In my letter to the Secretary of War I proved that there was a distinct medical and logical relation between influenza and vaccination, and that many serious diseases, including smallpox and cowpox, commence like influenza and may be mistaken for it,[2] but I do not need to go into proof of that point here, but can now say that this point further strengthens the suspicions stated that the recent epidemic of influenza and septicemia or septic pneumonia may have had some causative relation to the extensive wholesale and repeated vaccinations in the military camps throughout the world, and would indicate, according to another theory, that this vaccine infection had escaped from and overflowed its usual bounds and was running wild as a world-wide epidemic infection; and hence the positive and compelling reasons for checking this overflowing infection by suspending all vaccination while this epidemic and infecting condition exists, and making all vaccination voluntary instead of compulsory as heretofore. EPIDEMICS ACTUALLY CAUSED BY VACCINATION That the hypothetical condition suggested in the preceding paragraph, viz., that the wholesale and world-wide vaccine infection going on for the past few years had possibly escaped from its usual bounds and has been overflowing and running wild and thus causing epidemics in mankind, or animals,--that this, I say, may be no mere hypothesis or theory, but rather a hard fact, is proved by the frightful epidemics of “foot and mouth disease” in the United States in 1902, 1908, and 1914, some of which originated from two of the largest vaccine factories in this country, one in Philadelphia and the other in Detroit, and were widely distributed to cattle and mankind in several of our States. See reports of U. S. Bureau of Animal Industry, 1902 and 1908. Also Year Book of U. S. Department of Agriculture, 1914, page 20. See also page 96 in Supplement. It is clearly shown in these reports that vaccine infection was the direct cause of these epidemics in 1902 and 1908; but the cause of the epidemic of 1914 and 1915 is not so clearly proven, although there is a strong suspicion that it was caused by vaccine infection, like the two others, and, as a matter of fact, it originated in the same State--Michigan--where the epidemic of 1908 originated and where one of the largest vaccine factories in the country is located. See page 98 in Supplement.