The Medical-Pharmaceutical Killing Machine

 INTRODUCTION

The turbulent events surrounding the 2020 declaration of the COVID-19 “pandemic” have attracted attention as never before to the potential for medicine to be both lethal and malevolent.1 This is a lesson that Americans could have learned decades ago. Notably, when 40 million Americans were maneuvered into accepting a neurologically risky vaccine during and subsequent to the 1976 swine flu fiasco,2 it prefigured the recurrent fact that epidemics and pandemics (real or engineered)3 and the amped-up fear that accompanies them offer a convenient pretext for staging unfriendly medical assaults on credulous populations.

The spooky, “supercharged” biopharmaceutical technologies4 ushered onto the world stage under cover of COVID—and the scale of their implementation—suggest that the latest crop of medical-pharmaceutical interventions may represent a new level of medical skulduggery. At the same time, it cannot be denied that even before 2020, medical history was replete with examples of dangerous interventions that poisoned, injured, or killed. In the view of writer Jon Rappoport—who has outlined many examples of medicine’s “grotesque” track record—the “medical cartel destroying millions of lives is nothing new.”5At our current juncture, there is much we can learn from medical history—and from 20th- and 21st-century doctors and writers who have sounded the alarm about medicine’s treacherous waters. Ivan Illich, a theologian, philosopher, sociologist, and historian who was one of the most well-known critics of medicine in the last century, popularized the term iatrogenesis (meaning “doctor-caused”) in the 1970s in seminal writings that called attention to “injury done to patients by ineffective, toxic, and unsafe treatments.”6 Illich famously proclaimed that the medical  establishment had become “a major threat to health,” adding, “The disabling impact of professional control over medicine has reached the proportions of an epidemic.”

In more recent times, political economist Dr. Toby Rogers has put forth the term iatrogenocide—“the mass killing of a population by scientific and medical professionals”—as an even more apt descriptor of what medicine seems to be up to.7 Distressingly, Rogers notes,8 the pharmaceutical poisoning of the population—which often begins in utero9—has become a major engine of the U.S. economy, creating perverse and entrenched incentives to propagate medical harm. He somberly observes, “We appear rich (in terms of dollars and cents) but, because we are pursuing such a catastrophic economic model, we are actually desperately poor (in terms of health and happiness) as a nation.”10In April 2023, father and patients’ rights advocate Scott Schara filed a landmark lawsuit against a Wisconsin hospital, alleging purposeful medical battery by doctors and nurses against his 19-year-old daughter Grace, resulting in her wrongful death.11 Commenting on the Schara case and many others like it, Andrew Lohse of the communications firm Overton & Associates suggested in a September 2023 press release that “medical murder” is eclipsing heart disease and cancer and “becoming America’s #1 cause of death”; differentiating “medical murder” from “medical malpractice,” and with the Schara case in mind, Lohse characterizes it as “a degree of negligence and recklessness,” which he says “can only be identified as intentional.”12Even so, four years into the world events launched by COVID, many people still have a hard time believing that governments and corporations “would really do something this diabolical”; Rogers’ answer is, “of course they would. Genociders gonna genocide” [italics in original].13 Rappoport shares a similar perspective, asserting that “doctors, public health agencies, other government leaders, and mainstream journalists are fully aware” that death is often caused by “medicine.”14 Sadly, citizens who do not understand or accept the reality of medicine’s perils will find it impossible to duck the threats.

The goal of this book is to help readers contextualize current events and more clearly understand the lengthy history of “medical weapons of mass destruction,”15 so they can protect themselves and their family and friends.

 Chapter One, “From Quackery to Criminality,” tells the story of Founding Father Dr. Benjamin Rush and posits a historical continuity between some of Rush’s practices and beliefs and those of his modern-day medical brethren.

Chapter Two, “The Medical Cassandras,” reviews the cautionary reportage of nine articulate medical skeptics—Ivan Illich, Dr. Robert Mendelsohn, Dr. Barbara Starfield, Gary Null, Dr. Peter Breggin, Jon Rappoport, Celia Farber, Sasha Latypova, and Katherine Watt. Writing in the 20th and 21st centuries, each in their own way has tried to warn the public about medicine’s life-threatening underbelly. Their warnings, taken together, create a powerful portrait of widespread harm.

Chapter Three, “Twenty-First Century Vaccine Technologies,” highlights the mRNA vaccine technology inaugurated with COVID. Among other troubling features, it has become apparent that this new mechanism for iatrogenesis inflicts novel forms of toxicity, not all of which are understood or readily identifiable.

Chapter Four, “Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia,” discusses the global proliferation of policies and propaganda promoting assisted suicide and euthanasia, including for babies, children, individuals with autism, and those with mental illness. According to the critiques outlined in the chapter, some of the policymakers espousing a rhetoric of compassion actually may have a less benevolent agenda.

Chapter Five, “Deadly Medicine: How Do They Get Away With It?” dives deeper into some of the mechanisms that medicine and pharma use to facilitate and perpetuate medical harm.

Those who entertain the possibility that some of the harm caused by medicine may be intentional understandably wonder why. Chapter Six, “Why Do They Do It? Money, Prestige, and Control,” considers potential answers to that question.

Finally, Chapter Seven, “Lifesaving Facts for You and Those You Love,” explains why it is so important to acknowledge the reality of the medical-pharmaceutical killing machine, whether the damage results from carelessness or a plan. Only then will it be possible to avoid the threats posed by the current medical model and take steps toward building a different model that prioritizes life and genuine health.

***

New Threats on the Horizon

The need for citizen vigilance—and noncompliance—has not abated, with the despots who ran amok during the purported pandemic showing that they have no plans to let up. In New York State (one of tyranny’s consistent trendsetters), the governor’s actions indicate that she and her dictatorial cronies have even worse plans up their sleeve than county-wide weather lockdowns—and intend to continue using manufactured public health threats as a wedge to implement their dystopian policies. Bobbie Anne Cox has had ample opportunity to size up the New York leadership’s authoritarian designs, having spearheaded a lawsuit (Borrello v. Hochul), initially successful, against a chilling quarantine camp regulation promulgated by the governor and New York’s Department of Health (DOH). After Cox achieved a trial court victory against Hochul in July 2022, five governor-appointed judges from the state’s Appellate Division (Fourth Judicial Department) overturned the decision in November 2023, dismissing the lawsuit and allowing the governor to proceed with the quarantine regulation. Cox, who is now appealing, explains what is at stake:

[T]he language in the reg makes it crystal clear that the DOH can pull you from your home (and your life) and, with the force of police, hold you anywhere they deem appropriate, including “other residential or temporary housing” … [T]he reg says they don’t have to prove you are sick, they can hold you for however long they want, and there is no way for you to get out of lock up or lock down (unless you get a lawyer and sue them)!!!19

Another disturbing indicator of medicine’s intensified weaponization is the Biden administration’s creation, in March 2022, of a new biomedical research agency, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), “modeled after the US military’s ‘high-risk, high-reward’ … DARPA.”20 The ARPA-H director reports to the HHS Secretary, but the agency emphasizes that it is “distinct and independent” from the NIH, operating as a funding agency “with its own culture, policies, and processes.”21 In its second year (fiscal year 2023), ARPA-H’s budget had already increased by 50%.22In an investigative report published just months before the agency’s formal launch, journalist Whitney Webb highlighted a number of causes for concern, including ARPA-H’s “direct connection” to DARPA, its manifest interest in building a “total surveillance dragnet,” and its merged national-security-plus-health-security focus, which could allow “any decision or mandate promulgated as a public health measure” to be “justified as necessary for ‘national security.’”23 To accomplish biosurveillance goals, Webb suggested that the agency is likely to rely on DARPA “mainstays”—“biotechnology, supercomputing, big data, and artificial intelligence”—including promoting “wearables” to monitor and collect “pre-diagnostic medical data” and “behavioral indicators.” Elaborating on the critical role played by Big Tech, Webb added:

“[The creation of ARPA-H] combines well with the coordinated push of Silicon Valley companies into the field of health care, specifically … companies that double as contractors to US intelligence and/or the military (e.g., Microsoft, Google, and Amazon). During the COVID-19 crisis, this trend toward Silicon Valley dominance of the health-care sector has accelerated considerably due to a top-down push toward digitalization with telemedicine, remote monitoring, and the like.

Tying together New York’s push for quarantine regulations and ARPA-H’s biosurveillance thrust, Webb’s warning that “the era of digital dictatorships is nearly here” does not seem far-fetched. As she commented:

Making mandatory wearables the new normal … for monitoring health in general would institutionalize quarantining people who have no symptoms of an illness but only an opaque algorithm’s determination that vital signs indicate ‘abnormal’ activity.

In Webb’s view, ARPA-H at its worst could turn into a “technocratic ‘pre-crime’ organization with the potential to criminalize both mental and physical illness as well as ‘wrongthink.’”

Refocusing on Health, Not Medicine

Aided and abetted by Big Medicine and Big Pharma (along with Big Food, Big Ag, and others), a multipronged “Great Poisoning” (the term used by Fitts) has been underway for far too long, as attested to by the oft-cited (and now probably understated) statistic derived from the 2007 National Survey of Child Health that at least 54% of American children have one or more chronic health problems.24 However, with greater awareness and understanding of the risks—and of the pain and suffering that iatrogenesis causes, both directly and indirectly—there is no reason why an informed public cannot say “no more” and reverse direction. The fact demonstrated by Dr. Paul Thomas’s practice data that unvaccinated children interface with the health care system far less often than vaccinated children is a potent clue that parents, in particular, have the power to reshape future generations’ trajectory and protect them from a cradle-to-grave downward spiral.

Clearly, factors beyond vaccination (such as nutrition and other toxic exposures) also influence health and play into the frequency of doctor visits, but as Drs. Lyons-Weiler and Thomas point out:

Lifestyle differences between the vaccinated and unvaccinated groups … cannot explain the large difference in outcomes, and if they do, then it would be objective to conclude that everyone should adopt the lifestyle followed by the unvaccinated if they want healthier children. That lifestyle choice includes, for many families, avoiding some or all vaccines, and thus, the lifestyle choice concern is inextricably linked to vaccine exposure [bold added].25

Learning about iatrogenic dangers and how to avoid them is a vital step toward ensuring the radiant health that should be every child’s birthright. Redirecting time and dollars away from the “health care” system and toward health-supporting lifestyle choices can make a big difference. This includes eating real foods that are nutrient-dense; eliminating or minimizing exposure to glyphosate and other pesticides; drinking water free of fluoride, heavy metals, and other toxins; spending time in nature; being physically active; reducing phone and screen time; and creating the conditions for regenerative sleep (such as turning off Wi-Fi at night, keeping smartphones out of bedrooms, or returning to hard-wired Internet solutions).

