Killer Plagues of Children become tamer throughout the 20th Century

Fig. 1: Chart of the annual number of deaths in Ireland recorded from the combined major killers of all ages of impacting mostly infants and children: Scarlet Fever, Whooping Cough, Measles, Diphtheria & Polio. Source: Chart generated using this tumultuous statistics reports since records began – “Annual Reports on Marriages, Births and Deaths in Ireland, from 1864 to 2000” courtesy of: An Phríomh-Oifig Staidrimh, Central Statics Office CSO, link. © Copyright dig-press.com

Parents were now counting more of their children, not just from having had Scarlet Fever, but from just about all the major diseases that also plagued our young. Similar to Scarlet Fever, seasonal epidemics continued to erupt in our more modern era with increasingly fewer deaths and disabilities from contagions that were equally as deadly as Scarlet Fever once was (Measles and Whooping Cough in particular – See Fig. 1).

Basically, in the more modern era, when deaths and destruction had dropped dramatically from these diseases, having and spreading the infection, no longer spelt death and destruction for so many as it had done in the previous era. The world was looking good and we were no longer just as helpless, being tossed about like corks on a raging ocean of contagion.

In the end, it seems from the above graph (Figs. 1), that all of these once deadlier diseases of childhood essentially became resolved, either by, or just shortly after the turn of the middle of the 20th Century. Childhood killers such as Scarlet Fever, Measles, Diphtheria and Whooping Cough (Pertussis), now looked very different to most parents living in the middle of the 20th Century compared to how they would have appeared to all parents living in the middle of the 19th Century.

And once again, this much-welcomed decline in deaths and disabilities from such once more deadly plagues of childhood appears to be a near-universal phenomenon within our respective developed nations. For instance, this pattern of significantly declining death rates from the major childhood contagions is highlighted from other regions corresponding to a fairly similar timeframe in studies such as: ‘The Development of Infant Mortality in Iceland, 1800–1920’ Loftur Guttormsson and Ólöf Garðarsdóttir (2002) https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/d338/90ffb7c01490bde7a729270285926ea3b17e.pdf [1].

Similarly, across the other side of the world, we see a closely matched trend for approximately the same timeframe as detailed in, ‘Death registration and mortality trends in Australia 1856–1906’ by Michael Willem de Looper (2014), Abstract, p. iv https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/16791/1/De%20Looper%20Thesis%202015.pdf [2], and the later data for Australia corresponds very closely with the same timeframe from other regions as evident from the study entitled: ‘Epidemiologic Transition in Australia: The last hundred years’ (Booth, H, Tickle, L, Zhao, J  2016) https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/csp/index.php/csp/article/viewFile/25702/20363 [3].

Furthermore, from the long-term data that we have, namely from England and Wales,  we can see a closely matched pattern for the decline in deaths – for a similar timeframe from the very same childhood contagions as recorded in this present study for Ireland (Fig. 1), only on a relative scale of our respective population sizes as presented in, figures: 4.15 (Scarlet Fever), 4.24 (Whooping Cough/Pertussis) and 4.18 (Measles) showing rates of annual death rates per 100,000 of the population in England and Wales from 1901 – 2000 as presented in ‘Atlas of Epidemic Britain: A Twentieth-Century Picture’  Smallman-Raynor, M., and Cliff, A (2012) https://books.google.ca/books?id=iMnN4fZrj70C&pg=PA48#v=onepage&q&f=false  [4]. Also see,  ‘Causes of Death: A Study of a Century of Change in England & Wales’ specifically addressing the declining deaths for the major childhood diseases (Baillie, L. and Hawe, E. 2012) https://www.ohe.org/publications/causes-death-study-century-change-england-and-wales# [5].

Again, several closely matched graphs relating to deaths from these very same childhood contagions are presented in, ‘Mortality in the United States 1900 – 1950’ (Gordon, T., 1968). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2024011/ [6], and ‘Vital Statistics Rates in the United States, 1940 -1960’, (Grove, R.D. and Hetzel, A., 1968) https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsus/vsrates1940_60.pdf [7].

Other sources from the U.S. with closely matched patterns of declining deaths from major childhood infections over the very same course of time is presented in:  ‘Annual summary of vital statistics: trends in the health of Americans during the 20th century’, (Guyer B, Freedman M.A., Strobino DM and Sondik E.J. 2000),  in Paediatrics https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11099582 [8], and the raw statistics for many of these childhood diseases in the United States can be generated from tabulations given in ‘Vaccination and the Control of Seven Infectious Diseases in the US -1900-1970’, (Blood, B., 2000-2013) http://www.dolmetsch.com/USDiseaseData1900to1970.html#table9 [9] essentially reveal the same pattern.

And regarding the same essential pattern of a significant decline in deaths from many of the same diseases from the United States and Canada, we see further confirmation of this pattern of death rates from Diphtheria and many of the other major killers highlighted below in statistical terms – (i.e. the death rates for the diseases drop in magnitude significantly from the 1900s onwards).

 …THERAPY OF INFECTIOUS DISEASES

W. J. McCORMICK, M.D.

Toronto, Canada.

1951

Diphtheria

Prior to the present century this disease was the major scourge of infancy and childhood. The mortality rates in the United States, for consecutive ten-year periods from 1900 to 1940, were as follows: 40, 21, 15, 5 and 1.

For the city of Toronto, for ten-year periods from 1885 to 1945, the rates were as follows: 132, 66, 34, 19, 8 and 3.

These figures show a steady reduction in mortality which began over 60 years ago…

A similar general decline in incidence and mortality rates for other infectious diseases, notably scarlet fever, whooping cough, measles, mumps, rheumatic fever and typhoid fever, has also been recorded.

