How "influenza" bacterial vaccines were manufactured and used in 1918
For Prophylactic Use and Therapeutic Use. An insight into the thinking of the day.
I’ve been on the hunt to piece together the formation of the “Public Health” movement during the 1800’s and leading up to the 1918 pandemic. I’ve added a few public health data point to the TotalityofEvidence.com pandemic timeline (see below) but the most shocking revelation for me was to discover that the United States Public Health Service (USPHS) is a uniformed military organisation. I had always wondered why the Surgeon General and some of the ACIP committee members wore military uniforms, now it makes sense, but is also concerning.
Some recent timeline data points added:
1872 - Formation of The American Public Health Association - READ
1875 - With the passing of the Public Health Act, British Public Health societies emerge - READ
1912 - US Public Health Service (USPHS) – this military organisation now becomes responsible for all disease! - READ
Insights from Public Health Journals
Non-military Public Health Associations that began forming in the 1800’s also produced their own journal publications, providing another avenue into learning what was happening on the ground during the 1918 pandemic.
The following Public Health paper caught my attention, because I’ve read that mass vaccination1 took place during WWI for both the troops and the public, but it’s not that easy to find direct information on this topic, with respect to what exactly was administered. The following paper provides an insight into how the vaccines were made, their source material, they dosage used plus when and how often they were injected.
It’s another piece of the puzzle of what likely contributed to the excess mortality during 1918-19.
So far I have uncovered and reported on the overdose of Aspirin2 3 as a potential contributing factor. Since then I also found a 2009 paper by Karen Starko4 that also questions excess use of this off-patent drug.
We’ve been taught to believe that an influenza virus it the cause of mass deaths in the “Spanish Flu”, but little to no consideration has been given to other likely contributing factors, one of them being the medical interventions of the day, such as products called “vaccines”.
THE USE OF INFLUENZA VACCINE IN THE PRESENT EPIDEMIC.
Published October 8, 1918 in the American Journal of Public Health is the paper titled THE USE OF INFLUENZA VACCINE IN THE PRESENT EPIDEMIC by TIMOTHY LEARY, M. D., Professor of Pathology and Bacteriology, Tufts College Medical School, Boston, Mass.5
This paper gives an insight into how a bacterial vaccine was made and used during 1918 in an attempt to prevent and control “influenza”. At this time they still believe the disease labelled “influenza”, which escalated to pneumonia, is caused by Pfeiffer’s bacillus - a bacterium! This franken-stuff was injected into soldiers and citizens, and today no consideration is made for how this could have affected people’s health, and potentially led to their demise. This is but one vaccine of many.
(Highlights and formatting changes are mine for ease of reading and to add more information.)
THE USE OF INFLUENZA VACCINE IN THE PRESENT EPIDEMIC.
Three strains of influenza bacilli obtained from cases during the present epidemic have been used in the manufacture of vaccine. Strain "Carney" came from a culture from the nose of a nurse at the Carney Hospital. It was present in association with a white staphylococcus in abundant growth, in contrast to the picture obtained in most nose and throat cultures, which do not usually show the influenza bacillus. Strain "Navy" was procured from Lieutenant Keegan at the Chelsea Naval Hospital. Strain "Devens" was obtained from' Major Spooner through Doctor Allen.
The 3 “influenza bacillus” are Pfeiffer’s bacillus (bacteria) as published in the British Medical Journal, January 1892.6
The technic used in the preparation of vaccine follows:
1 1/2 per cent agar has been prepared from meat infusion (beef hearts) without glucose, and made 1 per cent acid to plenolphthalein [phenolphthalein?]. This is autoclaved for forty-five minutes at fifteen pounds pressure after tubing. Three to five drops of human blood are added to each tube. Blood is collected from the median basilic vein -15 to 40 cc. Poorest growth occurs when the blood is added to agar at 60°C. or below. Most abundant growth appears in tubes to which blood is added, with the agar at 80° to 90°C.
Beef hearts and human blood, any chance of contamination here?
The greater heat leads to a brown discoloration of the blood. Colonies on red agar (60°C.) are small, translucent and discrete, and produce a fine frosting on the surface. The growth on brown agar (80° to 90°C.) is heavier, tends to be confluent, and more opaque.
Experience seems to indicate that organisms grown on red blood agar retain their virulence in higher degree, and furnish a more efficient vaccine. Brown blood agar furnishes a more abundant crop.
So they’re growing bacteria, the wrong pathogen, yet they believe that bacteria derived from red blood agar produces a more “efficient vaccine”.
After the addition of blood the agar is slanted, cooled and incubated twenty four hours in order to control its sterility.
We have prepared in this way up to 4,000 tubes of blood-agar per day.
Seed for planting is grown on selected red tubes. Heavy seeding of tubes used for vaccine is obtained by mixing the growth on the surface of seed tubes with the water of condensation, and transferring with a loop large amounts of the emulsion to the whole of the surface of fresh tubes.
Cultivation is carried out for fifteen to eighteen hours at 37° C. [body temperature]
After careful inspection of growths, with a hand lens, and the discarding of all doubtful tubes, 2 cc. of saline solution are added to each tube. The growth is scraped from the surface and emulsified by means of a platinum loop and shaking. The saline suspensions are collected in small flasks and filtered through sterile gauze, to remove fragments of agar. The suspensions are then exposed to 56° C for twenty-five minutes in a water bath. The killed suspensions are then pooled in a large bottle and added to .5 per cent carbolized saline in a proportion varying from 1 to 10 to 1 to 20, depending upon opacity.