These types of lifestyle choices are equally important for those who have already experienced iatrogenic harm. In addition, there are numerous non-pharmaceutical pathways that hold out the possibility of either facilitating recovery (partial or full) or at least improving quality of life. Many people have experienced remarkable healing—even from the most serious of chronic conditions—by stepping off the medical cartel’s treadmill and exploring options such as:

 •Healing diets (for example, the GAPS, ketogenic, or carnivore diets)26,27,28

•Detoxification and cleansing

•Homeopathy

•Herbal medicine

•Non-Western approaches such as Traditional Chinese Medicine or Ayurveda

•The Wim Hof Method (involving breath work and cold exposure)29

•Coherence healing techniques such as those taught by Dr. Joe Dispenza30

•And many more

On a broader level, all of us must find ways to reckon with the growing technocratic-totalitarian threat, by protecting and strengthening the freedom to make and implement paradigm-changing life choices. This requires the qualities that make pushback possible—commitment, courage, and a willingness to think and act outside the box. In a 2016 Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) article titled “A totalitarian state can only rule a desperately poor society,” the author suggests that free and productive societies need people who not only have ingenuity and creativity but are willing to “go[] against the grain or traditionally accepted view of things” and “stand up to the existing order.”31

It would be easy to become discouraged by the encroachment of authoritarian measures such as quarantine camps and digital biosurveillance, but, as Sasha Latypova and Catherine Austin Fitts both emphasize, it is important not to “succumb to [a] mentality of doom and victimhood,” which only plays into the cabal’s hands. Latypova offers this advice:

Do not get into [a] “we are doomed” mindset. We are not doomed. We have solutions, we can work with what we have and build resilient support networks. Most importantly, as [we] shake the sleepers out of their stupor, the cabal loses more and more of its willing foot soldiers. Do not comply.32

 Fitts describes the process of moving forward as “turtling forth,” stating that “Forward action is a ‘force multiplier.’”33 Notwithstanding the potential for iatrogenocide and (to use Katherine Watt’s term) the “medical mercenaries” who might commit it, Fitts reminds us that “There is a wonderful world full of good people and good things,” and “anything is possible when you leave hopelessness behind.”

Introduction

1Elizabeth Lee Vliet, MD, “Lethal Connections: ‘Complete Lives’ Morphs into ‘COVID Protocol’ in America’s Hospitals,” Association of American Physicians & Surgeons, Oct. 26, 2021, https://aapsonline.org/lethal-connections-complete-lives-morphs-into-covid-protocol-in-americas-hospitals.

2Robert F. Kennedy Jr., “‘60 Minutes’ – Swine Flu 1976 Vaccine Warning,” Children’s Health Defense, Apr. 1, 2020, https://childrenshealthdefense.org/video/60-minutes-swine-flu-1976-vaccine-warning.

3Jon Rappoport, “Dispatches from the War: Epidemics Are Staged on Television,” Jon Rappoport’s Blog, Apr. 12, 2021, https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/2021/04/12/dispatches-from-the-war-epidemics-are-staged-on-television.

4John Cumbers, “The COVID-19 Pandemic Has Dramatically Changed How Biopharma Does Business,” Forbes, May 19, 2021, https://www.forbes.com/sites/johncumbers/2021/05/19/the-covid-19-pandemic-has-dramatically-changed-how-biopharma-does-business.

5Jon Rappoport, “COVID: The Medical Cartel Destroying Millions of Lives Is Nothing New,” Jon Rappoport’s Blog, Sep. 10, 2021, https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/2021/09/10/covid-the-medical-cartel-destroying-millions-of-lives-is-nothing-new.

6Pearce Wright, “Ivan Illich,” The Lancet 361, no. 9352 (2003): 185, doi: 10.1016/S0140–6736(03)12233–7.

7Toby Rogers, “Who Is ‘They’: Mapping the Institutions and Actors Involved in the Global Iatrogenocide,” uTobian, Aug. 31, 2022, https://tobyrogers.substack.com/p/who-is-they.

8Toby Rogers, “How Then Shall We Think about the Economy?” uTobian, Jun. 30, 2023, https://tobyrogers.substack.com/p/how-then-shall-we-think-about-the.

9Children’s Health Defense Team, “Pfizer Works to Fast-Track More Vaccines for Pregnant Moms, Despite Mounting Evidence Rushed COVID Shots Harmed Babies,” The Defender, Nov. 9, 2022, https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/pfizer-fast-track-vaccines-pregnant-moms.

10Toby Rogers, “How Then Shall We Think about the Economy?” uTobian, Jun. 30, 2023, https://tobyrogers.substack.com/p/how-then-shall-we-think-about-the.

11Mike Capuzzo, “Landmark Lawsuit Alleging Medical Battery Killed 19-Year-Old with Down Syndrome Will Go to Trial,” The Defender, Nov. 20, 2023, https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/grace-schara-lawsuit-medical-battery-trial.

12Andrew Lohse, “Press Release: ‘Medical Murder’ Outpaces Heart Disease and Cancer, Becoming America’s #1 Cause of Death,” DailyClout, Sep. 22, 2023, https://dailyclout.io/press-release-medical-murder-outpaces-heart-disease-and-cancer-becoming-americas-1-cause-of-death.

13Toby Rogers, “The Iatrogenocide Accelerates,” uTobian, Oct. 18, 2022, https://tobyrogers.substack.com/p/the-iatrogenocide-accelerates.

14Jon Rappoport, “COVID: The Medical Cartel Destroying Millions of Lives Is Nothing New,” Jon Rappoport’s Blog, Sep. 10, 2021, https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/2021/09/10/covid-the-medical-cartel-destroying-millions-of-lives-is-nothing-new.

15Ibid.

**

19Attorney Bobbie Anne Cox, “Quarantine Lawsuit Summary,” Attorney Bobbie Anne Cox … Knowledge Is Power! Dec. 17, 2023, https://attorneycox.substack.com/p/quarantine-lawsuit-summary.

20Whitney Webb, “This Biden Proposal Could Make the US a ‘Digital Dictatorship,’” Unlimited Hangout, May 5, 2021, https://unlimitedhangout.com/2021/05/investigative-reports/this-biden-proposal-could-make-the-us-a-digital-dictatorship.

21“Frequently Asked Questions,” ARPA-H, accessed Jul. 5, 2024, https://arpa-h.gov/about/faqs.

22Joyce Frieden, “New Federal Health Agency Sets Bold Goals,” Medpage Today, last updated Apr. 1, 2024, https://www.medpagetoday.com/publichealthpolicy/washington-watch/108401.

23Whitney Webb, “This Biden Proposal Could Make the US a ‘Digital Dictatorship,’” Unlimited Hangout, May 5, 2021, https://unlimitedhangout.com/2021/05/investigative-reports/this-biden-proposal-could-make-the-us-a-digital-dictatorship.

24Christina D. Bethell et al., “A National and State Profile of Leading Health Problems and Health Care Quality for US Children: Key Insurance Disparities and Across-State Variations,” Academic Pediatrics 11, no. 3S (2011): S22-S33, doi: 10.1016/j.acap.2010.08.011.

25James Lyons-Weiler and Paul Thomas, “Relative Incidence of Office Visits and Cumulative Rates of Billed Diagnoses along the Axis of Vaccination [Retracted],” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 17, no. 22 (2020): 8674, doi: 10.3390/ijerph17228674.

26Hilda Labrada Gore, “The GAPS Diet: A Powerful Healing Protocol with Natasha Campbell-McBride,” Oct. 31, 2022, in Wise Traditions Podcast, 42:47, https://www.westonaprice.org/podcast/the-gaps-diet-a-powerful-healing-protocol.

27Eugene Reznik, “A Review of a Ketogenic Diet in the Treatment of Autism Spectrum Disorder,” Loma Linda University, Jun. 2024, https://scholarsrepository.llu.edu/etd/1713.

28Celia Farber, “Meat Cures Depression and ‘Mental Illness,’” The Truth Barrier, Jan. 27, 2024, https://celiafarber.substack.com/p/meat-cures-depression-and-mental.

29“What Is the Wim Hof Method?” WimHofMethod, accessed Jul. 5, 2024, https://www.wimhofmethod.com.

30“Coherence Healing,” Unlimited Dr. Joe Dispenza, accessed Jul. 5, 2024, https://drjoedispenza.com/coherence-healing.

31Ryan Miller, “A Totalitarian State Can Only Rule a Desperately Poor Society,” Foundation for Economic Education, Sep. 5, 2016, https://fee.org/articles/a-totalitarian-state-can-only-rule-a-desperately-poor-society.

32Sasha Latypova, “Catherine Austin Fitts Explains the Cabal’s Land and Real Estate Stealing Tactics,” Due Diligence and Art, Aug. 30, 2023, https://sashalatypova.substack.com/p/catherine-austin-fitts-explains-the.

33Catherine Austin Fitts, “Turtle Forth,” Solari Report, Nov. 23, 2014, https://home.solari.com/turtle-forth.

Children’s Health Defense

"Cause Unknown": The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in 2021 & 2022 (Children's Health Defence)

 NOTE TO THE READER

You might be inspired to seek out a fact checking site to test or refute some information in this book that’s hard to believe. Fair enough. Before you blindly rely upon corporate fact checkers, however, use the QR code to confirm that the man who started Reuters Fact Check is also on the Board of Pfizer – while simultaneously serving as Chairman of the Reuters Foundation that oversees their fact checking operation. Conflicted and circular relationships like this are common among powerful people; often, such relationships are the way a person became powerful in the first place.

Also confirm that Pharma companies sponsor the overwhelming majority of TV news programs.

Also confirm that the government-funded British Broadcasting Corporation created The Trusted News Initiative (TNI), a coalition of Reuters, The Washington Post, the Canadian and Australian Broadcasting Corporations, the European Broadcasting Union, Associated Press, Google, YouTube, Facebook/Meta, Microsoft and Twitter, all “pledged to work together totackle harmful misinformation about Covid-19 vaccines.”