[10]

https://www.seanet.com/~alexs/ascorbate/195x/mccormick-wj-arch_pediatrics-1951-v68-n1-p1.htm

Killer Plagues of Adults & Children also become tamer throughout the 20th Century

It would appear that  – not only do all the major childhood killers of the 1800s and earlier part of the 1900s show a dramatic decline throughout much of the first half of the 20th Century but also, the other great killers that attacked adults and children alike. Figure 2 clearly shows this pattern along with the very tail end of some of the older contagions discussed earlier.

Fig. 2: Chart of the annual number of deaths in Ireland recorded from the combined major killers of all ages of TB, Influenza,, Typhus, Cholera, Dysentery & Typhoid Fever. Source: Chart generated using this tumultuous statistics reports since records began – “Annual Reports on Marriages, Births and Deaths in Ireland, from 1864 to 2000” courtesy of: An Phríomh-Oifig Staidrimh, Central Statics Office CSO, link. © Copyright dig-press.com

For instance, when we compare the deaths from TB (Tuberculosis) with the relatively low death rate corresponding to the very tail end of other great contagions such as Cholera, Dysentery and Typhus (Fig. 2), we can begin to gain a greater historical perspective on the longer-term pattern of the behaviour of these pathogens.

Compare, for example, the greatest spike for deaths from Influenza in white (corresponding to the great Spanish Flu of 1918/19) which pales into insignificance (statistically speaking of course) when assessed against the annual number of deaths from something as deadly as TB.

However, as Figure 2 clearly illustrates, even TB and Influenza declined in terms of their deadliness in the end just like the older great killers before them. These latter two diseases are relatively modern as we can see the rise to deadly prominence of Influenza along with the peaking of both TB and Influenza and ultimately their demise as killers.

By combining the patterns over the same timeframe for the rise and fall of numbers of individual deaths given annually from each disease, we can begin to detect the fact that it would appear each tells a similar story in that the earlier a disease rises to deadly prominence – the sooner it will resolve itself. And conversely, the more recently a disease rose to deadly prominence, the later in time it appears to become resolved.

Furthermore, it also looks like many of these diseases and their death toll when compared over time that often the reign of one pathogen will be predominant, whilst keeping another’s in check. And seemingly, once a void opens up – i.e. as the older (earlier) diseases begin to recede or become significantly less deadly – a previously suppressed or even less familiar pathogen appears to try to fill this void of destruction (Fig. 2), thus, giving us an insight into the pathogen/host or pathogen/pathogen behaviour over the course of time.

It should be noted that generally, most studies do not typically compare mortality charts over time between other regions to detect similarities or assess a range of contagions on a single graph to assess possible pathogen interactions – this is fairly peculiar to this present study. However, the important point that most other studies of this kind do highlight, is the striking decline in deaths from these same diseases – some of the greatest killers recorded – for the same general timeframe as documented and illustrated in the following broader studies of many of the major killers throughout the 20th Century, which correspond fairly closely with the Irish data (see Fig. 2).

This can be seen in studies such as: ‘Twentieth Century Mortality Trends in England and Wales’, Griffiths, C and Brock, A (2003) Office for National Statistics https://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/hsq/health-statistics-quarterly/no–18–summer-2003/twentieth-century-mortality-trends-in-england-and-wales.pdf [11] and, similarly, a number of comparative graphs are presented in Thomas McKeown’s publication for the same region in: ‘The Role of Medicine: Dream, Mirage, or Nemesis?’ (1979)   http://peaceworkspartners.org/vault/Oxford/DPHPC/Health%20and%20Development%20Course/Int%20Dev%20Readings%20HT10/1a.%20Main%20Theories/McKeown%20The%20Role%20of%20Medicine%201979.pdf  [12].

Again, the major killers that have statistics for the deaths over the course of time, clearly demonstrate that these same diseases of all age groups become significantly less deadly across the board in the U.S. as illustrated within in graphs plotting the deaths throughout the earlier part of the 20^th Century in the U.S. ‘Mortality in the United States 1900 – 1950’ (Gordon, T., 1968). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2024011/ [13]. And this pattern is also reflected in, ‘Trends in Infectious Disease Mortality in the United States During the 20th Century’ (Gregory L. Armstrong, G.L, Conn L.A, Pinner, R.W 1999) https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/768249 [14]. Once again, supporting data can also be seen in the graphs presented and discussed in, ‘Infectious Diseases and Human Population History’, (Dobson, A.P. and Carper, E.R., 1996), BioScience, https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article-abstract/46/2/115/252374 [15].

This begins to raise the important question of what caused such a closely corresponding decline in deaths – a near-universal pattern, from once much more deadly diseases in the first place? As outlined earlier in this study, some scholars have suggested causes relating to a Darwinian-type genetic selection idea, which doesn’t seem to stand up to scrutiny over the long term. But more often, others have suggested the hygiene and nutrition concept, along with population trends and economic and social improvements as a cause of the pattern of decline of some of the deadliest contagions known (e.g. recall the earlier discussion regarding the fact that it is widely believed that the Black Death or Plague of the Middle Ages was spread by black rats and their fleas and by cleaning up the rat infestations – the Plague disappeared – but, on closer inspection, this may not be the case).

And some of these hypotheses have been offered as alternatives due to the fact – as the data strongly support as you will see as we continue – that our medical interventions were virtually non-existent, came either too late or cannot be correlated with the statistics to show that their impact was a direct or significant causal factor in the decline in mortality or morbidity from such plague-like contagions at a population level. This aspect is certainly supported here in this present study as you will see as you continue.

However, as I hope it is now becoming clear from the evidence presented thus far in this present study, it would appear that by digging deeper into the historical archives of the time and by doing a broader comparative assessment of the statistical data, combined with more recent molecular insights, this strongly points to a rather different alternative hypothesis, one of, generational resilience to these pathogens via exposure as a direct causal factor in the overall decline – seen near-simultaneously throughout, and between, our-newly-emerging modern nations over a surprisingly similar timeframe.

