THOMAS LOW NICHOLS, 1873: No device of man can accomplish such a work as [Nature]; and man's efforts to assist nature have, in most cases, been full of error and mischief.”

Greatest medical invention in history?

In 1873, Dr. Thomas Low Nichols made a damning observation about the practice of vaccination. At that time, the method for preventing smallpox—nearly three-quarters of a century old and destined to continue for another twenty-five… pic.twitter.com/7CzHJpR8Wv

— Roman Bystrianyk (@RBystrianyk) March 4, 2026

Greatest medical invention in history? In 1873, Dr. Thomas Low Nichols made a damning observation about the practice of vaccination. At that time, the method for preventing smallpox—nearly three-quarters of a century old and destined to continue for another twenty-five years—involved scratching pus from an infected person’s arm directly onto another’s. This procedure, hailed by many as the greatest medical invention in history, was, in Nichols’ view, causing widespread harm. He asserted that it led to blood poisoning and a host of other diseases, resulting in thousands of deaths. “Closely allied to these, as causes of disease, are the poisonous drugs administered as medicines. And it must not be forgotten that syphilis, scrofula, and probably every kind of blood-poison can be taken by vaccination, which, so far from being a protection against small-pox, seems to have been one of the chief causes of the late epidemics. It is never safe to take matter from another body into our own. We risk taking all its diseases. There is no doubt thousands have been mortally poisoned by vaccination, made compulsory by law upon the whole population. Apparently healthy children have scattered hereditary syphilis, and perhaps, even worse diseases... The cure of disease is not accomplished by any medical system. Nature does her own work. It is the power of life that moulds and builds up the organism; it is the intelligent soul that first forms the body, and presides over all its processes, which struggles against disease, overcomes it, and casts it out of the system. No device of man can accomplish such a work as this; and man's efforts to assist nature have, in most cases, been full of error and mischief.”

[Thomas Low Nichols, MD, Esoteric Anthropology (The Mysteries of Man), 1873, p. 186, 192.]