TNI member companies censor what they label as misinformation, while promoting and elevating information from the CDC, the WHO and Big Pharma.

QR codes throughout these pages will take you to original source material so that you can confirm each report is real, each statistic well-sourced, each story all too true. Perhaps by the end of this book, you will come to see that much of the information reaching you day to day is carefully crafted by the media. The word media means “in the middle of and between.” Indeed, the news media stands in the middleof and between you and people in power. Only when you know this can you decide for yourself what’s promotion, what’s propaganda, what’s marketing, and what is truth.

FOREWORD

by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Among the world’s towering financial titans is BlackRock, a company with a bigger economy than every country on Earth except the U.S. and China. They manage $10 trillion in assets. In 2002, BlackRock recruited the brilliant Wall Street careerist Edward Dowd, and soon promoted him to serve as Managing Director. Turns out BlackRock made a very good bet on Ed Dowd: The Growth Fund he managed started at $2 billion; by the time he left BlackRock it was $14 billion.

His work with BlackRock required a keen ability to understand markets, pick stocks, analyze statistics, and identify trends.

In 2021, Dowd found himself withdrawing from Wall Street to study an entirely new kind of trend: the expanding and tragic epidemic of sudden deaths among healthy young people.

Every country dutifully maintains statistics on what’s called All-Cause Mortality – deaths from any cause whatsoever. Whether accidents, disease, suicide, homicide, natural disaster or unexplained deaths, there is a long-established and fairly consistent baseline of All-Cause Mortality, year over year. Anything above that baseline is considered Excess Death. In 2021, it was Ed Dowd –not the public health officials that citizens rely upon– but Dowd who brought international attention to the fact that healthy working-age Americans were dying, and dying suddenly, at an alarming rate not seen before. These excess deaths were not anticipated by insurance actuaries, and weren’t attributed to COVID.

Dowd framed the issue in a way I can’t forget:

“From February 2021 to March 2022, millennials experienced the equivalent of a Vietnam war, with more than 60,000 excess deaths. The Vietnam war took 12 years to kill the same number of healthy young people we’ve just seen die in 12 months.”

One after another, reports from life insurance companies confirmed what Dowd was discovering, and in early 2022, he convened a group of insurance industry executives to explore it further. Later, he recruited expert analysts from around the world, and drawing on data from various official sources in many countries, he and his growing team committed to study the topic from every available vantage point.

In this unusual book, Ed Dowd proves an undeniable and urgent reality, laid out with facts that can be confirmed by any reader, point by point, page by page. He has helped us all understand something that many powerful people want to deny – and would get away with denying were it not for his skills and integrity.

Anyone who appreciates truth and accuracy owes Ed Dowd their gratitude. He certainly has mine.

 RFK, Jr.

FIRST, IS IT TRUE?

Before 2021, none of us had ever seen anything like what you have just seen, and certainly never to this extent. If you were surprised there were so many confirmed news reports about healthy young athletes collapsing and dying in mid-play, please note that what you just saw is only a small sampling. There are many hundreds more of these tragedies confirmed in this book’s Compendium. And the Compendium itself is only a small sampling. And every one of the hundreds of people whose deaths are memorialized at the end of this book died before completing 45 years.

At this point, I ask that only one thing be fully accepted as fact: That these deaths are real, are happening. And don’t focus yet on why.

People and institutions hoping to suppress the information in this book will likely launch a criticism along the lines that looking at these deaths somehow disrespects the families. The exact opposite is true: Ignoring these deaths is the greatest disrespect we could ever show. These young people and their families and communities deserve to have someone care about why they died – particularly when official agencies have closed their eyes (and perhaps their hearts) to such cares.

Every single health official in America knows the obvious: Healthy young people don’t just stop living for no reason. The deaths in this book that happened at professional sports events are doubly unusual because those athletes died despite the immediate on-site presence of emergency medical responders who are trained and equipped to resuscitate people. But since 2021, so many could not be resuscitated; they died on the spot, arrived at the hospital already dead. That is both tragic and highly unusual.

Those seeking to discount the facts in this book might say there have always been cases of professional athletes dying from cardiac arrest during competition. And that’s true. But has it ever been this often? Or so many victims this young?

The most cited study on the topic of sudden death in young athletes was done in 2006 at the Division of Pediatric Cardiology, University Hospital of Lausanne, Switzerland. Experts there looked at sudden cardiac death in athletes under 35-years old, between the years 1966 and 2004.

After a systematic review of the literature, the Lausanne Study determined there had been 1101 such cases – over a period of 38 years. That’s an average of about 29 per year. These days, we’d be grateful to see even a single month with only 29 such events. In fact, since June 2021, there hasn’t been even one month with fewer than 29 such deaths; there were 90 reported in December 2021 alone, and about the same the month after that.

See Appendix One on Page 175 for more than 50 scholarly writings about sudden athlete deaths; none show anything approaching the number publicly reported since 2021.

If you believe athlete deaths have always happened at this rate and that nothing unusual is underway, conduct your own Google search for deaths like these in 2019, ’18, ’17, or any other past years. Try every combination of every search term you can think of (e.g., athlete sudden death, died midgame, young athlete collapsed and died, collapsed on field, suddenly died), and see if you can find even a fraction of what’s occurred since 2021.

Healthy teenagers dying in their sleep – an event like that was beyond rare, which is why most of us lived our whole lives never hearing about such things. Until 2021.

Imagine that two healthy teenage boys are found dead in their beds a few days apart. In both cases, emergency responders knew immediately that resuscitation would be futile. Just days before they died, both had received the second dose of Pfizer’s COVID vaccine. An autopsy in Connecticut, and another in Michigan confirmed the official cause of death for both boys: Vaccine-induced myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle, swelling of the heart).

When official agencies in two states conclude that COVID vaccines can kill healthy teenagers, wouldn’t that seem to be important national news? But it was barely reported anywhere. Using the QR code, you can confirm right now that this suppressed story is true.

When a sudden death occurs in front of spectators, it’s newsworthy, and will be reported at least in local media outlets. Similarly, when a healthy young famous person dies unexpectedly, it’s likely to be reported by the news media. In the past, such news stories about a young person would keenly focus on answering the glaring question: Why did this person die? But the current protocol in national news is to ignore such details outright. In the rare instances that these deaths are even reported beyond local news outlets, the reports contain phrases most readers have subconsciously come to expect and accept:

Cause of death unknown, died of natural causes, no cause of death has been given, died after a brief illness, officials are still investigating cause of death

No follow-up news stories, no questions from reporters, no curiosity.

But I am curious. I’ve made a career of being curious about trends, early indicators, statistics, demographics, metrics. That’s what I do: draw useful patterns from as many sources of reliable information and data as I can get.

Essentially, my career on Wall Street was to make money for our clients by making the best predictions. Wall Street is mostly comprised of smart, hardworking men and women competing to create impressive returns for their clients. Like any of us, people on Wall Street want proof of concept before acting, and certainly before committing money to some idea. There is a Wall Street saying: “Be early, be right and be loud!” A common problem is that most people are hesitant to go against the grain of consensus; they prefer to ride trends everyone can see. But the big money in stock picking is made by identifying changes in trends before everyone sees them.

Investing huge amounts of money incentivizes a person to be correct, to discern the difference between mere claims and real possibilities. That required me to become a successful ambassador between two worlds: perception and reality.

On Wall Street those who can figure out reality, those who can see the near future before the herd’s perception changes – those people stand to make a lot of money. My brain is wired in this fashion, and I’m applying the same modality to the strange present moment in which public health officials are no longer curious about what causes unexpected death.

In addition to the young athletes I saw dying in 2021, I began to hear stories from friends whose loved ones had died suddenly. (Oddly, I hadn’t heard such stories in 2020 when COVID was raging.) Before we look at the obvious change that occurred in 2021, I want to honor the healthy young people who died in their sleep, and whose deaths official agencies worked hard to ignore.

As you turn the following pages, ask yourself how often this happened while you were growing up. Reality is more persuasive than all the public health officials, Pharma executives and Pharma-sponsored talking heads on the cable news. We’ll get into the statistical sciences in a moment, but likely, you’ll have already realized on your own that something unusual and terrible is happening.

I really believe that is why God gave us two arms—one for the flu shot and the other one for the COVID shot.

— White House COVID czar Jha

DIED UNEXPECTEDLY IN THEIR SLEEP...

***

By April of 2021 I could see and begin to test the most compelling thesis about what was causing the shocking spike in sudden deaths of healthy young people. Trained to observe shifts in trends, it was clear to me that one big change could not be ignored: mass administration of new pharmaceutical products, experimental products using novel technology with only a 28-day clinical trial testing period. Under Operation Warp Speed, these products were quickly deemed “safe and effective” by the FDA. By April 2021, about 50% of eligible Americans had been injected with the new products.

There are simple facts that can be assessed and analyzed. For example, the number of Americans who took the vaccine products in 2021 can be laid alongside an increase in sudden deaths.

In public health, if evidence indicates a connection between a new Pharma product and increased death, our government should STOP promoting and administering the product.

Instead, we saw history’s biggest advertising and propaganda campaign, including the use of mandate and intimidation to force people to take the new products.

I had been here many times before in my stock picking career. The Dotcom bubble had fanatics who proclaimed it a “new paradigm.” I thought they were crazy and parlayed my contrary bet into substantial success. Five years later, the battle cry was “home prices never go down!” and again my teammates and I managed to steer our fund through that fraud, gaining tremendous market share as a result.

In April of 2021 we were all met with a new battle cry: “Safe & Effective!”

But I saw the trend of sudden death where none had been before.

VACCINE MANDATES & ALL-CAUSE MORTALITY

In Spring and Summer of 2021, we all watched President Biden famously declare that we were experiencing “a pandemic of the unvaccinated.” The CDC, Anthony Fauci’s NIH, and the medical establishment were touting the COVID vaccines as 100% effective against getting or spreading the virus. Though we all hoped for a successful vaccine, these claims were proven false. We all now know that COVID vaccine products do not stop infection, do not stop disease, and most important from a public policy point of view, do not stop transmission.

Simple logic dictates that if you are vaccinated you shouldn’t fear an unvaccinated person. But there was a hysteria pushed by our government that led to mandates for the general public, following the already draconian mandates forced upon hospital workers and first responders in early summer 2021.