Saying that, there is one aspect of the nutritional hypothesis that should be highlighted in this context as it is derived directly from clinical studies which clearly demonstrate the profound role that certain essential vitamins and trace minerals can have on many of the specific infections documented above – this warrants further investigation and it is also important to review – at least briefly here – as this type of therapy also played an important role in the history of our medical interventions – albeit briefly.

Intervention via Vitamin Therapy?

In ‘VITAMIN C IN THE PROPHYLAXIS AND THERAPY OF INFECTIOUS DISEASES’ by W. J. McCORMICK, M.D. 1951, McCormick proposes a hypothesis to account for the decline in deaths from a broad range of once much more deadly infectious diseases being caused by nutrient deficiencies arising from increasing urbanisation within populations as a whole, with dietary stability emerging as we settled into this new lifestyle, he argues that this would cause the deaths from highly infectious diseases to decline concurrently with these developments. He postulated this alternative based upon the fact that much of our medical interventions came either too late, or not at all to account for such a decline.

McCormick’s hypothesis was directly inspired by the highly successful clinical therapies and studies applying vitamin therapies which addressed underlying vitamin deficiencies and supported the body’s own immune system to accelerate recovery and limit the complications that still occasionally arose from being infected with such diseases – particularly those that still impacted children. For example, many conditions were treated using high dose vitamin C by McCormick, including the worst effects of Scarlet Fever, as summarised below.

…THERAPY OF INFECTIOUS DISEASES

W. J. McCORMICK, M.D.

Toronto, Canada.

1951

(The Author’s Experience)

In the author’s private practice during the past ten years, over 5,000 tests for vitamin-C status have been made, .. In many cases of deficiency, where the dietary intake indicates a subnormal in-take of vitamin C over a lengthy period, the correlated clinical history shows repeated occurrence of infectious processes,

Several cases of scarlet fever were given vitamin-C therapy, intravenously and orally, 2,000 mg. daily. In each case the fever dropped to normal in a few hours and the patients were symptom-free within three or four days.

[16]

https://www.seanet.com/~alexs/ascorbate/195x/mccormick-wj-arch_pediatrics-1951-v68-n1-p1.htm

McCormick was practising at the tail end of an era that saw the very promising development of such vitamin therapies which were emerging and gaining more and more momentum from around the first few decades of the 20th Century onwards as documented in summary below regarding Vitamin A therapy.

The Historical Evolution of Thought Regarding Multiple Micronutrient Nutrition

Progress with Vitamin A

In Denmark from 1910–1920, Carl Bloch and Olaf Blegvad … observed high mortality in children who were hospitalized with vitamin A deficiency. The mortality rate of vitamin A-deficient children was reduced by ~54% by treating the children with cod-liver oil and whole milk, two rich sources of vitamin A. In the late 1920s, vitamin A was recognized to have an effect on immunity to infection, and vitamin A became known as the antiinfective vitamin …

Largely through the influence of Mellanby, vitamin A underwent a period of intense clinical investigation. Between 1920 and 1940, at least 30 trials were conducted to determine whether vitamin A could reduce the morbidity and mortality from infectious diseases, including respiratory disease, measles, puerperal sepsis, and tuberculosis …

By the 1930s, it was established that vitamin A supplementation could reduce morbidity and mortality in young children. In 1932, Joseph Ellison… showed that vitamin A supplementation reduced the mortality of vitamin A-deficient children with measles by nearly 60%. Vitamin A became a mainstream preventive measure; cod-liver oil was part of the morning routine for millions of children and was acknowledged in saving the lives of children from poor families in England…

Semba, R.D. (2012)
The Journal of Nutrition

[17]

https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/142/1/143S/4630750

Cod-Liver Oil – Anyone old enough to remember it?

A clear illustration of how these clinical studies filtered out to the broader public can be seen in a sample of the type of advertisements of the era such as that for Cod Liver Oil as a protection against some of the worst effects and complications that could still occasionally arise from having such common childhood diseases:

Fig. 4: Vintage advertisement for ‘Squibb’s’ cod-liver oil. Source: Masterjohn, C. (2015) Did Cod Liver Oil Contribute to the Historical Decline in Measles Mortality and Mortality From Other Infectious Diseases?https://www.westonaprice.org/did-cod-liver-oil-contribute-to-the-historical-decline-in-measles-mortality-and-mortality-from-other-infectious-diseases/ 

[18]

See the highlights from the poster below:

• whooping cough, measles, mumps, • chicken pox, scarlet fever

…may do greater harm than most mothers think. But the children have lighter cases, they recover quicker and are less likely to be left with some permanent injury, if they build up good general resistance in advance to fight them…

There is a way to prevent the “common” diseases from resulting seriously. … “resistance-building” Vitamin A! Vitamin A is the important factor which increases their fighting power in time of illness. It helps to set up a defense against the attacking disease germs…

In fact, good cod-liver oil is one of the richest sources of Vitamin A mothers can give. Don’t wait until your child catches one of the “common” diseases. Give him Squibb Cod-Liver Oil now!

 Vintage advertisement for ‘Squibb’s’ cod-liver oil

https://www.westonaprice.org/did-cod-liver-oil-contribute-to-the-historical-decline-in-measles-mortality-and-mortality-from-other-infectious-diseases/

Many clinical studies from the era show that different vitamin therapies were given to patients suffering from the ill effects of a broad range of highly infectious diseases. However, high-dose vitamin C therapy seemed to be the most often applied and takes up the greatest bulk of the medical literature regarding our intervention in such contagions of the era. High dose Vitamin C therapy is consistently shown to be powerfully effective in reducing the time, severity and deaths and disabilities that could sometimes arise from a broad range of both viral and bacterial diseases, but only when applied in a timely manner in fairly high doses.

