Why Doctors Vaccinate Why Doctors Vaccinate.* 
BY J. W. Hodge, M. D., of Niagara Falls, N. Y. 
A person can hardly pick up one of the great metropolitan dailies these 
days without being confronted with the announcement of the death of one 
or more children from tetanus (lock-jaw) following vaccination. In several 
American cities, notably Camden, N J., and Philadelphia, " the slaughter of 
the innocents " by vaccinators has been so great as to amount to an epi- 
demic. During the months of November and December last I kept a 
record of the names, and places of residence of children whose deaths were 
reported as caused by vaccination, in the papers and periodicals which I am 
accustomed to read. Owing to the great length of this death-list which runs 
into the hundreds it can not be here presented. The deaths from vaccina- 
tion which reach the newspapers are necessarily but a small part of the 
aggregate mortality from this cause. In view of this widespread slaughter 
of children under the senseless plea of sanitation, I am amazed that any 
sensible guardian or parent can be found who will submit his children to 
this health-blighting practice. 
While warning my patients against the uselessness and dangers of this 
pernicious practice, I am frequently asked the question ; " Why do so 
many physicians continue to vaccinate ?" In this letter I propose to answer 
the above question in accordance with the dictates of truth and justice. Not 
being one of those physicians who prefer to keep their convictions to them- 
selves, and who consider it " unprofessional ' to speak out where the trade- 
secrets and trade-shams are concerned, I consider it my privilege and my 
duty on every available opportunity to expose to the light of publicity the 
deformities of the ancient and pernicious fraud called vaccination. I do not 
consider that it is " unprofessional " to tell the truth. I was at one time a 
confiding dupe to this degrading dogma myself, and can therefore testify 
from personal experience derived from having vaccinated more than three 
thousand victims, to its baneful effects. Next to the commission of a blunder 
its admission is considered the worst thing that can happen to a learned 
profession. 
It is amazing how long the corpse of an error is often kept enthroned 
after its spirit has fled. As late as A. D. 210, Imperial Rome maintained a 
college of augurs-sooth-sayers who founded their predictions upon the 
flight of crows and the cackle of chickens and who in Cicero's time had 
already become so rationalistic that two of them could rarely meet without 
laughing at each other. 
The Copernican system of astronomy had been clearly demonstrated 
before the death of its propounder, but for the next hundred years universi- 
ties continued to rehearse to their students the old-time erroneous doctrine. 
Reprinted from The Weekly Review and Advertiser of Jan, 16,1902. Should these universities have admitted they were grossly mistaken ? 
Perish the thought. / 
So generation after generation of students were gravely informed that 
the sun-ninety-six millions of miles distant-whirled around our planet 
with the speed of lightning, and that stars a trillion miles away revolved 
around our little planet every twenty-four hours. In 1519 Magellan set sail 
on his successful voyage of circumnavigating the world He went around, 
still there are people living to day outside of asylums for the insane who 
believe, or, at least, affect to believe, that this earth is a flat surface testing 
on supports. " Giving up witchcraft is giving up the Bible," declared 
John Wesley, when one of his friends proposed to repudiate the impossible 
crime of spook-mongery of the Middle Ages. Hence also the mainstay of 
the cow-pox delusion. If doctors shou'd admit that for a hundred jears 
they have worshipped a fetish, might not the public extend its inconvenient 
inferences to other medical practices. Serums extracted from old sick 
horses, drastic drugs, and shot-gun prescriptions, might come to look 
shrewdly suspicious to a one-eyed man. < onnivers at the cow-pox swindle 
dislike to confess that they have so long ignored the true cause and 
neglected the true preventive of small-pox. It is so much safer, don't you 
see, to sit still and wait until an anachronistic idol tumbles to pieces of its 
own accord Moreover admitted pursuit of the wrong road implies neglect 
of the right one-baneful, often fatal neglect, in questions of life-and-death 
importance. Another prop which helps to uphold the cow pox crime is business 
interests. After having mentioned some of the foibles which prevent thou- 
sands of physicians from taking the field in defense of truth and health vs. 
the Jenner dogma (vaccination), 1 must mention one main support-in 
many cases the only and last support of the cow pox practice-viz., the 
emolument derived from vaccination. Cupidity is often a powerful motive 
in shaping the opinions and actions of men. In the United States the 
usual fee of the vaccinator is one dollar per capita, There are times during 
a small-pox scare-when the busy practitioner can rake in fifty dollars a 
day-say ten times his usual income, in the case of a young country prac- 
titioner. 