Soon, people would need proof of vaccination to use restaurants, gyms, concerts, sporting events, attend college, keep a job, etc. Remember, this was for a virus that had a survival rate of 99.8% and mostly affected old people who were already sick with one or more fatal comorbidities. Though the survival rate isn’t widely reported even today, it was already known right near the start of the pandemic: Most people had a very low risk of death from COVID. Way back in March of 2020, the facts from Italy showed that nearly 100% of deaths attributed to COVID were in people already ill with more than one fatal comorbidity.

If my thesis about the risks of the new vaccine products was right, then All-Cause Mortality would explode when mandates were implemented.

I also formed the professional opinion that these excess deaths would soon show up in insurance company and funeral home results. Insurance companies would incur abnormal losses and funeral home companies would experience growth beyond their expectations.

Through Summer 2021, corporations began their vaccine mandates; Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, two of the most revered investment banks on Wall Street, led the way, announcing vaccine mandates in August 2021. Most of corporate America followed this lead. Then in September, President Biden signed an executive order mandating COVID vaccination for all companies with over 100 employees. The fear campaign by the CDC, NIH and the Biden administration was aided by a complicit news media that’s long been captured by Big Pharma.

The vaccination rate, particularly among working people, rose extremely fast in a short amount of time. I would soon confirm that being employed in 2021 was actually detrimental to your health.

By the fall-winter of 2021 the threatened mandates were implemented by businesses all over America. We all saw the mainstream media demonize the unvaccinated, the effect of which was to tear families and friends apart as many who took the vaccine refused to mingle with the “infectious” unvaccinated. The country was encouraged to forget the traditional understanding of the word vaccine: an intervention that would prevent nearly everyone from getting the infection from an unvaccinated person. Since this vaccine didn’t stop infection or transmission, the old definition of vaccine was becoming less applicable by the day.

As the news reported an alarming number of what they euphemistically called “breakthrough cases,” it soon became so obvious that the CDC decided to quietly change the definition of vaccine. On September 1, 2021, the definition was changed from inoculants that “produce immunity to a specific disease” to “a preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases.”

The definition change turned these new COVID products into therapeutics, not vaccines.

Note: Throughout this book, the word vaccine is used for ease of reading – not because these COVID products are vaccines according to any traditional definition.

The CDC, NIH and even President Biden himself told everyone that if you take the vaccine you are protected from COVID and cannot spread COVID. This is not a little lie; it is one to keep in mind as you view the All-Cause Mortality data in this book.

Unfortunately, perception was woefully far from reality. The mainstream media didn’t bother to mention the definition change, continued to spout “safe and effective,” and continued to demonize the unvaccinated.

Ed Dowd

 

Portrait of a Learned Lady

A Mountainous Me - Refreshment and Instruction - Some benighted Beings - The Aspirations of Mr. Nathan - Mr. Nathan's Belief in Providence - A Propensity of strong-minded Ladies - Asses and Amaranths - Miss Fuller and Mr. Ward - The Man of Mind – A natural male feeling

A FOGGY EVENING IN THE MONTH OF October, 1846, had we peered through a window into the dining-room of a certain house in Chelsea, which was filled always with a shaggy Highland-cattle-like odour of homespun materials and by a Scotch mist of tobacco smoke, we might have seen a successful dinner-party in full blast. The host was Thomas Carlyle, the guest of honour an American lady of thirty-six, Miss Margaret Fuller, the author of Woman in the Nineteenth Century and the first editor of The Dial. 

This chaste, passionate, and high-principled woman, at once splendid and ridiculous, was the direct outcome of the movement towards the Emancipation of Women, a movement in which learned, trousered and vivacious ladies like George Sand made presents of themselves with the same frequency, cheapness and indiscrimination as that with which other ladies present Christmas cards. This caused them to be collected with great eagerness by sex-snobs, who, unlike all other snobs, or collectors, prefer the ubiquitous to the rare. 

Miss Fuller's principles, but not her behaviour, were derived from ladies such as these, and her friend Mr. Emerson tells us that Margaret 'Was always a most earnest, devoted champion of the Emancipation of Women, from their past and present condition of inferiority, to an independence on men. She demanded for them the fullest recognition of Social and Political Equality with the rougher sex; the freest access to all stations, professions, employments, which are open to men. To this demand I heartily acceded. It seemed to me however that her clear perceptions of abstract right were often overborne in practice by the influence of education and habit; that while she demanded absolute equality for women, she exacted a deference and courtesy from men to women, as women, which was entirely inconsistent with that requirement. 

'So long as a lady shall deem herself in need of some gentleman's arm to conduct her properly out of a dining-room or ballroom, so long as she shall consider it dangerous or unbecoming to walk half a mile alone by night, I cannot see how the Woman's Rights theory is ever to be more than a logically defensible abstraction ... Whenever she (Margaret) said or did anything implying the usual demands of woman on the courtesy and protection of manhood, I was apt, before complying, to look her in the face and exclaim with marked emphasis - quoting from her Woman in the Nineteenth Century - "Let them be Sea-Captain if they will."' However, according to Mr. Emerson's letter introducing her to Mr. Carlyle, she was 'a wise, sincere and accomplished, and one of the most entertaining of women, one of the noblest of women', although her appearance, according to the same gentleman's memoirs of her published after her death, 'had nothing prepossessing. Her extreme plainness,' he continued, 'a trick of incessantly opening and shutting her eyelids, the nasal tone of her voice, all repelled. It is to be said that Margaret made a disagreeable first impression on most persons, including those who afterwards became her best friends, to such an extent that they did not wish to remain in the same room with her. This was partly the effect of her manners, which expressed an overweening sense of power and slight esteem of others.' 

Mr. Emerson, however, admired Miss Fuller's 'severity of truth', for 'I have known her' he wrote, 'mow down the crop of evil, like the angel of retribution itself, and could not sufficiently admire her courage. My friends told me of a verdict, pronounced upon Mr. ____ at Paris, which they said was perfectly tremendous. They themselves sat breathless; Mr. ____ was struck dumb; his eyes fixed on her with wonder and amazement, yet gazing too with an attention which seemed like fascination. When she had done he still looked to see if she was to say more, and when he found she had really finished, he arose, took his hat, said faintly "I thank you," and ]eft the room.' Miss Fuller was in no doubt as to her own mental attainments and Mr. Emerson tells us that 'she would let slip, with all the innocence imaginable, some phrase betraying the presence of a rather mountainous ME, in a way to surprise those who knew her great sense'. 

Mr. Emerson was however grateful to her for he, owing to his years of arduous mental toil, had almost lost the 'capacity to laugh', and Mrs. Emerson, deciding that he must make a new and thorough study of this useful accomplishment under the careful tutorship of Margaret Fuller, had invited that lady for a fortnight's visit, and had insisted that the two sages should take a daily walk together, with the result that the lessons were, after a while, crowned with comparative success. I can imagine the happy chatter, the gay badinage about metempsychosis and Goethe, Locke, English metaphysics, Racine, Korner, Truth, Liberty for Woman, Carlyle and Liberty for Man, the Christian religion, Plato, Socrates, Bigelow's Elements, Jacob's Letters to Fichte, which constituted those Lessons in Laughter. I can imagine too the spell of ordinariness which came over the Emerson household during these brief respites from Wisdom. 

At first Mr. Emerson did not find the lessons easy, for he tells us that he 'was, at that time, an eager scholar of ethics and had tasted the sweets of solitude and stoicism, and I found something profane in the hours of amusing gossip into which she drew me'. Hollow sounds, as from an owl in a metaphysical holly-bush, an owl imprisoned in the mausoleum of Goethe, were heard floating over the woodlands. Then the sounds grew lighter, took on a more shrill and batlike note. In the end, however, though slowly and painfully, the accomplishment to which I have referred was restored to Mr. Emerson through the tutelage of Margaret, and now he had passed his teacher on to his friend Carlyle, in the hope perhaps that he also might derive some benefit of the same kind. 

Mr. Carlyle however would not allow himself to receive any instruction of any kind, and Miss Fuller tells us that 'it is the usual misfortune of such marked men, happily not one invariable or inevitable, that they cannot allow other minds room to breathe, and show themselves in their atmosphere, and thus miss the refreshment and instruction which the greatest never cease to need from the experience of the humblest. Carlyle allows no one a chance, but bears down all opposition, not only by his wit, and onset of words, resistless as so many bayonets, but by actual physical superiority, raising his voice, and rushing on his opponent with a torrent of sound. This is not in the least from unwillingness to allow freedom to others. On the contrary, no man would more enjoy a manly resistance to his thought.' Still, Mr. Carlyle would not allow Miss Fuller to speak, and Miss Fuller was used to talking uninterrupted and to interrupting others. 'The worst of hearing Carlyle,' she assured her correspondent, 'is that you cannot interrupt him. I understand the habit of haranguing has increased very much upon him, so that you are a perfect prisoner when he has once got hold of you. To interrupt him is a physical impossibility. If you get a chance to remonstrate for a moment, he raises his voice and bears you down. True, he does you no injustice, and, with his admirable penetration sees the disclaimer in your mind, so that you are not morally delinquent; but it is not pleasant to be unable to utter it.' 

Another guest at this dinner-party, was 'a witty French, flippant sort of man, author of a History of Philosophy, and now writing a Life of Goethe, a task for which he must be as unfit as irreligion and sparkling shallowness can make him. But he told stories admirably, and was allowed sometimes to interrupt Carlyle for a little.' This irreligious sparkling shallowness caused the witty flippant sort of man, whose name was George Henry Lewes, to enter into a menage with that monument of lightness George Eliot. 

The inability to interrupt seems to have been a great problem in literary circles, in the year 1846. For Miss Martineau, immediately before Miss Fuller's meeting with Wordsworth, which took place a month or so before her inability to interrupt Carlyle, warned her that 'He does all the talking, and never knows the name of the person he is addressing. He talks mostly about his poems and he is pretty sure to take the visitor to see the terrace where he has composed so many'. But then Miss Martineau did not entirely approve of her neighbours. She could, and did, give Margaret other and equally important information about the author of the Ode on the Intimations of Immortality. In the winter he wore a long cloak, a Scotch bonnet and great goggles. Usually a score of children ran along after him, coaxing him to cut switches out of the hedge for them. A curious combination of economy and generosity he was. If you dropped in to tea you were likely not to have enough cream to put into it, and yet Wordsworth gave away all the milk the household did not want to cottagers perfectly well able to buy their own. If you dropped in for any other meal, you were greeted with 'You are very well welcome to have a cup of tea with us, but if you want any meat you must pay for it.' 

