The Pus Trust

An epidemic of smallpox that last month broke out in Philadelphia, appeared, last week, to have spread to Washington and, in less degree, to Baltimore. Negro quarters of these cities were focal areas for the infection. Mortality was between 11% and 35%, indicating a virulent strain of organism.

In Philadelphia, department stores, hospitals, police cooperated with the medical authorities in establishing zones of isolation. Vaccination proceeded widely and apace. In Washington, the scare penetrated to Capitol Hill and newspaper accounts featured U. S. Senators hastening to bare their arms to the needle; Secretary of the Interior Work (who before taking office was a physician, onetime President of the American Medical Association) vaccinating himself; the President submitted quietly to the general precaution.

The epidemics, reported by each city to be well in hand, called forth fresh outbursts from antiserum faddists, notably Bernarr Macfadden, blatant apostle to vulgarians of "physical culture." Macfadden's Manhattan sheetlet, The Graphic, ran "screamers" about "two persons known to be dead from tetanus following the injection of pus from diseased animals" in Baltimore. Health officials admitted the deaths from tetanus, then explained to the newspaper that the serum injected was not "cow-pox," but human smallpox, scientifically prepared in the glycerated lymph of calves. "This," said The Graphic, "is little else than a form of variolation which was outlawed by the British Parliament because of its effect upon public health."* The Graphic headlined: IS REPORT OF COOLIDGE'S VACCINATION PUBLICITY STUNT OF PUS TRUST?

U. S. Surgeon General Hugh S. Cumming : "Since January 1, 1912, the Public Health Service has tabulated the vaccination histories of 120,501 cases of smallpox. Of this number, 110,075, or 91.35%, never had been vaccinated; 6,610, or 5.48%, had not been vaccinated for more than 7 years, many of them from 10 to 50 years. Of those who had been vaccinated within 7 years, there were 3,810, or only 3.17%."

* A perversion of the truth. The English Vaccination Law of 1898 requires a vaccination certificate to he filed with the Registrar of Births within six months of a child's birth, exception being made for "conscientious objectors," who must voice their objections within four months of their child's birth.