Doug
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Never mind. It becomes the record and that does count some where down the historical line.
Speaking of facts, I did some web searching on smallpox but never posted the results because I was `just following orders'....
Since the topic is still up on the list I'll summarize some of the more interesting facts. I took inspiration from Thomas Brown who noted most reassuringly that Congress appropriated funds for smallpox vaccinations. This reassurance caught my morbid curiosity.
I ask myself do I trust the US President, Congress, the Army, and private companies to `do the right thing' with smallpox in 2005?
Okay, what about the same cast of dubious institutional characters dealing with Native Americans and smallpox in 1837?
Any way onto some historical facts.
In 1837 there was no such thing as a germ theory of disease. Nobody knew what smallpox was, only that it was a contagious disease. Viruses were completely unknown, and smallpox is a virus.
So how did vaccinations against smallpox get started and how were they made?
Turns out the early technique was from China (10thC), then transmitted to India, the Middle East, Turkey and the Ottomans. It arrived in Europe in the early 18thC. The method was to use smallpox scabs and pustules and prepare a concoction applied with needles or made into a power and put in the nose.
This inoculation method was called variolation and was not popular because getting smallpox, spreading smallpox, and dying from smallpox were the three main side effects.
If the preparation was made by sheer luck with compromised virus, then the patient got sick with a mild form and then recovered with immunity. I couldn't find any statistics on how many died from this method versus how many lived. I would guess that survival depended on the way the variolation material was prepared. But judging purely from continued usage, evidently more people survive variolation than died from it.
In the late 18thC, an English doctor (Jenner) discovered from countryside lore that milkmaids and others who routinely got cowpox, never got smallpox. He used a needle to transfer material from cowpox sores to un-exposed patients (servants, naturally). Then he exposed them to smallpox using the same method. They got cowpox sores from the first inoculation, but got nothing from the later smallpox application. Jenner called his method vaccination, after the latin for cow, vaccinus. The idea was to call it something different from the much dreaded variolation with smallpox.
Cowpox vaccination was introduced to the US in 1801 in NYC which had a long history with the disease.
(http://www.rpi.edu/~vostral/hist_med/smallpox.html):
``Historically, small pox had been ever present in Manhattan, with the first recorded incidence in 1649. Before the 18th century efforts to contain small pox were limited to the quarantining of the infected. In 1721 the first inoculations were offered in Boston. The practice of giving inoculations or variolation was quite effective in curbing a small pox outbreak in New York City in 1731. The advantages of inoculations were that their mortality rate was far lower than that of natural small pox infections and they offered a lifetime of immunity. The main drawback to inoculation was that even though it caused a mild small pox infection, it made those exposed to it just as contagious as those who contracted small pox naturally. While inoculation made people immune to small pox *it also facilitated its spread to the non-inoculated*, which therefore spurred further inoculation, keeping the disease present in the North American colonies. The solution for this cycle of infection came in 1801 when Drs. Valentine Seaman and David Hosack introduced a vaccination made with cow pox. Cow pox offered the same future immunity to small pox without the highly contagious side-effects...'' (* added for emphasis)
Although not mentioned in this quote, elsewhere (NIH) the Boston date 1721 comes from Cotton Mather who learned of the variolation practice from his slave Onesimus.
So, we can assume in 1837 there were two forms of vaccination, one using cowpox and one using smallpox. The former was relatively safe and didn't spread smallpox and the other was questionable with a high mortality rate and did spread smallpox.
Given this background, I am not reassured at all by the idea that Congress appropriated funds for smallpox vaccinations in the 1830s. In fact if I was interested in researching the 1837-8 smallpox epidemic I would follow the US Government trail on vaccination rather than blankets.
I would be looking for specific references to how the vaccinations were prepared or what recipes or texts were followed or recommended. It would only take one or two references to the older technique of variolation to convince me that `best practices' were not being followed in vaccination programs.
Here are some more random `facts'.
The first Office of Indian Affairs was created by the Continental Congress in 1775 under commissioners Benjamin Franklin and Patrick Henry and charged to negotiate treaties of neutrality during the War of Independence. Under the US federal government the Office of Indian Affairs was moved to the Department of War to manage trade agreements in 1806 (Jefferson, Louisiana Purchase, Lewis & Clark, etc).
A cabinet level Bureau of Indian Affairs was established by Congress under the Department of War in 1824. Who was Secretary of War in 1824? John C. Calhoun was Secretary of War under President James Monroe. (Think about that for awhile...)
In the 1830s the era of several Congressional bills for vaccination programs for Native Americans, we have none other than Andrew Jackson as President (1829-37). Jackson is not a name that is normally associated positive public health outcomes for Native Americans.
Here are some references for the Office of Indian Affairs and smallpox under the Jackson administration:
Office of Indian Affairs. Physician employed to vaccinate Indians. Annual Report, Comm of Indian Affairs to Sec of Interior, 1831.
Office of Indian Affairs. Act of Congress concerning vaccination of Indians. Annual Report, Comm of Indian Affairs to Sec of Interior, 1832.
Office of Indian Affairs. Small-pox among Chippewas in 1750 and 1770. Annual Report, Comm of Indian Affairs to Sec of Interior, 1832.
Office of Indian Affairs. Small-pox in 1802-1803 at Sault Ste. Marie. Annual Report, Comm of Indian Affairs to Sec of Interior, 1832.
Office of Indian Affairs. Statement of fund for extending benefits of vaccination to Indian tribes. Annual Report, Comm Indian Affairs to Sec of Interior, 1832.
Office of Indian Affairs. Statement showing amount of requisitions from January 1st to September 30th, 1833 for vaccination. Annual Report, Comm Ind Affairs to Sec of Interior, 1833.
Office of Indian Affairs. Disbursements, January 1st to September 30th, 1834 for vaccinating Indians. Annual Report, Comm Ind Affairs to Sec of Interior, 1834.
Office of Indian Affairs. Requisitions during fiscal year for vaccination among Indians. Annual Report, Comm Ind Affairs to Sec of Interior, 1835.
Office of Indian Affairs. Small-pox at Saginaw. Annual Report, Comm Indian Affairs to Sec of Interior, 1837-38.
[taken from a discussion on `Indians and Smallpox' at http://www.h-net.msu.edu/~west/threads/disc-smallpox.html]
While Brown claims the US government did not practice genocide against Native Americans, there is always the possibility that not only is Brown wrong, but that the case might even be worse than what Churchill (and others) reported about the 1837 example.
After savoring the above historical facts I have to wonder, was Dr. Mengele's public health work on the lesser tribes of Europe behind the curve of previous US advances in the field?
CG