Others of Miss Martineau's neighbours were hardly respectable, but like a comfortable Christian woman Miss Martineau said no more about them than would destroy their reputation for respectability and enhance her own. Take the Coleridges, for example. The poet's son, Hartley, had died of drink. De Quincey was not only on the verge of starvation, but, according to his virtuous neighbour, was in such a state that 'when he lived at Keswick he drank five or six wineglasses of laudanum a night. Coleridge was to blame for that of course, for De Quincey ran across him shortly after he came down from Oxford, and Coleridge was then drinking his tumblerful a day.'

After these revelations, we cannot for a moment doubt that Miss Martineau, with her striking virtues, was a more valuable inhabitant of the world than the authors of the Ode on the Intimations of Immortality, the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, and the Confessions of an Opium Eater. 

Margaret Fuller however was not as critical of these benighted beings as was Miss Martineau, and she was glad to be in Europe, because her life in Boston must remind her of the imaginary being, clothed in actual flesh, whom she had lost. 

Two years before Margaret Fuller's journey to Europe she had fallen passionately in love with a young gentleman named James Nathan, who came from Hamburg. Mr. Nathan was younger than Miss Fuller, was pale, had long dark hair, played the guitar, spent his days in the City, and talked about the Soul. He was consistently and profitably misunderstood as we shall see. 'His was no plebeian mind,' Miss Bell informs us in her book on Margaret Fuller. 'Not for him the utilitarian life, where leisure was considered a waste of time and graceful indolence the pastime of fools and women. He felt a little out of place in the world of lower Broadway.' 

The work-shy and superior Mr. Nathan spent a good deal of time in being melancholy with the aid of Margaret, and between them developed one of those innocently incestuous brother-and-sister relationships which are always so grateful and convenient to the gentleman, so shattering to the nerves and dignity of the lady. 

At first the nature of Mr. Nathan's behaviour had not allowed Margaret to guess that she was his sister. Do gentlemen, she wondered, when the nature of the relationship had been made abundantly clear, pour blackberry blossoms into the laps of their sisters? She fancied not. Blackberry blossoms, though they are frail, seem to hold in them some promise of fruition, however cold, belated and hard. However, Mr. Nathan proved to her that she was wrong; for after some time he discovered that she had no money, and this fact made their relationship clearer than ever. They had, he said, a spiritual affinity. He proposed that it should be recognized, that their relationship came from within, although I imagine that this high spiritual life was interspersed, even then, by interludes of a distressing tenderness. 

At last, owing partly to overwork, partly to the wrack and worry and general wear and tear of this inhibited incest, Miss Fuller's face began to show increased signs of her age, and these signs were noted by Mr. Nathan with distress and a profound distaste for the misunderstanding which had caused them. He meanwhile had been giving a good deal of time to the contemplation of himself, his prospects, his outlook, etc ... and the result was that, in Miss Fuller's eyes, his face was sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, though a prejudiced observer might have said that he was suffering from an enlarged liver. His curls, too, were less luxuriant than formerly. But these signs of mental pain only made the woman who loved him move more closely to him, with a deeper, more foolish, phoenix-like love. 

The disillusioned Mr. Nathan began to pick quarrels with Miss Fuller, but she replied only: 'You shall upbraid me to the stars, and I feel sure that you will not find me incompetent.' This irritated Mr. Nathan so much that he found more and more faults in her. 

At last he wrote and told her that he was about to leave America and return to Europe, and this drove Margaret to despair, for she did not know what this might mean, or if he would ever return. Then, as she read his long and extremely noble letter, at last, at the very end of that letter, she found the heart which had inspired it. Mr. Nathan needed money because he wished to explore the East, and be the first to navigate the Dead Sea. Also, he wanted to go to Jerusalem. Margaret, he felt, might ask her rich and influential friends for some money which would make these aspirations possible. He would be glad, too, if she would take charge of his Newfoundland pup Josey, and the irresistible guitar. 

The money was, of course, forthcoming; Margaret saw to that; and for some time Mr. Nathan was too busy packing and making arrangements for the explorations to pay her a visit. But at last, just a week before he sailed he found time to come and see her, bringing Josey and the guitar, and explaining that he would carry her letters with him wherever he went. 

When he had gone, Margaret, in her loneliness and sadness, wrote: 'I have lost my dear companion, the first I ever had who could feel every better side of life and beauty as exquisitely as myself.' 

Other sides of life and beauty, however, were occupying the thoughts of Mr. Nathan, and, although Margaret wrote often, two months passed before a letter reached her in return. But then how noble was the letter, and how long! 'Let me lie down and die,' exclaimed Mr. Nathan, 'rather than my presence abet falsehood.' It was not till the end of that long letter, that the unpractical and unworldly Mr. Nathan enquired if his correspondent would secure for him a letter of introduction from Mr. George Bancroft, the Minister of Marine, and place Mr. Nathan's articles on travel under the editorship of Mr. Greeley. 

The months passed and Mr Nathan's letters grew fewer and fewer: her heart knew that the tone of those rare letters had changed. Perhaps, she might have broken the bond that held her, but although Mr. Nathan felt himself as free as air, it would have injured his high ideals to see any signs of such a frailty on the part of woman, whose legendary fidelity is her birthright, bestowed upon her by heaven. What an inspiration is this fidelity to Man, supporting as it does his belief in human nature on those many occasions when he is weighed down by the disillusionment brought about by the contemplation of his own lack of fidelity. Besides, any shadow cast on Mr. Nathan's belief in Woman would have been particularly tragic at this moment, since - although Margaret did not know this - he was about to marry another and a younger woman. Margaret wrote to him, 'You will love me as much, as long, and as carefully as you can, will you not?' 

The months dragged on, and it was only a fortnight before Margaret sailed for Europe that she received his reply to this letter. He had arrived in Hamburg, where he was the centre of attention, the guest of honour at dinner-parties and receptions ... but his funds were exhausted. Where could he get a book published? Would Margaret see to it that Mr. Greeley 'published this? ... Then comes this sublime and characteristic touch, showing all Mr. Nathan's childlike and beautiful gift for casting other people's bread upon the waters: 'As for Josey' (his Newfoundland pup), 'if he is too much trouble and if Mr. March cannot keep him for me and you know of no other person that will, just have him sold at auction, or run loose away, or what he may do, a kind Providence will have a care of him'. When Margaret was in Edinburgh, she received another letter from this childlike believer. She too might run loose away, or do what she might do, and a kind Providence would have a care of her, for Mr. Nathan was soon to be married to the younger lady. 

But Mr. Nathan would not entrust the letters, that the celebrated older lady had written him, to the care of Providence. They might, he thought, prove valuable yet. In answer to her request that he would return these pledges of her affection, he wrote, 'My loving regard is and was too sincere and earnest and holy as to change with any new ties or external events ... And to permit me to part with things so dear, so suddenly. Let me entreat you to let the spiritual offspring of our friendship remain in the home they were born to and intended for, until on our return to New York we will talk the matter over more fully and fairly. In the meantime, let me assure you, they enjoy the sacredness and privacy of this uninterrupted and uninterfered with from any foreign alliance or relationship, and that at our meeting there I shall do nothing but what is right, manly and honourable.' Anxious to add one further incitement to madness, he proclaimed that he felt 'a deep admiration for your great, superior well-stored mind, an equally true regard for the integrity, profundity, and holiness of your character and for the many womanly virtues and sentiments of your capacious heart and true love for the purity of your soul, from which noble source I have drawn many deep inspirations'. 

It may be that the thought of these letters written to the unworldly Mr. Nathan, gnawed into Miss Fuller's mind as she sat, listening to the thunder of Carlyle's talk, and being allowed, once an hour or so, to speak, 'enough to free my lungs and change my position, so that I did not get tired'. Or perhaps she thought of the difference between her repressed childhood and youth, and the freedom that had come to her by way of her friendship with such people as the Emersons, and Horace Greeley and his wife. She was in many ways a remarkable woman, and we find ourselves agreeing with Emerson's verdict that, although 'Margaret often loses herself in sentimentalism, here was a head so creative of new colours, of wonderful gleams, so iridescent that it piqued curiosity and stimulated thought and communicated mental activity to all who approached her; though her perceptions were not to be compared to her fancy, and she made numerous mistakes. Her integrity was perfect, and she was led and followed by love, and was really bent on truth, but was too indulgent to the meteors of her fancy.' 

She lived, indeed, a life full of noble ideals, backfisch nonsense and moonshine, silly cloying over-emotionalized friendships and repressed loves, (friendship being often disguised as love, and love as friendship), extreme mental and moral courage, and magnificent loyalty to her ideals, friends, and loves. 

Miss Fuller's life was one mass of symbolism; even the magnificent and tragic shipwreck with which her life, together with those of her young Italian husband and her baby boy ended, was symbolic. It is impossible not to feel an embarrassed sympathy, and a kind of affection for her, since the whole record of her life leaves us with the impression of a certain nobility and uprightness, blurred over by an overheated nervous sensibility masquerading as imagination. She had a certain non-productive intellect, and considerable rectitude, but these qualities were balanced, to some degree, by her almost incomparable silliness. As in the case of nearly all remarkable women, opinions were strongly divided about her, and one hostile biographer exclaimed that her writing was 'a striking illustration of the propensity of all strong-minded ladies to Monster Nothings'. Miss Fuller took an untiring interest in everything and everybody, including herself, and wrote that 'mine is a large, rich, but unclarified nature. My history presents much superficial temporary tragedy. The woman in me kneels and weeps in tender rapture, the man in me rushes forth, but only to be baffled.' 

Alas, this was only too true, and when Miss Fuller enquired of herself and of others: 'Who may understand 'me?' the answer was 'None'. 

This unconscious candidate for the attentions of the yet unborn Professor Sigmund Freud was according to her biographer Miss Margaret Bell, 'hungry for soul demonstrations of love ... so hungry that she pressed the flowers passionately to her lips, and to her breast, and tried to imagine that they gave her all she needed'. 