The literature indicates that high doses (unlike Vitamin A which is more preventative) were necessary at the time of infection due to the fact that many of the diseases used up Vitamin C when the body was attacked and therefore, the immune system required a great deal of Vitamin C to fight such infections. For instance, just like McCormick’s application of high dose Vitamin C to a vast range of viral and bacterial infections, including Scarlet Fever, another example of the use of high dose Vitamin C therapy during the worst effects of Whooping Cough (Pertussis) infection is clearly demonstrated to be rather successful as documented as follows: 

A FURTHER REPORT ON THE ASCORBIC ACID TREATMENT OF WHOOPING COUGH

From the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, University of Manitoba

IN a previous communication two of us (M.J.O. and B.M.U.) gave an account of the treatment of 10 cases of whooping cough with ascorbic acid (synthetic vitamin C). While the small number of cases forbade any statistical conclusions they nevertheless did show that this treatment had an almost specific effect in decreasing the intensity and duration of the disease.

At the time of forwarding the above paper we believed this to be an entirely new system of treatment, but we have since discovered that Otani 7 had published his results in treating 81 cases of whooping cough with ascorbic acid, and we take this opportunity of acknowledging his priority and confirming his results. His method of treatment was the intravenous injection of the same brand of ascorbic acid (Redoxon – Hoffmann-La Roche) as we have used orally, and his patients were drawn from hospital clinics, while ours were treated in the home.

He does not give much detail in the paper but his general conclusions are matched by ours. In hospital work the intravenous method may be ideal, but where oral use is possible and efficient, as it is here, we believe the greater simplicity and reduced cost (about one-fifth that of the intravenous method) of our method is more suited to general practice.

In the present communication we present the results in 17 additional cases of whooping cough treated by oral administration of ascorbic acid. An attempt was made to gain a more accurate idea of dosage and utilization of the vitamin by studying its urinary excretion before and during treatment. …

 Ormerod, M. J., UnKauf, B. M., & White, F. D. (1937).

[19]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC536087/

And again,  the highly effective use of high dose Vitamin C treatment in combating complications from Diphtheria infections is summarised in another medical paper from around the late 1940s. Note the title includes Poliomyelitis (Polio) which we will review shortly.

Journal of Southern Medical & Surgery

The Treatment of Poliomyelitis and Other Virus Diseases with Vitamin C

Harde et al. reported that diphtheria toxin is inactivated by vitamin C in vitro and to a lesser extent in vivo. I have confirmed this finding, in- deed extended it. Diphtheria can be cured in man by the administration of massive frequent doses of … (vitamin C) given intravenously and/or intramuscularly. To the synthetic drug, by mouth, there is little response, even when 1000 to 2000 mg. is used every two hours.

This cure in diphtheria is brought about in half the time required to remove the membrane and give negative smears by antitoxin. This membrane is removed by lysis when “C” is given, rather than by sloughing as results with the use of the antitoxin. An advantage of this form of therapy is that the danger of serum reaction is eliminated. The only disadvantage of the ascorbic acid therapy is the inconvenience of the multiple injections.

Klenner, F.R., (1949, 211)

[20]

https://ia800301.us.archive.org/3/items/southernmed1111949char/southernmed1111949char.pdf 

Although deaths from Polio were minuscule compared to the much more massive deadliness of something like Measles in its heyday (See Fig. 1) and as tragic as this was at the time on the ground for the individuals who were directly impacted, what made Polio so terrifying perhaps was its high visibility in terms of its greater fallout, paralysis. It is that presumably prompted, with some the urgency, the only available treatment at the time which could stave off the worst effects of Polio at its height of the 1940s and 50s across our now fairly modern nations.

Hence, we have quite a large number of studies using vitamin C (high dose) therapy to treat the disease, and often with great success along with tackling many other viral infections – some examples are given in the following references and excerpts: And in many ways, treatment against the worst effects of Polio was seen as a stop-gap until other medical technologies could be made available as indicated in the opening of the excerpt that follows:

Journal of Southern Medical & Surgery

The Treatment of Poliomyelitis and Other Virus Diseases with Vitamin C

Since immunization against poliomyelitis comparable to that against other bacterial diseases is still a matter of the future, it suggested itself that some antibiotic could be found that would destroy this scourge …

These results were so consistently positive that we did not hesitate to try its effectiveness against all tvpes of virus infections.

The frequent administration of massive doses of vitamin C was so encouraging in the early days of the 1948 epidemic of poliomyelitis that a review of the literature was begun…

Klenner, F.R., (1949, 211)

[21]

https://ia800301.us.archive.org/3/items/southernmed1111949char/southernmed1111949char.pdf

Journal of Southern Medical & Surgery

High-dose Intravenous Vitamin C as a Successful Treatment of Viral Infections

 In the poliomyelitis epidemic in North Carolina in 1948, 60 cases of this disease came under his care. The treatment employed was vitamin C in massive doses. It was given like any other antibiotic every two to four hours. The initial dose was 1000 to 2000 mg, depending on age. This schedule was followed for 24 hours. After this time the fever was consistently down, so the vitamin C was given 1000 to 2000 mg every six hours for the next 48 hours. All patients were clinically well after 72 hours.

Klenner, F.R., (1949, 211-12)

[22]

https://ia800301.us.archive.org/3/items/southernmed1111949char/southernmed1111949char.pdf

Below is a recommended list of further clinical studies of the general pre-Polio-vaccine era using high dose Vitamin C therapies in the main with an emphasis upon Polio as this was a relatively new emergent contagion at the time.

Orthomolecular Medicine News Service

The Forgotten Research of Claus W. Jungeblut, M.D.

Robert Landwehr. The origin of the 42-year stonewall of vitamin C. Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine, 1991, Vol 6, No 2, p 99-103.

