forgotten dumpster of medical history.

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

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[1] R. T. Trall MD, The True Healing Art or Hygienic vs. Drug Medication, 1872, S. R. Wells, Publisher, New York, p. 55.

[2] Wm. Jefferson Guernsey MD, Philadelphia, “Letters Regarding Vaccination,” Homeopathic Recorder, Vo. XVI, no. 12, December 1901, pp. 529-536.

[3] Order to Show Cause. N. Y. SUPREME COURT, KINGS COUNTY, In the Matter of The Application of Edmund C. Viemeister for a Peremptory Writ of Mandamus, Patrick J. White, President of the Board of Education, and F. H. Meade, Principal of Public School No. 12. Borough of Queens Supreme Court: Appellate Division-Second Department, 1903, pp. 5–10.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Joe Shelby Riley, MD, MS, PhD, Conquering Units: Or The Mastery of Disease, 1921, p. 346.

[6] Order to Show Cause. N. Y. SUPREME COURT, KINGS COUNTY, In the Matter of The Application of Edmund C. Viemeister for a Peremptory Writ of Mandamus, Patrick J. White, President of the Board of Education, and F. H. Meade, Principal of Public School No. 12. Borough of Queens Supreme Court: Appellate Division-Second Department, 1903, pp. 11–16.

[7] Montague R. Leverson, MD, “Vaccination. Should it be enforced by law?” Medico-Legal Journal, vol. XIV, no. 1, 1896, New York, pp. 271–272.

[8] Dr. Charles Creighton (1847–1927), Nature, November 15, 1947.

[9] Eleanor McBean, The Poisoned Needle: Suppressed Facts About Vaccination, 1957, p. 204.

[10] Dr. Charles Creighton, MD, “Inaccuracies about vaccination,” The Lancet, January 12, 1889, pp. 96–97.

[11] Dr. Charles Creighton, MD, “Vaccination: A Scientific Inquiry,” The Arena, September 1890, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 423, 436–437.

[12] Charles Creighton MD, Jenner and Vaccination. A Strange Chapter of Medical History, 1889, Swan Sonnenschein & Co., p. 353.