Researches upon 'spurious vaccination,' or the abnormal phenomena accompanying and following vaccination in the Confederate Army, during the recent American Civil War, 1861-1865 / by Joseph Jones.

  • Jones, Joseph, 1833-1896.
Date:
1867
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Researches upon 'spurious vaccination,' or the abnormal phenomena accompanying and following vaccination in the Confederate Army, during the recent American Civil War, 1861-1865 / by Joseph Jones. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    intended, and in aid of the then existing rebellion against the United States, with the view to assist in weakening and impairing the armies of the United States, and in furtherance of the said conspiracy, and with full knowledge, consent and conni- vance of his co-conspirators aforesaid, he the said Wirz, then and there did.” Amongst the co-conspirators specified in the charges, were the Surgeon of the Post, Dr. White, and the Surgeon in charge of the Military Prison Hospital, R. R. Stevenson. As the vaccina- tions were made hy their orders, and by the medical officers of the Confederate Army acting under their command, the charge of deliberately poisoning the Federal Prisoners with vaccine mat- ter, is a sweeping one, and whether intended so or not, affects every medical officer stationed at that post; and it appears to have been designed to go farther and to affect the reputation of every one who held a commission in the Medical Department of the Con- federate Army. The acts of those who once composed the Medical Department of the Confederate Army, from the efficient and laborious Sur- geon General to the Regimental officers, need no defence at my hands: time, with its unerring lines of historic truth, will em- balm their heroic labors in the cause of suffering humanity, and will acknowledge their untiring efforts to ameliorate the most gigantic mass of suffering, that ever fell to the lot of a beleaguered and distressed people. I desire at the present time, simply to place on record, the re- sults of labors which concern this country, no more than any other; and these results when properly received without preju- dice or malicious hatred, will be seen to relate to the hygiene and to the diseases of Prisoners, however confined, and wherever incarcerated, in civil or military prisons throughout the world. In accordance with the direction of Dr. Samuel Preston Moore, formerly Surgeon General C. S. A., I instituted during the months of Angust and September, 1SG4, a series of investigations upon the diseases of Federal Prisoners confined in Camp Sumpter, Andersonville, Georgia. The field was of great extent and of extraordinary importance. There were more than five thousand seriously sick in the hospital and stockade, and the deaths ranged from ninety, to one bundled