Klenner FR. The use of vitamin C as an antibiotic. Journal of Applied Nutrition, 1953, Vol. 6, p 274-278. 15. Klenner FR. The treatment of poliomyelitis and other virus diseases with vitamin C. Southern Medicine and Surgery, July, 1949, p 209.

Dr. Jungeblut’s 22 research reports were published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine and are available at: http://jem.rupress.org/search?submit=yes&author1=jungeblut&sortspec=date&where=author1&y=11&x=29&hopnum=1

…Other important papers are as follows Key papers regarding vitamin C include:

Jungeblut CW. Inactivation of poliomyelitis virus in vitro by crystalline vitamin C (ascorbic acid). J Exper Med, 1935. October; 62:517-521
Jungeblut CW. Vitamin C therapy and prophylaxis in experimental poliomyelitis. J Exp Med, 1937. 65: 127-146.
Jungeblut CW. Further observations on vitamin C therapy in experimental poliomyelitis. J Exper Med, 1937. 66: 459-477.
Jungeblut CW, Feiner RR. Vitamin C content of monkey tissues in experimental poliomyelitis. J Exper Med, 1937. 66: 479-491.
Jungeblut CW. A further contribution to vitamin C therapy in experimental poliomyelitis. J Exper Med, 1939. 70:315-332.

Orthomolecular Medicine News (2013)

[23]

 http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/v09n16.shtml

However, as much as these therapies with vitamins were shown to be life-saving and of immense value to the patients for the most part who had had the timely intervention, as it turned out, these vitamin therapies, unfortunately, became somewhat overshadowed by other emerging medical interventions of the era. Most notably, one medical intervention that is still very much with us today – antibiotics seems to have played a particular role in subduing the more natural therapies.

 

Antibiotic vs. Vitamin Interventions?

There is some indication that vitamin therapies and antibiotics were at logger-heads with each other in the early days of their applied treatments, presumably due to their fundamentally different ways of approaching the treatment of disease as suggested from reading the following excerpts.

THE JOURNAL OF SOUTHERN

MEDICINE AND SURGERY

VOL.CIII APRIL, 1951 No. 4

Massive Doses of Vitamin C and the Virus Diseases

It has been reported that one of the mold-derived drugs, in addition to being a good antibiotic, is a super-vitamin Conversely, we argue that vitamin C, besides being an essential vitamin, is a superantibiotic.

*****

Hippocrates declared the highest duty of medicine to be to get the patient well. He further declared that, of several remedies physicians should choose the least sensational- Vitamin C would seem to meet both these requirements.

Klenner, F.R. (1951, 101, 107)

[24]

http://www.mv.helsinki.fi/home/hemila/CP/Klenner_1951_ch.pdf

 Or to put it another way…

VITAMIN C IN THE PROPHYLAXIS AND THE THERAPY OF INFECTIOUS DISEASES

The author’s experience leads to the conclusion that the principle of trying to eradicate disease by concentrating our attack against the associated micro-organisms by means of toxic antibiotics is fundamentally unsound. If we wish to eliminate a desert or swamp we do not proceed to cut down the sage brush and cactus of the former or the lush characteristic verdure of the latter. Instead, we change the condition of the soil. By irrigation we make the desert blossom like a rose, and by drainage we change the flora of the swamp.

The late Dr. Alexis Carrel …has said: “Microbes and viruses are to be found everywhere, in the air, in the water, in our food… Nevertheless, in many people they remain inoffensive… This is natural immunity… But natural immunity does not exclusively derive from our ancestral constitution. It may come also from the mode of life …

 McCormick, W.J  (1951) 

[25]

https://www.seanet.com/~alexs/ascorbate/195x/mccormick-wj-arch_pediatrics-1951-v68-n1-p1.htm

It would also appear, judging by the excerpt above, that these therapies may have perhaps been perceived as simply too simplistic to be taken seriously by the emerging sophistication of the medical industry of the time. However, one major advantage that vitamin therapies had over antibiotics was that, where antibiotics could only treat bacterial disease and different antibiotics needed to be developed to treat particular bacterial infections, no antibiotics could be used to tackle viral or fungal infection types – whereas, the vitamin therapies seemed to be able to tackle just about any microbial type – viral or otherwise and all variants thereof. 

Basically, antibiotics seemed to appeal more to the emerging medical authorities of the era and they supported Alexander Fleming’s new discovery instead. However, as Penicillin only really began to be more widely available after World War II around the mid-1940s, and as this coincides very closely with the vast majority of deaths from contagions having essentially declined to a one or a few per cent from the 1900s in most regions, antibiotics cannot have been responsible for the overall decline in deaths prior to its wider availability. Furthermore, as noted above, it was some years later that other specific antibiotics were developed to counteract the worst effects of particular bacterial infections, and viral infections were not treatable using antibiotics at all. 

About Antimicrobial Resistance

Brief History of Antibiotics

Penicillin, the first commercialized antibiotic, was discovered in 1928 by Alexander Fleming.  While it wasn’t distributed among the general public until 1945, it was widely used in World War II for surgical and wound infections among the Allied Forces.  It was hailed as a “miracle drug” and a future free of infectious diseases was considered.  When Fleming won the Nobel Prize for his discovery, he warned of bacteria becoming resistant to penicillin in his acceptance speech.

CDC (2015)

[26]

https://www.cdc.gov/drugresistance/about.html

As indicated above, Fleming’s warning has unfortunately turned out to be quite correct, as we are battling with superbugs through over-use of such treatments against much less trivial infections and those bacterial critters have apparently adapted to just about anything we can throw at them, it is worth reiterating, as vitamin therapies were not in the game of annihilation, but, rather supporting our own immune systems to fight a whole spectrum of pathogens and their adaptive strains, isn’t it fortunate that vitamin therapies are beginning to re-emerge and be taken seriously again in our modern era of the rise of the Superbugs.

Vaccine Interventions?