Her childhood and early girlhood were not devoid of incident or excitement, for, among other remarkable phenomena, she had been brought face to face with 'an old man in a cocked hat carrying a circular canopy over his head. This was Dr. Popkin, introducing the first umbrella to Cambridge. It was not long till the tax-collector had one, then Professor Hedge was seen carrying one back and forth from lectures.' In spite, however, of these excitements, Miss Fuller longed for experiences of a more romantic spiritual order, in which all symbols were to be mixed together into a rather heavy pudding. For instance, she told her admirers that 'when I first met with the name of Leila, I knew it to be mine. I knew that it meant night - night which brings out truths'. She found, too, that there was much to be said for the symbolism of precious stones, and she became a firm believer in talismans and omens. It appears that she herself was a stone of the masculine gender, a living carbuncle - for carbuncles were divided into two sexes. The female casts out light, the male has light within itself. Mine is the male. Accordingly, when Miss Fuller wrote a letter to a much valued friend, she wore a male carbuncle upon her finger, but when she wrote to a slighter acquaintance, the stone worn would be an onyx or an amethyst, according to the degrees of friendship which prevailed. 

This bunkum may, or may not, have been the result of a schoolgirl friendship with a nauseatingly silly English woman. 'I was reading Guy Mannering,' Miss Fuller tells us, 'and my eyes were wet and dim with tears drawn forth by the loss of little Harry Bertram, when an English lady of supreme beauty, who was on a brief visit to that part of America, observing me, approached and accosted me. She did not question me, but fixed on me looks of beautiful love. She did not speak many words; her mere presence was to me a gate of Paradise. I laid my head against her shoulder and wept, dimly feeling that I must lose her and all who spake to me of the same things - that the cold waves would rush over me. She waited till my tears were spent, then, rising, took from a box a bunch of golden amaranths. They were very fragrant. "They came to me", she said, "from Madeira". The departure of the lady threw me into a deep melancholy, from which I was with difficulty aroused. I kept the amaranths during seventeen years. Madeira, for long, long afterwards, was pictured in my imagination as an Island of the Blest. And when ships sailed past the coast, their white wings gleaming in the sunlight, I fancied they might be bound for happy, fortunate Madeira.' 

The young men were, at first, less attracted to Miss Fuller's friendship than were women. It is true that one young man, Mr. Henry Hedge, would and did talk about philosophy with her, whilst others listened with a strained expression to her monologues on the subject of Greek mythology, precious stones, Maria Edgeworth, Goethe, and Madame de Stael. But it was a young lady named Anna Barker who was the recipient of confidences such as this: 'I sometimes see myself in a large lull, it is the age of feudalism; a charming company is assembled, and a minstrel is playing on a harp. Torches flicker and now and then one hears the clank of armour, as the sentries at the doorways change their places ... The night wears on; servants bring refreshments, there is a flash of golden goblets and the sound of gold falling at the feet of the minstrel.' 

From the preceding passages, and from Miss Fuller's unfortunate love-passages with Mr. Nathan and a previous friend, Mr. Samuel Ward, we can see that European culture, the romance of the Middle Ages, and the Rights of Women, as inculcated by such teachers as Mary Wollstonecraft and the trousered and volatile Madame George Sand, had worked equal havoc with her life. It was, I imagine, as a result of the teaching of these ladies, that she contracted the unfortunate daily habit of sending bouquets of flowers to Mr. Samuel Ward. As a not unnatural result of this habit Miss Fuller was rewarded by the sound of scampering feet, disappearing into the far distance. 

When Miss Fuller had waited for several months for some sign from Mr. Ward, she wrote to him the following letter: 'You do not wish to be with me. Why try to hide it from me, from yourself? You are not interested in any of my interests; my friends, my pursuits are not yours ... the sympathetic contemplation of the beautiful in nature, in art, is over for us - that for which I loved you first and which made that love a shrine at which I could rest upon my weary pilgrimage. You come home to go away again, and make a call upon me in the parlour ... You write me to say you could not write before. My heart deceives me widely if this be love.' 

Mr. Ward replied, as I imagine, with a letter which agreed with these sentiments, for Margaret, in reply, wrote this letter, inspired by her innate nobility of soul and of heart, which, when that soul and that heart were profoundly moved, could not be smeared over or spoiled by the sentimentality which was the only cause of any foolishness in her: 

'My dearest Samuel, 

'Although I do not feel able at present to return a full answer to your letter, I will not do myself the injustice of preserving entire silence. Its sincerity of tone is all I asked. As I told you, I should never make any claim upon the heart of any person on the score of past intercourse ... but, on the minds of those who have known me, I have always a claim. My own entire sincerity in every passage of life gives me a claim to expect that I shall never be led by unmeaning phrases or attentions. 

'For the rest, believe me, I understand all perfectly, and though I might grieve that you should shut me from you in your highest hour and find yourself unable to meet me on the very ground where you had taught me to expect it, I would not complain that the past had bound either of us at the present. 

'I had thought that in ceasing to be intimates, we might cease to be friends. I think so no longer. My attachment was never so deep as now; it is quite unstained by pride or passion; it is sufficiently disinterested for me to be sure of it. Time, distance, different pursuits, may hide you from me, yet will I never forget to be your friend, or to visit your life "with a daily benediction. 

'Do not bid yourself remember me, but should an hour come by and by when you have any need of me, you will find me in my place and End me faithful to you.' 

But now, unshadowed by Doctor Popkin's and the tax-collector's umbrellas, unshadowed, perhaps, by memories of the strange behaviour of Mr. Ward and Mr. Nathan, this large-souled, noble, but overdramatic lady sat listening to the torrents of Mr. Carlyle's conversation. 

At their first meeting, Mr. Carlyle let his American guest down gently, and she, writing of the encounter to Mr. Emerson, had said: 'I admired his Scotch, his way of singing his great full sentences, so that each one was the stanza of a narrative ballad. That evening, he talked of the present state of things in England, giving light, witty sketches of the men of the day, fanatics and others, and some sweet homely stories he told of things he had known of the Scotch peasantry. Of you he spoke with hearty kindness; and he told, with beautiful feeling, a story of some poor farmer, or artisan, in the country, who on Sundays lays aside the cant and care of the dirty English world, and sits reading the Essays, and looking upon the sea.' 

How typical of the Victorian age was their conversation. Indeed, it seems to smell of the time, and in feeling, the story of 'the poor farmer, or artisan,' resembles closely Mr. Ruskin's rhapsody over a picture by Mr. Landseer - a shepherd, a rhapsody that was disinterred for us by Miss Margaret Barton and Sir Osbert Sitwell, and enshrined in their joint Victorians. 'Take', said Mr. Ruskin, 'one of the most perfect poems or pictures' (I use the words as synonymous) 'which modern times have seen, "The Old Shepherd's Chief Mourner". Here the exquisite execution of the glossy and crisp hair of the dog, the bright, sharp touching of the green bough beside it, the clear painting of the wood of the coffin, and the folds of the blanket, are language - language clear and expressive in the highest degree. But the close pressure of the dog's breast against the wood, the convulsive clinging of the paws, which have dragged the blanket off the trestle, the total powerlessness of the head laid, close and motionless, upon its folds, the fixed and tearful fall of the eye in its utter hopelessness, the rigidity of repose which marks that there has been no motion nor change in the trance of agony since the last blow was struck on the coffin-lid, the quietness and gloom of the chamber, the spectacles marking the place where the Bible was last closed, indicating how lonely has been the life - how unwatched the departure of him who is now laid solitary in his sleep - these are all thoughts - thoughts by which the picture is separated at once from the hundreds of equal merit, as far as mere painting goes, by which it ranks as a work of high art, and stamps its author, not as the neat imitator of the texture of the skin, but as the Man of Mind.' 

A Landseer-like smell of homespun, Highland cattle, shaggy lonely shepherds, the liberty of man, and mountain peaks, must have pervaded the conversation, and we may be sure that Margaret enjoyed it. But there was sparkle and fun too, of the order that was countenanced in that age, and Margaret could not forbear giving her former pupil in the difficult accomplishment of laughter a slight rebuke in that connection: 'Carlyle is worth a thousand of you, for that he is not ashamed to laugh when he is amused, but goes on in a cordial human fashion.' 

In the few years that remained to Margaret Fuller, years that were to bring her the friendship of Mazzini, a young Italian husband, Count Ossoli, a baby son, and that strange, dramatic and tremendous shipwreck in which she, her husband, and her baby, lost their lives, Margaret remembered, often, her conversations with Carlyle, how the great man, inveighing against poetry, 'came back to some refrain, as in the French Revolution, of the Sea-Green'. In this instance, it was Petrarch and Laura, the last word pronounced with his ineffable drawl of sarcasm. Although he said this 'over fifty times, I could not help laughing when Laura would come, Carlyle running his chin out, when he spoke it, and his eyes glowing till they looked like the eyes and beak of a bird of prey ...'

On another occasion, Mr. Carlyle spent some hours in rebuking Mazzini and Miss Fuller for their 'rose-water imbecilities'. 

Scholars have, it seems, always despised this quality; but they are notoriously difficult to please; stupidity and flippancy in women, learning in women, all these offences may, at different times, prove equally unpalatable to them, though the last offence is usually the most unforgivable - largely, I imagine, because it is sometimes a little too readily assumed that heaven deems the charms of the mind to be sufficient of an endowment, and therefore bestows no other. In any case I suspect that the feeling cherished by both Mr. Emerson and Mr. Carlyle towards the learned Miss Fuller was very much the same as that natural male feeling expressed by Mr. Fatigay, in my friend Mr. John Collier's His Monkey Wife, when he learns that his pet monkey has taught herself to spell: 'Come, come, Emily, if you are as clever as all that, you must be sold to perform on the Halls.'

ENGLISH ECCENTRICS

By DAME EDITH SITWELL

An Englishman in America’s “Weirdest” Town

For some reason, I had long wanted to visit Portland, Oregon. It has gained a reputation internationally—especially since Antifa took over part of Portland State University during the George Floyd disorder—not only of being the most Woke city in the US, but also one that has acted as a magnet for eccentrics and weirdoes from all over the country. So, naturally, I jumped at the opportunity to fly to Portland to speak at a “based” conference, especially as it included other speakers who were friends of mine, such as Jared Taylor. My four days in the city whose motto is “Keep Portland Weird!” opened my eyes to a stimulating, chaotic anarcho-tyranny, and one that was overwhelmingly white.

