(Reprinted from The TOSCIN, of Marth 12th, 1892.)
PRINTED BY WERTHEIMER, LEA & CO., Circus PLACE, LONDON WALL.
I892
SIR,As the medical journals are reluctant to give currency to suggestions
which, throw discredit on certain dogmas of the orthodox medical church, I
venture to ask permission, in the interest of the public health, to address your
readers on a subject of admitted public importance, the causation of the
remarkable and mysterious recrudescence of cancer during the past 30 years. And
surely, sir, the study of the sources of any malady, particularly one of so
grave and destructive a character, is as well deserving of consideration as the
multitudinous but abortive attempts to effect a cure.
I may mention, as an inspiring motive for this communication to the impartial
columns of THE TOSCIN, that several of my friends and acquaintances have, after
acute and protracted suffering, succumbed to cancer, the origin of which their
friends declare to be unaccountable except on the theory below, so that I hardly
need an apology for bringing the matter before the attention of those of your
readers who are interested in the public health. Cancer, like leprosy, is an
incurable disease; and none of the vaunted remedies have stood the test of
experience. It can be disseminated like leprosy, and is increasing at an
alarming rate. The deaths from cancer in England and Wales are returned by the
Registrar-General, thus : Or per million living.
Per million living
1851
5,218
289
1861
7,276
361
1871
9,650
423
1881
13,542
520
1885
15,560
572
1886
16,243
590
1887
17,113
615
1888
17,506
621
1889
18,654
656
1890
29,433
676
Cancer is reported to be increasing not only in England and the Continent,
but in all parts of the world where vaccination is practised.
Dr. H. McAul Alston, Acting Resident Surgeon, Colonial Hospital, Port of
Spain, Trinidad, in the Annual Report to the Surgeon General, dated 5th of
April, 1887, says (p. 7):
"A noticeable feature of the diseases of patients admitted isthe
increasing number of the cases of cancer."
Sir James Paget observes :
"The richest and poorest alike seem to be subject to it; so do the
worst and best fed; those that are living in the best conditions of the
atmosphere, and those that are immured in the worst; those that are cleanly,
and those that are foul; those of all temperaments and of all occupations;
those that appear healthy, and those that are diseased. We can hardly lay our
hands upon any of the various circumstances of life in the various orders of
society in this country, to which we can refer as rendering one more or less
liable than another to the acquirement of the cancerous constitution."
It is claimed that cancer is hereditary and is occasionally due to local
injury, but is it not obvious that there must be some antecedent constitutional
taint or diathesis to give rise to the development, of the disease? To
what, then, is this condition really due? Sir James Paget also says cancer is
due to a morbid condition of the blood, and some of your readers will have
little difficulty in pointing out one cause of the morbidity. It is allowed by
physicians that cancer may be caused by impregnating the blood with impure
matter.
Dr. Joseph Jones, President of the Louisiana Board of Health, a well-known
pathologist, says that, this disease is inoculable; that cancer may be
propagated by inoculation, or by the injection of cancerous matter into the
veins. He adds:
"We will have accomplished our purpose in recording these facts if
we succeed in directing the attention of the profession to the necessity of
greater attention to the condition of the subjects selected for the
propagation of the vaccine disease."
Drs. Von Bergman and E. Hahn have demonstrated this by the recent notoriously
inhuman experiments at the Berlin Hospital. The Medical Press, December
5th, 1888, quotes Dr. Hahn as
"Disposed to believe that, in many cases of recurrence, it is quite
probable that the disease has developed anew, as the result of accidental
inoculation."
In The British Medical Journal, June 29th, 1889, Mr. Jonathan
Hutchison, F.R.C.S., says that, with due care in the transplantation of a bit of
living tissue, cancer may be transferred.
There is probably no method by which inoculation is practised on so large a
scale as in vaccination and re-vaccination. It is not now denied by the medical
profession that vaccination is an exciting cause of infantile syphilis, and,
according to the Registrar-Generals returns, Vaccination Mortality, No. 433,
dated 1877, and Infant Mortality, No. 392, dated 1880, the increase in Infantile
Syphilis, since vaccination has been compulsory, is fourfold.