This brings us to the development of vaccines of the era which seemed to hold the great promise of controlling these scourges of both viral and bacterial type diseases  –  all that was required, was the development of a vaccine for each disease and as some of these were beginning to be tackled using vaccines already, the initial success must have been somewhat amplified by the fact that the deaths were already plummeting – some deaths almost in free fall, and ultimately coming to a fairly abrupt end as illustrated in charts above (Figs. 1 and 2) which is fully reflected in the data from other regions across the world.

This observation has been highlighted within McKeown’s thesis of the 1970s [27]. And similar sentiments are echoed some decades earlier in the 1951 article by McCormick, who points to the evidence of his own era, where the availability of vaccines for a couple of diseases could not account for the major decline in deaths prior to their availability, and certainly could not account for the great decrease in deaths that had already plummeted that had not yet had a vaccine developed. And it was this fact that prompted both McCormick and McKeown and other scholars to posit an alternative explanation for the rather dramatic decline in deaths from so many once deadlier infectious diseases.

VITAMIN C IN THE PROPHYLAXIS AND THERAPY OF INFECTIOUS DISEASES

W. J. McCORMICK, M.D.

Toronto, Canada.

1951

The usual explanation offered for this changed trend in infectious diseases has been the forward march of medicine in prophylaxis and therapy; but, from a study of the literature, it is evident that these changes in incidence and mortality have been neither synchronous with nor proportionate to such measures.

…Likewise, the decline in diphtheria, whooping cough and typhoid fever began fully fifty years prior to the inception of artificial immunization and followed an almost even grade before and after the adoption of these control measures.

In the case of scarlet fever, mumps, measles and rheumatic fever there has been no specific innovation in control measures, yet these also have followed the same general pattern in incidence decline…

…On this same subject McKinnon … says: “Quite obviously then, all the factors mentioned are not adequate in themselves to explain the recorded decline. Some other factor or factors must have been operating during this period and it is necessary to cast farther afield in search of them…

We should ascertain whether natural resistance to infections could be conferred on man by definite conditions of life. Injections of specific vaccine or serum for each disease, repeated medical examinations of the whole population, construction of gigantic hospitals, are expensive and not very effective means of preventing diseases and of developing a nation’s health. Good health should be natural.”

[28]

https://www.seanet.com/~alexs/ascorbate/195x/mccormick-wj-arch_pediatrics-1951-v68-n1-p1.htm

In the end, it seems that the belief that we could prevent the disease occurring in the first place, using these newly emerging vaccines therapies,  that overrode any alternative and it is this fact, more than any other I believe, that very likely pushed vitamin therapies into the recesses of history.

However, even though it was early days when McCormick noted the few available vaccines coming online to combat particular diseases, as you can see from the updated statistics right up to our present-day (see the above graphs, Figs. 1 and 2), all of our older and more modern diseases declined in terms of becoming less deadly over the generations, Scarlet Fever, the Plague, Dysentery, Cholera, Typhus Fever and Typhoid without any medical intervention at all (although there were tentative moves towards a vaccine for Scarlet Fever and Typhoid – they never came to anything much) and all the other great contagions of our more modern era went the same way – becoming essentially relatively tame, where much of the death and destruction is essentially over as our more modern vaccine era begins.

However, there is one glaring contagion that we haven’t addressed yet in terms of a vaccine that was made available relatively early, and that is Jenner’s famous Cowpox vaccine against Smallpox, which will be addressed in the following section. But, first, we will finish off with a short discussion of why I would tend to argue the case for a natural resistance to disease via exposure over generations rather than support the micro-nutrient hypothesis as proposed by McCormick and other related hypotheses offered for the ultimate cause of the rise and fall of once deadlier contagions if it wasn’t caused for the most part by our medical interventions as discussed in the following.

The Cause of the Near-Universal Decline in Deaths from Major Contagions 

This present study would tend to lean more towards the natural generational resistance hypothesis for all the reasons stated previously. However, several other scholars would essentially support McCormick’s type of proposal of the possible cause of the major decline in all the great contagions of old and this is offered along with overall improvements of health, diet, wealth and cleanliness, as an explanation based upon the fact that we cannot explain this common phenomenon via our medical interventions as they essentially came either too late, or not at all, or were too sporadic to explain the pattern of decline across our developing nations as outlined in a number of Thomas McKeown’s publications [29]. 

These scholars are of course not alone in identifying the lack of association between the timing, degree and availability of medical interventions and the dramatic decline in deaths which cannot, for the most part, be correlated with our interventions and therefore, cannot have been the major cause of the decline in the first place.

This issue has been discussed  as it relates to the United States by McKinlay J.B and McKinlay S.M. (1977) in ‘The Questionable Contribution of Medical Measures to the Decline of Mortality in the United States in the Twentieth Century’   https://www.jstor.org/stable/3349539?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents [30], where these authors open their study with the following:

The Questionable Contribution of Medical Measures to the Decline of Mortality in the United States in the Twentieth Century

Abstract

Legislators, practitioners, and the public may deem it “heretical,” but analysis of United States data shows that introduction of specific medical measures and expansion of services account for only a fraction of the decline in mortality since 1900.

[30]

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3349539?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

Now regarding the nutrition/micro-nutrient hypothesis offered to explain this decline in deaths from some of the deadliest diseases of all time ever recorded without our medical intervention, it must be conceded that diseases such as those directly linked to vital mineral/vitamin deficiencies such as Scurry and Rickets being two examples that come to mind, appear at first to be exceptions to this pattern. However, this is probably because they are not contagious, unlike all the other great epidemic infectious diseases and are specific and limited to the individual that gets the infection.

Among the maladies currently having a resurgence are:

Rickets

“Rickets affects bone development in children and is caused by vitamin D deficiency,” says Dr Jeff Foster, GP at Spire Parkway Hospital, Solihull. With improvements in nutrition, the condition was considered all but eradicated.