The first hint of what was going on came when the student who picked me up from the airport asked me what I fancied for dinner. I fancied Chick Fill-A, a chain which fascinated me because it was apparently run by evangelical Christians, to the extent that it was closed on Sundays. We had to drive to the neighbouring town of Beaverton to find one; it was banned from Portland, it seemed, because it was Christian; Portland proudly being the least Christian city in America. The pretty, blonde, polite teens who served me were, apparently, not consistent with keeping Portland weird.

The next day, I wandered from my hotel, which was close to the university, to the centre of the city. As I got closer to “Voodoo Donuts”—which a lesbian couple on my flight from Iceland had advised me to try out—I began to see tents in the street; something that the Woke city authorities were obviously prepared to tolerate. But this was nothing compared to what happened once I walked into “China Town,” having purchased my “Old Dirty Bastard” donut from an East Asian woman who’d shaved all her hair off and wore a black facemask. The aroma of cannabis mixed with urine started to assault my nostrils as I found myself unable to move for vagrants; a surprising number of them being female. The balmy micro-climate of the west coast being as it is, many of them simply lived in the streets of China Town, with the Chinese long since having moved out.

I lost count, on that sunny early afternoon, of the number of unkempt men simply lying on the pavement asleep. Many vagrants had wheelchairs and trolleys of goods and blankets which they wheeled around. I passed a number of tents with multiple occupants, including dogs. A middle-aged woman talked to herself, a young schizophrenic girl—who presumably thought she had psychic powers—asked “Is your wife a redhead?” and appeared disappointed to discover that she wasn’t. As I ventured closer to the famous Powell’s book shop, an old homeless man with a Bible preached loudly about our damnation, and an elderly lady vagrant, complete with trolley, screamed about how she was being persecuted, to the extent the local “security force” moved her on for “disturbing the peace.” Young, black-clad and very unconvincing transvestites, performatively donning black Covid masks as if it was still 2020, made their way to shops that sold nothing but cannabis and related paraphernalia.

I meandered around the university—which an emeritus professor/fan told me has a shockingly high acceptance rate—to see a fluorescent street mural painted by women dressed in black with “they/them” pronouns, and countless female students with tattoos and unnatural hair colours. Talking to some “Christian” students I found that even they were “non-denominational” in order to be “inclusive.”

A Portland-based follower took me up into the hills; the nice area of the city, from which The Simpsons creator Matt Groening hails; there is a graffito of Bart Simpson in cement in front of Groening’s old school. I assume that Portland once had that wholesome-comic Springfield vibe that you predict from fundamentalist Christian English immigrants to the northern states who then emigrated again to the rugged far West: a sense of religious destiny, intelligence, and creativity. With the collapse of harsh conditions, however, and the rise of Leftism the same social conformity, social anxiety and guilt have created super-Woke Portland and it has sucked in the mentally unwell from far and wide.

Even in the leafy suburbs there were Democrat signs attached to houses, albeit for less Woke Democrats. Portland City Council has only Democrat representatives ranging from traditional Leftists to the borderline insane. The nature spot above this area of large houses afforded a beautiful view of the city, though there were, of course, teenagers dressed in black and smoking weed. They were quite friendly, however. My “British accent” seems to elicit that in Americans. I had never been in a city where there were so many mad people. Naturally, as Portland is mainly white but Woke, all of the many murals on the sides of buildings were of non-whites, including one of a black man carrying Portland on his shoulders. Portland seems to be the Vatican City of the White Guilt sect.

However, the anarchy in Portland goes well beyond tolerating vagrancy. I witnessed a huge queue in front of a place that gives food to the homeless before allowing them, seemingly at their own request, to sleep in the streets. My professor friend showed me a sports and social club. Earlier this year, an anarchist had deliberately driven a car into it as he felt it symbolised traditional power in Portland.

As has been reported in the Daily Mail, as our group ate its brunch, at a Portland restaurant run by a gay man which had the gay-trans flag outside it called “Clarklewis,” Antifa turned up and began filming us; initially two tattooed girls and a weedy man in a facemask, all of them in black. One of the women demanded to know why the restaurant was serving “Nazis,” and started screaming “Nazis.” The restaurant set off its alarm and called the police, with the owner telling them he doesn’t discriminate on religious grounds. The Left were turning on their own; attacking a gay man for the sin of unknowingly serving the opponents of their special form of de facto Fascism.

We left via the back door, being watched by a male Antifa member who’d suffered severe burns to his face. It seems that, somehow, one of our meeting’s programmes had gotten into their hands, possibly having been accidentally left at another restaurant. In other words, Portland is riddled with people who are sympathetic to this violent, terrorist organisation.

A few hours later, the restaurant was surrounded by a mob of about twenty Antifa, windows were smashed, it was forced to close for the evening and to cancel a staff member’s wedding celebration, and a “traumatised” waitress resigned. The hyperbolic headline on the local television news a few hours later was that the restaurant had been “destroyed.” Andy Ngo, who has been seriously assaulted by this group of bitter mutants for revealing their activities, reported on what had taken place.

Beneath the beguilingly “weird” eccentricity of Portland, it is, effectively, run by the mob. However, this is not the mafia that ran Chicago; it is mentally and physically sick people who wear black—expressing, outwardly, how they feel about themselves—and who push for everything degenerate in Portland to be even worse.

Without them, it would be a quirky riverside city of eccentric arty, though Leftist, types. But I suppose, as I explore in my book Borderline Genius/Borderline Insane, optimum mental illness predicts artistic ability and, frequently, the insanity is such that, in the failed artist, it overwhelms rather than leads to talent. Antifa are the side effect of what is interesting about this eccentric little part of the old Wild West.

https://counter-currents.com/author/edward-dutton/

Nuremburg, October 16, 1946: 80 Years of Allied Lynch (In)justice!

 

Vae Vicitis – Revenge, not justice, determined the Nuremberg show trials!

The often-cited arrogance of power, which is characterized not least by judging self-righteously from the standpoint of a presumed higher morality, without adhering to the standards of generally recognized legal principles or applying the same maxims that are supposed to apply to others to oneself, rarely, if ever, manifested in a more perverse form than 80 years ago at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. The victor’s tribunal, which simultaneously served as prosecutor and judge, was not concerned with international law or peace, but solely with destroying the institutions and elites necessary for a state.

Let’s approach the Nuremberg show trial by first recalling Bismarck’s words, which he directed at the media that were posing as public opinion when they demanded the punishment of the French Emperor Napoleon III after the Franco-German War of 1870-1871 (France declared war on Prussia). “The concepts of punishment, reward, and revenge do not belong in politics. Politics must not meddle in the affairs of Nemesis or seek to act as a judge. That is the business of divine providence. Politics is not to avenge what has happened, but to ensure that it does not happen again”, said the Chancellor of victorious Germany. However, the Nuremberg Trials did not become the foundation of an exemplary international legal order for peace; rather, the world suffers from a chronic “peace-dis/UN-order“ after this “super-Versailles.”

Prosecutor and Judge

The Nuremberg Trials lacked the principles applied to modern jurisprudence. The judges lacked impartiality: no judges from neutral states, such as Switzerland or Sweden, sat on the bench; instead, the bench was made up exclusively of representatives of the victorious nations, the warring parties. This party served as prosecutor and judge, wrote the court’s constitution, and set the criminal law norms. On August 8, 1945, the USA, Russia, England, and France signed the London Agreement establishing the tribunal; in London, they also developed the pseudo-legal framework, the so-called London Statute. Moscow criminal lawyer Prof. Traimin did much of the preliminary work and is credited with the so-called complicity theory, under which industrial leaders, scholars, engineers, officials, and soldiers were to be punished collectively. Due to Allied Control Council Law No. 10 of December 20, 1945, twelve more trials against industrialists, doctors, and lawyers took place in Germany. As a result, the axe fell on the entire German elite.

“Nulla poena sine lege”

The legal principle “Nulla poena sine lege” was completely thrown overboard by an unlawful retroactive application of criminal law. The annihilation verdicts of revenge justice were based on ex post facto laws. To punish certain crimes, such as murder, the existing legislation would have sufficed, BUT to defame Germany, new terms were needed as discursive weapons. This was the purpose of that tribunal, which prosecuted offenses that had not yet been recognized as punishable acts under either national law or international law, and which were declared punishable only after they had been committed. The procedural regulations were purpose-oriented, aimed at convicting the defendants. Significantly, the Chicago Tribune wrote on June 10, 1946, that the statute under which the defendants were being tried was Jackson’s personal invention and contrary to international law as defined in the Second Hague Convention. By inventing such a statute, Jackson granted legality to lynch justice.

Military court, a continuation of the war efforts

As a cancellation of the previous, internationally recognized legal opinion, the abolition of the right to appeal ordered by the Allies must also be considered. Similarly, no revision of the judgment ever took place, nor could it, as the London Statute also preemptively prohibited that. The trial procedure followed almost exclusively Anglo-American procedural law, which was qua natura relatively unfamiliar to the German defenders. Moreover, the Allies controlled the vast majority of documents, and the defense usually received access to exculpatory material only very late and often only partially. The interrogations of witnesses were often conducted in ways that one can hardly acknowledge without inner outrage. When Dr Otto Stahmer, Hermann Göring’s chief defense attorney, asked internationally recognized experts in international law to review the statute’s legal foundations, he nearly embarrassed the court, but the court simply prohibited the request. On July 26, 1946, American Chief Justice Robert Jackson even admitted that the Nuremberg Tribunal, as a military court, represented a continuation of the Allied nations’ war efforts.

No equality before the law

Consequently, war crimes committed by the Allies, such as the Soviet massacre at Katyn, which was falsely attributed to the Wehrmacht, the Soviet occupation of Eastern Poland, the unrestricted aerial warfare against a defenseless civilian population ordered by Winston Churchill, the mass expulsion of Germans from the Eastern territories, or the two American atomic bombings, were not prosecuted, and the defense was not even allowed to present them. Article 8 of the court’s statute also stated that a plea of superior orders does not justify excluding punishment; it did not matter that, by comparison, U.S. military regulations of 1940 and the British manual of 1936 did the opposite. So much for equality before the law. The charges of “conspiracy against peace” and “preparation for an aggressive war” turned out to be extremely artificial constructions. The principle of collective compensation was also unknown in international law until then. It is clear that no legally usable definition of “aggressive war” existed before or during the trial. Let’s just think of the Soviet war of aggression against Eastern Poland or the Baltic States. Moreover, what was then subsumed under this charge was later considered the highest fulfillment of duty, with Israel being an example, praised for its meticulous preparation for the Six-Day War. Here, even charges were brought against generals because they had opposed (!) that preparation.

