The Physician Who Smeared Himself with Smallpox

Source: https://unbekoming.substack.com/p/the-physician-who-smeared-himself

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This essay draws on Daniel Roytas’s Can You Catch a Cold? Untold History and Human Experiments, which documents historical challenges to germ theory and the extensive record of failed disease transmission experiments conducted between 1798 and the mid-twentieth century.

 

On January 21, 1901, Dr. Matthew Joseph Rodermund, an American ophthalmologist, visited a young female patient suffering from smallpox. Upon entering her room, he asked the girl’s mother if she feared contracting the disease. When she replied she was not afraid, Rodermund burst open several pustules on the girl’s face and arms and collected the fetid pus. He then smeared it across his own face, hands, beard, and clothes.

Without washing, Rodermund returned home and ate dinner with his family. He consulted patients at his medical practice. He played cards at the local Businessmen’s Club, touching the faces and hands of at least ten people that evening. The next day, still covered in smallpox pus, he travelled by train to a nearby town, mingling with those he encountered. He consulted with twenty-seven more patients, again touching their faces and hands. For nearly forty-eight hours, Rodermund had been covered in the bodily fluids of a smallpox patient, which he had deliberately rubbed onto the faces and hands of at least thirty-seven unsuspecting individuals.

When news broke of his actions, Rodermund was held under police guard in a quarantine facility. He escaped that same evening, travelled to a nearby town to visit an acquaintance, and was arrested for the second time in twenty-four hours. After four days in quarantine, he was released. The police could find nothing to charge him with.

Not a single case of smallpox occurred — neither in Rodermund nor in any of the thirty-seven people he had directly exposed.

The result made headlines across the United States. Media outlets continue to report on Rodermund’s exploits to this day. The attention is understandable. Smallpox was considered one of the most contagious diseases known to medicine. Direct contact with infectious material from active pustules represented the most concentrated possible exposure. By every principle of contagion theory, Rodermund should have contracted smallpox. So should at least some of the dozens of people whose faces he touched with pus-covered hands. The expected outcome was an outbreak. The actual outcome was nothing.

Rodermund was not surprised. He had performed this experiment dozens of times over fifteen years. Each time, the result was negative.

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Rodermund smeared smallpox pus across his face and touched thirty-seven people. None of them got sick. The question is not whether this happened — it is documented, reported, and never disputed. The question is what it means. Contagion theory has no satisfying answer. The sanitarian physicians who were Rodermund’s intellectual allies believed they did. Their explanation may be wrong. But their question — why didn’t anyone get sick? — has never been adequately addressed.

You can read the full essay here > https://unbekoming.substack.com/p/the-physician-who-smeared-himself

As usual from this author, a very thought-provoking piece.

The book, by Daniel Roytas, is a masterpiece of research data plus, could we say, ''Off The Beaten Track'' thought; based on facts, truth and science.

The last paragraph of the essay poses a question:

''Rodermund smeared smallpox pus across his face and touched thirty-seven people. None of them got sick. The question is not whether this happened — it is documented, reported, and never disputed. The question is what it means. Contagion theory has no satisfying answer. The sanitarian physicians who were Rodermund’s intellectual allies believed they did. Their explanation may be wrong. But their question — why didn’t anyone get sick? — has never been adequately addressed.''

I have, through quite a number of posts, attempted to answer the posed question.

It is because the supposed entities in the 'pus', 'snot', mucus', 'body-fluid', 'blood' etc, are not the disease. They are the body's clean-up in action. in other words; the symptoms of an illness/sickness are the cure. The modern theory; that one person can pass a entity causing disease, to another, does not stand up to scrutiny. This is explained more comprehensively and eloquently in Dr Roytas' book 'Can You Catch a Cold?' ----- www.humanley.com.

Also, a point that has been emphasised very often on both AN & TT; the shift from natural medicine to 'modern' medicine, took just 20 years. From 1900 to 1920. The move, from natural health to a drug-based system, was largely dependent on rich individuals wanting to get even richer. Dreaming of $$$s in the not too distant future. If they could financially capture the 'germ theory' system. They could see the benefit of flogging drugs to sick patients. But they had to get sick in the first place. Certainly the same people had a handle on that.

The sicknesses of WW2, and subsequent 'Spanish Flu' were the end of nature/terrain healing. Do no harm, was replaced by $$$ incentives. Big Pharma indoctrination had began. As it is to this day.