Since we have been able to obtain Three Cresols, the suspensions have been diluted directly in saline solution, containing .4 per cent Three Cresols, and have not been exposed to heat. The dosage is essentially 400,000,000 per half cubic centimeter.
Could Three Cresols be: “The cresols are obtained from coal tar or petroleum…. This mixture is also called tricresol, or cresylic acid. All three isomers are very toxic, and in high concentrations they can be absorbed in fatal amounts through the skin.”7 This was injected into people, absorption not necessary!
We have bottled vaccine in 10 cc., 30 cc., 50 cc., and 100 cc. amber bottles, closed with test tube caps or closed nursing bottle nipples.
Sterility of vaccine is controlled by transfer of 1 cc. from each of ten bottles if each lot to blood agar, and to 25 cc. 1 per cent glucose bouillon in fermentation tubes. If controls are not satisfactory at first, storage of the vaccine will usually result in sterile controls within a few days.
Testing for potential contamination with a “glucose boulion” stored for a “few days”. I wonder how many they threw out?
Dosage:
Dosage: The prophylactic dosage has been .5 per cent cc., 1 cc. and 1.5 cc. in three doses at twenty-four hour intervals.
The therapeutic dosage has been .5 cc. every twelve hours. It is probable that all of these doses are too small, notably the therapeutic dose. Many men are obtaining best results with 1.5 to 2 cc. at twelve to twenty-four hour intervals.
Sounds very hit and miss here. Three jabs in 24 hrs!
Therapeutic dosage is when someone is already sick. Every 12 hours they get a dose. But that didn’t seem to work so lets use 3 to 4 times the dose!
Prophylactic Use:
Prophylactic Use: The prophylactic use of vaccine will not furnish as high protection as does typhoid prophylaxis, probably because the exposure is greater and infection more readily produced.
Typhoid is a bacterial-born disease, of which the soldiers were mass vaccinated with that bacterial vaccine. Para-typhoid began to appear after that vaccination program, which they called another disease, and not due to the vaccine.. but that’s another story.
The percentage of complete protection appears to be high, and there is marked amelioration of symptoms in those who do come down, and pneumonias appear in very few case
A lot of guess work here… by the men of “medical science”.
Therapeutic Use:
Therapeutic Use: The therapeutic use of vaccines is followed by the best results when large doses are exhibited early in the disease. It should be possible to abort a large percentage of the cases, and prevent the development of pneumonia. After pneumonia has developed, many clinicians report excellent results under large doses of vaccine.
I wonder what rate they mean by “large doses” and “excellent results”. Maybe there is a paper somewhere…
The disease is a local disease, usually limited to the respiratory tract. Blood cultures are constantly negative during life or after death.
If they are returning negative results for “Pfeiffer’s bacillus” (influenza bacillus), is this because the bacteria wasn’t there in the first place, and not because the vaccine “worked” at preventing/eliminating it?
If the pneumococci or streptococci which occur in symbiosis with the influenza bacillus in the lung processes were important factors, one would expect to find them present in blood-cultures at some time in the course of the disease.
For these reasons the objections which are made to the use of vaccines in the treatment of septicemias do not hold in the pneumonias of the present epidemic.
Each injection of vaccine should be made into a new muscle group. It is the belief of the writer that the muscles are important producers of immune substances. In no other way is it possible to explain the rarity of bacterial infection of muscles, even when the viscera, blood and lymphatic systems show deep infections.
In a local disease, limited as this is to the respiratory system, it should be possible theoretically to awaken the muscle groups to an activity, which they do not exhibit in response to an infection in which the organisms are localized in one part of the body.
Vaccine treatment is not recommended in moribund cases with massive pneumonias and cyanosis. Unlike antitoxins, vaccines require reacting ability on the part of the patient.
It all sounds very hit and miss to me. This is but another piece of information to add to yours and my knowledge bank of what went down in 1918.
It is worth noting in the same Journal edition in another paper8 well worth a read titled THE EPIDEMIOLOGY AND BACTERIOLOGY OF INFLUENZA it is stated:
The importance of knowing the causative organism is more appreciated during these days when vaccines and sera are of so much importance in the prevention and treatment of so many diseases.
But then goes onto point out how the soldiers were perfect lab rats!
The opportunities given in our army camps for studying the disease under controlled conditions will doubtless throw considerable light not only upon the epidemiology of the disease but also upon the organisms concerned in producing such epidemics as the present one.
God bless all our military, the lab rats for “Public Health”.
Salicylates and Pandemic Influenza Mortality, 1918–1919 Pharmacology, Pathology, and Historic Evidence - READ
https://www.britannica.com/science/cresol
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1362339/
I am struck by the hubris of experts always thinking they know everything there is to know rather than realizing how much they don’t
So Brasscheck TV just posted something from Dr. James Thorp where he speaks about the conflict of interest from $ being paid out to push an agenda/policy that causes harm. If he's familiar with Dr. Suzanne Humphries then he knows this isn't the first time either.
Is there anything we Can't Stop if we end the ability of corporations to pay to turn their agendas into bought policies? Is there anything we Can Stop if we don't?
So: care to discuss how we can legally & non-violently mount an effort to end lobbying practices? Truly, the law is already against it. It's just a question of how to get enough public support FIRST, before making any such effort known so that we'd be too big to block or deny without exposing themselves as worse frauds.
Yes, I HAVE thought this through in general. I need the minds of others to help flesh out the details. No one need put their names to anything. In fact, putting one person's face onto anything would be a step in the wrong direction in the first delicate phases of the effort.
Care to discuss? The alternative is to continue waiting for people to stop accepting $. You can continue to do that on the side in your spare time while doing this.
Everyone needs a hobby.