Emerson's Demographics

The worldwide polio epidemic of 1916 was most intense in the U.S. where the main epicenter was the New York City region. That epidemic was devastating, as can be visualized via the table and graph herein. The disease, in 1916, mostly effected infants and young children, thus the name "infantile paralysis".

The epidemic lasted six months, from June to November. 82% of the cases occurred in two months (July August), with polio cases declining quickly, just as the NYC newspapers began to publish in early August, rumors that milk was causal.

After the epidemic of 1916, the New York City Department of Health Commissioner, Haven Emerson, recorded polio cases by nationality in a demographic chart. The chart below, is essentially Emerson's chart, sorted on descending cases (from Naomi Roger's Dirt And Disease: Polio Before FDR, 1990).

This table demonstrates the main theme of "Dirt and Disease", that polio distribution elicited no meaningful pattern. The independent thinker is given a message of futility, ie., any search for a non-infectious causation would be futile.

		Cases
NATIVE (BORN IN USA)		3,825
FOREIGN BORN WHITES		5,228
	Italy	1,348
	Russia	1,287
	Ireland	644
	Germany	479
	Austria	479
	Poland	224
	England	181
	Hungary	103
	Norway	101
	Sweden	75
	Rumania	59
	Scotland	46
	Finland	26
	Other Canada	20
	West Indies	20
	Czechoslovakia	18
	France	17
	Greece	17
	Switzerland	14
	Lithuania	14
	Spain	12
	Turkey In Asia	10
	Syria	9
	Atlantic Islands	7
	Netherlands	5
	All Other	2
	Yugoslavia	2
	Armenia	2
	Other Asia	2
	Belgium	1
	Portugal	1
	Mexico	1
	C&S America	1
	Wales	0
	Denmark	0
	Luxembourg	0
	Alsace-Lorraine	0
	Bulgaria	0
	Turkey in Europe	0
	Albania	0
	Other Europe	0
	Asia Minor	0
	Palestine	0
	French Canada	0
	Newfoundland	0
	Australia	0

Like Naomi Rogers' theme ("Dirt and Disease"), Emerson's table is based on cases with no population numbers to establish proportions. The book and the table give a confusing picture, made meaningful by constant references to the poliovirus.

The table provides little data that can be used to understand the epidemiology of polio (the patterns of contagion). The table just reinforces the orthodox view that all persons are vulnerable to the poliovirus: the native born, the immigrants, the lowly, the dirty, and especially the hygienic middle class, who being clean, were said to have paradoxically lost their natural immunity.

However, Orientals showed very few cases. Yet the Chinese were ridiculed in the NY Times when they offered non-invasive medical advice (dietary). This effectively blocked consideration of diet and/or poison causation. Negroes were described as immune to polio because they also had virtually no polio cases. The word "immune" made it difficult for clinicians to consider diet or poison causation.

Neither Orientals nor Negroes shared the European tradition of cow's milk. Milk, which being a fatty substance, is probably the most efficient carrier of toxic chemicals to infants (as in "infantile paralysis", ie., polio). Evidence for this thesis can be found in the following study:

The table becomes much more informative when population data is included. Now, polio incidence (cases per 100,000 population) can be calculated. Here, the table is sorted on incidence, giving us a realistic picture of New York City in 1916:

		Population	Cases	Incidence
NATIVE (BORN IN USA)		3,857,388	3,825	99.2
FOREIGN BORN WHITES		1,455,083	5,228	359.3
	Atlantic Islands	297	7	2,355.6
	Turkey in Asia	1,382	10	723.6
	Norway	14,400	101	701.4
	Austria	78,952	479	606.7
	Italy	284,724	1,348	473.4
	Russia	276,402	1,287	465.6
	Ireland	148,713	644	433.0
	West Indies	4,978	20	401.8
	Finland	6,530	26	398.1
	Germany	154,407	479	310.2
	Other Asia	679	2	294.6
	Rumania	20,951	59	281.6
	Sweden	27,693	75	270.8
	England	70,665	181	256.1
	Hungary	40,932	103	251.6
	All Other	1,276	3	235.0
	Scotland	19,665	46	233.9
	Lithuania	6,330	14	221.2
	Syria	4,244	9	212.0
	Spain	6,553	12	183.1
	Switzerland	7,862	14	178.1
	Poland	129,270	224	173.3
	Portugal	733	1	136.4
	France	13,083	17	129.9
	Greece	13,640	17	124.6
	Czechoslovakia	19,975	18	90.1
	Netherlands	7,193	5	69.5
	Armenia	2,924	2	68.4
	Mexico	1,513	1	66.1
	Yugoslavia	4,464	2	44.8
	Other Canada	50,353	20	39.7
	Belgium	2,768	1	36.1
	C&S America	3,880	1	25.8
	Wales	3,532	0	0.0
	Denmark	7,428	0	0.0
	Luxembourg	295	0	0.0
	Alsace-Lorraine	3,723	0	0.0
	Bulgaria	321	0	0.0
	Turkey in Europe	1,071	0	0.0
	Albania	217	0	0.0
	Other Europe	289	0	0.0
	Asia Minor	554	0	0.0
	Palestine	8,126	0	0.0
	French Canada	945	0	0.0
	Australia	710	0	0.0

It is difficult to make sense of this table without dietary information on each nationality group. And since polio was legally defined as an infectious disease, and required to be treated and reported as an infectious disease, dietary data was rarely reported.

However, of great significance, is that the incidence of foreign born vs native born was approximately 4 to 1.

This blatantly contradicts Naomi Rogers' theme, the mainstream propaganda which states repeatedly that a) all are vulnerable to the predatory poliovirus, b) there is no pattern of contagion and c) the educated population which has accepted modern hygienic habits are actually more susceptible to polio due to lost immunity.

Why were the foreign-born at such a higher risk? According to the poison theory, there are many answers:

1	Immigrants were out of their usual environment.
	Immigrants were accustomed neither to the pollution nor microbial environments of New York City. Like any immigrant or tourist in a polluted, gastro-enteritis can be expected, especially in New York, 1916, which was one of the world's most polluted and environmentally unregulated cities. Polio's early symptoms are defined as a form of gastro-enteritis (diarrheal disease) and the major polio symptoms are vomiting, diarrhea, and fever, just like a flu. "Flu" is described on modern-day chemical bottles as a sign of use with improper ventilation. Gastro-enteritis and polio share the same disease symptoms. Not only is there a clinical similarity between diarrheal disease and polio, there is an epidemiological similarity. Notice in the following graph (1915-1916) that the polio epidemic appears to be an extension of the regular summer epidemic of diarrheal disease. Meningitis, often seen clinically as the early stages of polio or as a predecessor to impending polio, also appears epidemiological to be an indicator of the impending polio epidemic.



2	Immigrants, in need of help, were most likely to use the services of the "Infant’s Milk Stations".
	The first paralyzed victims of this epidemic were infants, found in their distraught mother's arms, who were waiting desperately at the Infant's Milk Stations for help. These free-milk stations were a way of signing parents into the City's health industry and worked interactively with the department of health. The name of these stations (first established in 1912, along with pasteurization) was instantly changed to "Baby Health Stations" at the beginning of the polio epidemic of 1916. Emerson's speech, at the end of 1916, cleared cow milk of suspicion, as he declared that it had passed extensive bacterial tests. However, the NYC Health department had no method for detecting industrial organochlorine neurotoxins in milk, and apparently expressed no interest. Still, in the same speech, Emerson castigated industry generally for widespread chemical related deaths due to industrial carelessness. He contrasted American industry with European industry and noted that America was far behind Europe regarding chemical safety in the workplace.

3	Organochlorines in Milk
	In the contemporary era, pharmaceutical companies have continued to use chloroform as a preservative antibiotic for their products, such as cough syrup for children, though this has been banned in developing countries. Chloroform is poisonous, and it can oxidize into phosgene gas, an even more deadly poison, which was used during WWI as state of the art war gas.

	There are several reasons to believe that milk may have been poisoned in 1916.