A conscience salve like this can explain a good many things if we 
remember that mediaeval fuel dealers denounced heretics in the hope of 
booming the sale of pitched faggots. The historian Guizot recites an in- 
stance which is here in point, of a Spanish-American bishop who insisted 
upon burning a few heretics every year because the lumber yard of his 
brother-in-law made a specialty of pitched faggots." 1 he persistence of 
the cow-pox nuisance makes it almost equally difficult to assign any limit 
to the length of time a doctrine can maintain itself by means of business in- 
terests and corporation spirit after all its other supports have vanished. 
We all know, whether we are willing to admit it or not, how prone human 
nature is to nurse opinions and beliefs when they favor our self-interest 
Hectors are not the only beneficiaries engaged in the propagation of 
the dairy-maid's superstition. Besides, there are the vaccine rings with their 
lively traffic in " lymph " and vaccine points, and in choice animals for 
" lymph culture." *• Sterilized lymph " is the name given to a new variety 
of hocused cow-pox virus, with a suggestion of a guarantee against the 
microbes of other germ diseases, as if any such result could be warranted as 
long as the sterilizing process has failed to destroy the vitality of the vaccine 
microbes. Altogether, the fees, trust-prices, charges and perquisites derived from the cow-pox practice in the course of a year must aggregate 
several millions of dollars in the United States alone, so that as long as the 
golden eggs of the Jennerian goose can be squeezed out by proper manipu- 
lation, Dr. Edward Jenner will continue to be classed with the chief bene- 
factors of the human race. 
As to bias of judgment it is perhaps enough to say that the members of 
the medical profession, like those of the legal and other professions, are 
only human ; and when we come to consider that vaccination involves the 
transfer of millions of dollars annually from the pockets of the people to the 
pockets of the doctors, and that pride of opinion, aside from the effects of 
early teaching, and mercenary motives, might be sufficient to prevent the 
open acknowledgement and abandonment of such a stupendous error and 
fatal malpractice as vaccination is known to be by thonsands of investigat- 
ors. we can readily understand why so many physicians cling to this ancient 
fallacy. 
Vaccination with the medical faculty is mainly a monetary question. I 
shall drive this nail home at every point. Money is the bone and sinew of 
the practice. Every argument employed by the profession in justification 
of vaccination finds its real inspiration in the money value of the 
observance. 
The widespread mischief which inoculation-the forerunner of vacci- 
nation-accomplished in the eighteenth century, is less a matter of surprise 
when we compare that period of intellectual enlightenment with the nine- 
teenth and twentieth centuries. The fact that vaccination has been so gen- 
erally submitted to, or even tolerated, as it has been during the last fifty 
years, is one of those marvels which prove the desperate persistence of a 
practice when once it has become intrenched in the self-interest of a privi- 
leged class, and when a powerful profession discovers an adequate motive 
to invoke legislation to establish its permanence. I could fill a large volume 
with testimonies of eminent medical practitioners regarding the widespread 
injury which, has followed the use of all animalized vaccine virus. Glycer- 
inated calf-lymph " and all modern brands of vaccine stock are only new 
devices to make an old discredited virus acceptable. All the talk about 
" pure virus " indulged in by doctors who practice vaccination is pure rot. 
Neither the doctor nor the parent has any means of judging the quality 
of vaccine virus used, since it is an article of commerce, and its production 
is associated not only with mercenary motives, but with empiricism as well. 
Commerce has usurped the field here as everywhere else, and the doctor who 
is merely a " middle man " between the vaccine dealer and the vaccinated, 
knows no more about the composition of his vaccine stock, either in its 
occult properties or its vital chemistry, than he does about the baking 
powders or the canned beef used in his family ; whether the former are free 
from alum adulteration, or whether the latter has passed through the hands 
of the embalmer. We do know, however, that the whole consignment 
of horse-grease - cow-pox - syphilized-vaccine-glycerinated-" pure calf 
lymph," has been, is now, and is destined to be, the most damnable stuff 
that was ever admitted into the category of commercialized medical 
practice. 
We may soon expect that the various vaccine farms will be massed into 
one gigantje trust, with a lobby at Washington and money to secure federal 
enforcement of a more stringent compulsory vaccination act for the entire 
country. Z