However, 4,638 children admitted to NHS hospitals in 2013 and 2014 were found to be suffering from vitamin D deficiency, compared to 1,398 cases in 2009 and 2010.

[31]

https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/health/910967/victorian-disease-syphilis-rickets-scurvey-pirates-tuberculosis

Otherwise, going against this nutritional causation interpretation of the data presented thus far in this present study, take for example some of the great contagions that were carried inadvertently to perfectly nutritionally healthy indigenous peoples who are described vividly within our history books where suddenly they had to face for the first time – outsiders – often seemingly healthy carriers of their new invaders who had already become immune over generations of exposure. We know what happened then, but as discussed earlier, although these people were fairly decimated within a few short generations they too seemed to become naturally immune when faced with the same disease – sometimes within later populations who hadn’t even directly experienced the disease in their own life-time. 

Now – if this same tribe (prior to first exposure) were fit and healthy and eating nothing but good vitamin-filled fruit if they were tropical dwellers, or full of vitamin A as they ate raw fish for the most part if they were coastal dwellers in the more northerly regions,  and apparently got their vitamin C or equivalent indirectly (I heard that somewhere – but I can’t immediately remember the details – other than they are not lacking in such immune support), or were hunters on the great plains who ate nothing but good grass-fed nutritional game – living in harmony with nature and did every right according to nature’s rules, then how could the nutritional hypothesis account for either the rise or the subsequent immunity and decline in deaths from these diseases?

In other words, it seems unlikely that every nook and cranny within our great nations – both large and small and between the lands so geographically and climatically diverse – sometimes separated by thousands of miles of ocean, would all manage to consume comparable levels, or be lacking (whichever may be the case) in vitamin-rich foods and trace minerals to have the very same nutritional status at the exact same time points in history, to show this almost universal effect across the entire earth and over centuries as illustrated by the graphs and overall statistics generated historically for our nations. The Irish famine is a case in point as discussed previously. It seems that your level of exposure ancestrally was more a factor in whether you survived or died back in the day more than your diet.

Final Episode: Part Eight: Don’t Count Your Children ’til they’ve had the POX! Conclusion…

References to Part Seven

[1] Guttormsson, L and Garðarsdóttir, Ó (2002) The Development of Infant Mortality in Iceland, 1800–1920, Hygiea Internationalis, An Interdisciplinary Journal for the History of Public Health, Vol. 3 [1] pp. 151 – 176, PDF · [Available online as PDF] DOI: 10.3384/hygiea.1403-8668.0231151 https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/d338/90ffb7c01490bde7a729270285926ea3b17e.pdf

[2] De Looper, MW (2014) Death registration and mortality trends in Australia 1856–1906, Abstract, p. iv. PhD Thesis: The Australian National University [Available online as PDF] https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/…/De%20Looper%20Thesis%202015.pdf

[3] Booth, H, Tickle, L, Zhao, J (2016) Epidemiologic Transition in Australia: The last hundred years, Canadian Studies in Population Vol. 43, [1–2]: pp. 23–47. https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/csp/index.php/csp/article/viewFile/25702/20363

[4] Smallman-Raynor, M, and Cliff, A (2012), Atlas of Epidemic Britain: A Twentieth Century Picture, Oxford University Press, Oxford. p.50, figure 4:18 (Measles); p. 52, figure 4:24 (Whooping Cough); p.49, figure 4:15 (Scarlet Fever). https://books.google.ie/books

[5] Baillie, L. and Hawe, E. (2012) Causes of Death: A Study of a Century of Change in England & Wales, OHE (Office of Health & Economics). https://www.ohe.org/publications/causes-death-study-century-change-england-and-wales#

[6] Gordon, T. (1953) Mortality in the United States, 1900-1950. Public Health Reports, Vol. 68 [4], pp. 441–444. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2024011/

[7] Grove, R.D., and Hezel, A.M (1968) Vital Statistics Rates in the United States, 1940 – 1960, Department of Health, Education and Welfare Public Health Service, National Center for Health Statistics. [Available online cdc.gov] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsus/vsrates

[8] Guyer B, Freedman MA, Strobino DM, Sondik EJ. (2000) Annual summary of vital statistics: trends in the health of Americans during the 20th century, Pediatrics. Vol. 106, [6]: pp. 1307-17. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11099582

[9] Blood, B., (2000-2013) Vaccination and the Control of Seven Infectious Diseases in the US (1900-1970), Dolmetsch.com (Compilation of statistics compiled from the Historical Statistics of the United States Colonial Times to 1970 http://www2.census.gov/prod2/statcomp/documents/CT1970p1-03.pdf) [Available online dolmetsch.com] https://www.dolmetsch.com/USDiseaseData1900to1970.html#table9

[10] McCormick, W.J (1951) Vitamin C in the Prophylaxis and Therapy of Infectious Diseases, Archives of Pediatrics, Vol. 68, [1]. https://www.seanet.com/~alexs/ascorbate/195x/mccormick-wj-arch_pediatrics-1951-v68-n1-p1.htm

[11] Griffiths C and Brock A (2003) Twentieth Century Mortality Trends in England and Wales. Health Statistics Quarterly, Issue 18, pp. 5–17. [Available online as PDF] https://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/hsq/health-statistics-quarterly/no–18–summer-2003/twentieth-century-mortality-trends-in-england-and-wales.pdf

[12] Mc Keown, T (1979) The Role of Medicine: Dream, Mirage, or Nemesis? Basil Blackwell, Oxford [Available online as PDF] http://peaceworkspartners.org/vault/Oxford/DPHPC/Health%20and%20Development%20Course/Int%20Dev%20Readings%20HT10/1a.%20Main%20Theories/McKeown%20The%20Role%20of%20Medicine%201979.pdf