		In 1915, just before WWI began, organochlorine production skyrocketed, with production at Niagara Falls. Owners of silos were encouraged to use organochlorine gases and fumes to sterilize their silos. This has become standard practice, and with a huge organochlorine plant in New York State, these chemicals may have been very inexpensive and their use encouraged as part of a promotional campaign for these chemicals. A monopoly system of milk distribution was waging a "milk war" upon dairy farmers. Nestles was one such corporation. Nestles, in the modern era, is a dominant distributor of noodles in China, incidentally. Pasteurization had become legal standard in NYC, 1912. This was a major step towards regulation and centralization of milk distribution. Pasteurization, during the "milk war" may have been been insured against the embarrassment (to distributors) of bacterial growth, by the addition of chloroform as an antibiotic. Optionally, chloroform may have been used to disinfect centralized dairy processing equipment, to ensure the success of pasteurization. This suspicion is not unfounded. A modern study of organochlorines in dairy products finds chloroform to be highest in dairy products, yet almost entirely missing from other foodstuffs. Chloroform in cheese was listed by weight, at 33ug/kg, while chloroform in beef fat, listed at 3ug/kg. See Casaret and Doull's, 6th Ed., 2001, page 1074. Additionally, other dairy related poisons may exist concealed. I've heard that the dairy industry is exempt for many labeling requirements. Deja vu regarding the politics of bovine growth hormone.

5	Immigrants had little political power to focus upon pollution.
	Pollutants are more likely in the immigrant areas of NYC, as in the present era, regarding incineration and dumping, in the Bronx (borough of NYC). Underground plumbing would not be fixed and services would not be rendered. Complaints would not registered, and carelessness would be covered with carelessness -- such as in Harlem and the Bronx today, where pollution and asthma, interpreted as an environmental contamination/dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system, are epidemic.

6	Breast Milk and Carbon Tetrachloride, 1908, Massachusets
	Though diet was not an official concern in 1916, in New York City, there is a parallel in 1908, when a dietary study was conducted as part of an extensive study of a polio epidemic in Massachusetts. The Health Inspector found no polio victims among those infants that were exclusively fed from the breast. The epidemic was far in the rural areas of Massachusetts, but cases were associated with families who were living next to and downstream from rivers, streams, and mill ponds fed from the river, by which was located three cotton mills situated in a industrial town of Colrain. The 1908, poliovirus was not firmly established as an official hypothesis, though 1908 is the date of the first study that claims to have found a poliovirus. The study of the Massachusetts epidemic was pre-defined to be a study of an infectious disease, however, the inspector's conclusion was that polio was not contagious, and that the epidemic and study were optimal for such a determination. In attempting to determine the cause of the disease, food and/or water was suspected to be the carrier for the infectious agent. Questions were asked of the population about when the victim showed symptoms, who the victim had met, what they ate, and where they lived. When I mapped out the study results, I found that the Colrain had an incidence rate that was triple of the next town downstream. In 1907, unprecedented tonnage of carbon tetrachloride production began in the northeast U.S. This organochlorine was used as a fumigant, solvent, degreaser, cotton seed oil extraction solvent, and insecticide by unregulated manufacturers who, in that era, apparently knew little of carbon tetrachloride's ability to cause CNS disease in humans. Encyclopedia Britannica (1906) states that solvent extraction was then standard procedure for obtaining cotton seed oil. Another poison route, in addition to solvent effluent in the river, is the cottonseed protein and hulls, which remained after the solvent extraction process was completed. This matter was fed to dairy cows. Most of the polio cases occurred within six towns that were all linked by three interconnecting rivers which weaved in snake-like convolutions among the hills. Using an automobile map, I marked the polio cases, and being unable to determine the flow direction of the rivers, I decided from the polio cases alone which way the rivers were flowing with the assumption that it would flow from highest cases to lowest cases. The more populated areas downstream even had fewer cases. Several days later, I obtained a topographical map and found that I had discerned the various directions of water flow correctly. The town with the highest cases was the town with the three cotton mills, Colrain. These were the Shattuck Cotton Mills. Coincidences: Shattuck is a name of relatives of the the former chairman of the EPA, Christine Todd Whitman, former governor of New Jersey. The Shattuck super-fund site, near Denver, is one of the worst polluted in the US. The huge mining towns throughout the U.S. which experienced epidemics in 1912, were supplied by a Shattuck distribution company. Here's another coincidence: The laboratory that handled all wildlife toxicology for New York State during the so-called West Nile virus epidemics is located on Shattuck road. But that is just poetry. It deserves further study.