Mr. Hibbert, formerly Secretary to the Local Government Board, said in July,
1880, that this terrible increase was one of the most unsatisfactory features of
the Vaccination Acts, and a reason why further legislation was needed. Dr.
William Forbes Laurie, late medical director of a metropolitan cancer hospital,
was thoroughly convinced that the increase of cancer was due to vaccination, and
he wrote to Members of Parliament, inviting them to visit the hospital, and
witness the terrible result of the vaccine operation. He says this increase of
cancer is attributed by some medical men to the large amount of syphilitic
disease with which vaccine lymph is impregnated, and by others to the direct
impregnation "of healthy persons with lymph imbued with scrofulous and cancerous
matter."
And the late Dr. Dennis Turnbull, who made cancer his particular study for
thirty years, declared in the public press his conviction that vaccination and
re-vaccination is the most prolific cause of this disease. Mr. Keuchenius, late
Colonial Secretary to the Holland Government, called the attention of the Second
Chamber to the alarming spread of cancer in the Netherlands, which was
coincident with the spread of vaccination, and (as he believed) due to poison
conveyed in the vaccine virus.
The British Medical Journal for May 19th, 1885, in a leading article
on the increasing fatality of cancer, says :
"Our negligence in dealing effectually with other diseases may also
favour its dissemination, for if syphilitic inflammation. may become
cancerous, it is clear that the spread of syphilis has scattered throughout
the population innumerable possible seeds of cancerous degeneration."
Some time ago the Hospital Gazelle reported that fifty infants had
been admitted into one hospital suffering from syphilitic disease, and that from
some of these infants vaccine lymph had been taken. Assuming that the theory of
the British Medical Journal is correct, this is an indication how the
cancer spreading virus may be distributed.
In his recent work on cancer (Churchill, 1891), Dr. Herbert Snow calls
attention to the fact that cancer is:
"Almost absent in the savage, while rapidly increasing in prevalence
among the civilised."
The savage it may be noted will not allow his blood to be poisoned with
vaccine virus, hence he escapes that morbidity under which cancerous tumours
find nutriment. Where the system has become thoroughly infected with this morbid
tendency, cure by extirpation or otherwise is admitted to be impossible, and the
suffering caused by the apprehension of being the victim of so dreadful an
affliction may well engage the attention of your benevolent and thoughtful
readers. Dr. Aitken says,
"The normal course of cancerous tumours we now know to be that of steady
increase, a steady and certain progress towards death."
It would, however, be unbecoming in me to dogmatise upon a subject which is
admitted to be a puzzle to the medical profession, but I venture to hope that
medical practitioners who have had the opportunity which clinical observation
affords will no longer keep silence, but in the interests of the public health
say whether the suggestion I have ventured to make is borne out by facts within
their own experience.
Yours faithfully,
WILLIAM TEBB.
Devonshire Club, St. James, London.
[The value of Mr. Tebbs work in calling attention to these and to other
matters of the highest importance is very great, and doubtless would be greater
but for the intense indifference of the average Briton to matters which so
nearly concern him. Inoculation of all kinds constitutes the fad and fancy of
this generations medicine, although those practising it know well the dangerous
nature of the tool with which they are playing.Ed. TOSCIN.
ALL INFORMATION, DATA, AND
MATERIAL CONTAINED, PRESENTED, OR PROVIDED HERE IS FOR GENERAL INFORMATION
PURPOSES ONLY AND IS NOT TO BE CONSTRUED AS REFLECTING THE KNOWLEDGE OR OPINIONS
OF THE PUBLISHER, AND IS NOT TO BE CONSTRUED OR INTENDED AS PROVIDING MEDICAL OR
LEGAL ADVICE. THE DECISION WHETHER OR NOT TO VACCINATE IS AN IMPORTANT AND
COMPLEX ISSUE AND SHOULD BE MADE BY YOU, AND YOU ALONE, IN CONSULTATION WITH
YOUR HEALTH CARE PROVIDER.
"A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of truth."
-- Albert Einstein, letter to a friend, 1901
"I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves, and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education."
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to William C. Jarvis, September 28, 1820
"What's the point of vaccination if it doesn't protect you from the unvaccinated?"
-- Sandy Gottstein
"Who gets to decide what the greater good is and how many will be sacrificed to it?"