[13] Gordon, T. (1953) Mortality in the United States, 1900-1950. Public Health Reports, Vol. 68 [4], pp. 441–444. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2024011/

[14] Gregory L. Armstrong, G.L, Conn L.A, Pinner, RW (1999) Trends in Infectious Disease Mortality in the United States During the 20th Century, JAMA. Vol. 281 [1]: pp.61-66. DOI: 10.1001/jama.281.1.61 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/768249

[15] Dobson, A.P. and Carper, E.R (1996) Infectious Diseases and Human Population History: Throughout history the establishment of disease has been a side effect of the growth of civilization, BioScience, 46, Issue [2,] pp. 115–126, DOI: 10.2307/1312814 [Available online as PDF] https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article-abstract/46/2/115/252374

[16] McKinlay JB and McKinlay SM. (1977) The Questionable Contribution of Medical Measures to the Decline of Mortality in the United States in the Twentieth Century. The Millbank Memorial Fund Quarterly. Health and Society. Vol, 55 [3], pp. 405-428. [Available online at JSTOR] https://www.jstor.org/stable/3349539?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

[17] Richard D. Semba, R.D. (2012) The Historical Evolution of Thought Regarding Multiple Micronutrient Nutrition, The Journal of Nutrition, Vo. 142, [1], Progress with Vitamin A, https://doi.org/10.3945/jn.110.137745 [Available online from academic.oup.com] https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/142/1/143S/4630750

[18] Masterjohn, C. (2015) Did Cod Liver Oil Contribute to the Historical Decline in Measles Mortality and Mortality From Other Infectious Diseases? Westonaprice.org, (April 6^th 2015) [Available online from westonaprice.org] https://www.westonaprice.org/did-cod-liver-oil-contribute-to-the-historical-decline-in-measles-mortality-and-mortality-from-other-infectious-diseases/

[19] Ormerod, M. J., UnKauf, B. M., & White, F. D. (1937). A Further Report on the Ascorbic Acid Treatment of Whooping Cough, Department of Physiology and Pharmacology. Canadian Medical Association Journal, Vol. 37 [3] pp. 268–272. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC536087

[20] Klenner, F.R., (1949) The Treatment of Poliomyelitis and Other Virus Diseases with Vitamin C 
. Journal of Southern Medical & Surgery, VOL. 111 [1], p. 211, [Available online as PDF from Gutenberg.org] https://ia800301.us.archive.org/3/items/southernmed1111949char/southernmed1111949char.pdf

[21] Klenner, F.R., (1949) The Treatment of Poliomyelitis and Other Virus Diseases with Vitamin C 
. Journal of Southern Medical & Surgery, VOL. 111 [1], p. 211, [Available online as PDF from Gutenberg.org] https://ia800301.us.archive.org/3/items/southernmed1111949char/southernmed1111949char.pdf

[22] Klenner, F.R., (1949) The Treatment of Poliomyelitis and Other Virus Diseases with Vitamin C 
. Journal of Southern Medical & Surgery, VOL. 111 [1], p. 211-12[Available online as PDF from Gutenberg.org] https://ia800301.us.archive.org/3/items/southernmed1111949char/southernmed1111949char.pdf

[23] Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, (2013), Vitamin C and Polio, The Forgotten Research of Claus W. Jungeblut, M.D. in (ed.) Andrew W. Saul, Orthomolecular Medicine News Service (August 7rh, 2013) http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/v09n16.shtm

[24] Klenner, F.R., (1951) Massive Doses of Vitamin C and the Virus Diseases
. Journal of Southern Medical & Surgery, VOL. 113 [4], p. 101-107 [Available online as PDF from Gutenberg.org] http://www.mv.helsinki.fi/home/hemila/CP/Klenner_1951_ch.pdf

[25] McCormick, W.J (1951) Vitamin C in the Prophylaxis and Therapy of Infectious Diseases, Archives of Pediatrics, Vol. 68, [1]. https://www.seanet.com/~alexs/ascorbate/195x/mccormick-wj-arch_pediatrics-1951-v68-n1-p1.htm

[26] CDC (2015) About Antimicrobial Resistance, Brief History of Antibiotics, CDC website [Available online CDC.gov] https://www.cdc.gov/drugresistance/about.html

[27] McCormick, W.J (1951) Vitamin C in the Prophylaxis and Therapy of Infectious Diseases, Archives of Pediatrics, Vol. 68, [1]. https://www.seanet.com/~alexs/ascorbate/195x/mccormick-wj-arch_pediatrics-1951-v68-n1-p1.htm

[28] Mc Keown, T (1979) The Role of Medicine: Dream, Mirage, or Nemesis? Basil Blackwell, Oxford [Available online as PDF] http://peaceworkspartners.org/vault/Oxford/DPHPC/Health%20and%20Development%20Course/Int%20Dev%20Readings%20HT10/1a.%20Main%20Theories/McKeown%20The%20Role%20of%20Medicine%201979.pdf

[29] McCormick, W.J (1951) Vitamin C in the Prophylaxis and Therapy of Infectious Diseases, Archives of Pediatrics, Vol. 68, [1]. https://www.seanet.com/~alexs/ascorbate/195x/mccormick-wj-arch_pediatrics-1951-v68-n1-p1.htm

[30] Mc Keown, T (1979) The Role of Medicine: Dream, Mirage, or Nemesis? Basil Blackwell, Oxford [Available online as PDF] http://peaceworkspartners.org/vault/Oxford/DPHPC/Health%20and%20Development%20Course/Int%20Dev%20Readings%20HT10/1a.%20Main%20Theories/McKeown%20The%20Role%20of%20Medicine%201979.pdf

[31] O’Connor, M., (2018) Deadly Victorian diseases make a return from obscurity, but why now? RICKETS, TB and scurvy sound like the stuff of history books but official figures show such Dickensian diseases have recently been making a comeback. Express.uk.com (January 28th 2018).