The Jew Lherman alias Gaston Oulman

The court did not even conduct a customary judicial investigation of motives for a verdict, solely to avoid dealing with the question of war guilt. Judge Jackson instead warned U.S. President Truman in a letter dated July 19, 1945, that this trial would cause significant damage if it examined the political causes of the war. On August 8, 1945, Jackson reiterated to President Truman that we should not allow ourselves to be drawn into a negotiation about the causes of the war. Under such conditions, it is not surprising that the purely military surrender was inaccurately interpreted as a capitulation of the state under international law. This contributed to the instrumentalization of the Nuremberg verdicts as a justification for the expulsion and murder of Germans from the Eastern territories. At that time, there was NO independent German media coverage. Reporting focused exclusively on the prosecution’s theses. The IMT’s responsible Allied propaganda officer was the con artist Gaston Oulman, whose real name was Jo Lherman, and who had a criminal record for numerous property crimes, financial crimes, and forgery of his doctoral thesis. This Jew became the main source of information for the German people.

Morgenthau and Hooton Plan

The victor’s show trial court, presuming a higher morality that lacked ethics, was characterized by purpose-driven cynical partiality and arrogant self-righteousness. Only American judge Charles F. Wennerström had the courage to criticize the prosecution’s trial methods, at least in retrospect. On October 16, 1946, ten of the death sentences imposed in the so-called Nuremberg Trials against high-ranking leaders of the German Reich were carried out by hanging in the Nuremberg Palace of Justice. Several executions were not immediately fatal due to an insufficient drop height, causing the condemned to struggle for up to 15 minutes. Senator Robert A. Taft from Ohio stated in a speech in October 1946, among other things: “The death of the eleven condemned men at the gallows is a stain on America that will burden us for a long time.” Blind with hatred, the enforcers of the Morgenthau Plan indulged their Old Testament thirst for revenge. By the way, the American Chief Justice Robert Jackson was formerly an advisor to the aforementioned Morgenthau, from whom the notorious Morgenthau Plan originated. Today’s de-industrialization of Germany and replacement migration seem to be a delayed implementation of the Morgenthau and Hooton Plans.

Sascha Roßmüller is a German freelance journalist and book author (1972) living in Bavaria. Married since 2000. Politically active as a political writer and conference speaker. He is a member of the executive board of the German political party “Die Heimat“ (The Homeland).

https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/author/sascha-a-rossmuller/

Eccentricity

Abstract

Not long after Cavendish died, and probably before, his behavior was associated with eccentricity. In this chapter, his traits, described in Chaps.  3 and 4, are compared with traits that came to be seen as distinctive of the English character in the eighteenth century. They are also compared with traits of individuals who lived in or around Cavendish’s time who were seen as having marked eccentricities. Placed in the society of his day, Cavendish’s odd behaviors are seen as exaggerations of common behaviors rather than as original departures. He may seem stranger to us than he did to his contemporaries, who granted wide latitude to individuality. This chapter views Cavendish as having eccentricities.

In a study of several British scientists, Victoria Carroll shows how they came to be regarded as eccentric. The setting is the early nineteenth century when the sciences were becoming more clearly demarcated, their practitioners more self-consciously professional, and the boundaries between orthodox and unorthodox science more carefully observed. Crossings of boundaries were perceived as eccentric. Carroll’s study succeeds in showing that eccentricity can be a “revealing lens” for understanding social developments of science.1

Cavendish belonged to an earlier stage of science, and his eccentricity arose from a different source, one having to do with character rather than scientific boundaries. Young supposed that Cavendish’s severe habits of study alone spared him from “absolute eccentricity.”2 I take him to mean that outside of science, Cavendish was eccentric. In this chapter, I speak of Cavendish as “eccentric.” Alternatively, I could speak of his “difficult character,” as Wilson does,3 but “eccentric” is acceptable, and it has the advantage of precedent.

If we think of eccentricity as lying on a scale, at one end we find ticks, fanciful beliefs, and odd likes and dislikes. A person who will touch nothing yellow has a minor eccentricity. At the other end of the scale, we find behavior so strange as to cause general wonderment.4 Clifford Pickover, in his book on scientific eccentrics, Strange Brains and Genius, says that Cavendish was the “shyest of all scientists,” whose shyness went “beyond shyness, beyond ordinary social phobia”; this “shabby, eccentric man” was “not entirely human,” “more an alien robot than a member of the human race.”5 If we believe half of what Pickover says, Cavendish was notably eccentric with respect to shyness.

We use the word “eccentricity” loosely to refer to persons who are notably odd in some manner. Before it was used in that sense, it had technical meanings. In geometry it meant a circle that is not concentric with another circle. In astronomy it meant paths of planets not centered on the earth or sun or not circular. It was applied to comets because their paths are not circular, and it is from comets that the figurative use of “eccentric” derived, entering English usage in the late seventeenth century. To the middle of the eighteenth century, it was applied to persons who were bold and innovative. The London Times in 1787 gave it the wider meaning we accept today, “a departure from the general conduct of society.” It was not until the early nineteenth century that “eccentric” was used as a noun applying to a person exhibiting eccentric behaviors.6

Although the word “eccentric” originated in science, in its figurative meaning it has had scant scientific study. To make a start, in 1988 David Weeks and Kate Ward, and again in 1995 Weeks with another co-author Jamie James, published book-length studies of eccentrics as psychological subjects, based on a sample of about 1,000 self-professed British eccentrics. They also studied around 150 eccentrics from the past, persons who were called eccentric or were given a comparable description in their time. Cavendish qualified as one of their historical eccentrics by reason of his social behavior: he was shy and introverted “to a highly eccentric degree,” and his “selective avoidance of people probably amounted to a social phobia.”7

The authors found eccentricity in all ranks of society and in both sexes. Historically, aristocracy and landed gentry dominated the ranks of eccentrics, but that is because the upper class was written about more than other people and because they had more money, required for some kinds of eccentricity. The reason there seemed to be more male than female eccentrics is probably prejudice. The authors recognized that eccentricity lies on a continuum, that it varies over time, place, and social stratum, and that the perception of eccentricity is subjective. Their work was descriptive, not analytic.8

By examining eccentrics from the perspective of more or less non-eccentric persons, the authors constructed a profile of 15 most common characteristics, 5 of which stand out. Of the full 15 characteristics, 8 apply to Cavendish. Of the short list of five, four apply to him: nonconformity, creativity, strongly motivating curiosity, and obsession with one or more hobbyhorses. The one characteristic that does not obviously apply is idealism, a desire to change the world. As a Whig, Cavendish would have supported liberal reforms, and he welcomed changes in the material world through applied science and technology, but there is no sign he wanted to change the social world, in which he had a comfortable place. Of the four traits that do fit, the two that best describe him are curiosity and obsession. Of the range of possible motivations, curiosity is the only one that is primarily intellectual, and when it is combined with obsession we have our man: Cavendish the eccentric investigator, who goes to obsessive labor to satisfy his curiosity, the end result of which is truth, its own reward.9

The common idea of the eccentric Englishman in Cavendish’s time was a highly unusual person “whose faults were on the right side.” Then as now, the harmless misfit was the type, though misanthropy was often present, and eccentrics could be disturbing.10 Beyond that, it is easier to say what the idea was not than what it was, and any generalization has exceptions. Eccentricity was not conscious exhibitionism. It was not libertine; libertines were occasionally included in collections, but for other reasons.11 It was not criminal or sinister, though robbers, swindlers, and murderers were occasionally included.12 It was not revolutionary, though it could be political. It was not religious, though individual clergy could behave eccentrically.13 Of particular relevance to Cavendish, eccentricity was not maladaptive. Richard Kirwan, a colleague of his, is an example. We read in Blagden’s diary in 1795, “Kirwan as eccentric as ever.” Kirwan was a hypochondriac given to marvelous routines to maintain body heat. He had his servant sleep in his room with instructions to wake him every few hours to pour hot tea down his throat.14 Kirwan’s eccentricity did not affect his work: he was competent and productive in several scientific fields. His eccentricity was also benign: at worst, his hot-tea routine interrupted his servant’s sleep, and the servant was paid for the discomfort.

Eccentricities were often comical or absurd, not least because their behavior was unnecessary. Kirwan could have slept through the night with no ill effects. Lest we write off eccentricity as quirkiness and nothing else, we should be aware that it has its champions. During a time of industrial leveling and Victorian conformity, the philosopher John Stuart Mill welcomed eccentricity as an antidote to oppressive popular opinion, regarding it as a measure of “strength of character.” He quantified its benefits: “the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigour, and moral courage it contained.”15 In the next century, Edith Sitwell, author of English Eccentrics, and herself an eccentric, wrote an appreciation of eccentricity that could apply to Cavendish: “the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd.”16 More recently, in the face of conformity of another kind, Weeks and Ward wrote that the existence of eccentricity points to a valued quality of human nature, its allowance for individuality. “In an era when human beings seem typecast by their culture or genes, eccentrics are a refreshing reminder of everyone’s intrinsic uniqueness. By heedlessly flouting norms of behavior that most of us never question, they remind us how much of our liberty we forfeit without thought, and how great our ability is, in fact, to forge our own identities and shape our own lives.”17 John Timbs, in his English Eccentrics and Eccentricities, wrote, “how often do we find eccentricity in the mind of persons of good understanding.” However “outlandish, odd, queer” the eccentric appears, he “may possess claims to our notice which the man who is ever studying the fitness of things would not so readily present.” We do well to keep Timbs’s observation in mind where we consider Cavendish’s eccentricities.18

The English spoke of “character” where we speak of “personality.” Both words imply wholeness, though modern psychology does not identify personality with character alone. Personality is said to express temperament as well as character, the former shaped more by inheritance, the latter by social experience.19

Paul Langford has written about how certain traits came to be seen as distinctive of the English character in the eighteenth century. Foreigners largely agreed with the English on what these traits were. The word Langford uses for them is “Englishness,” which entered the dictionaries only at the end of Cavendish’s life. During his lifetime, the expression “national character” was preferred. Today the idea of national character is unpopular, suggesting behaviors rooted in race and ethnicity, but in the eighteenth century it did not have this forbidding association.20 It is, of course, a stereotype, but useful nonetheless here.

National character implied a degree of conformity, which appeared at odds with English individuality. Priestley said that the English had the reputation of having “least of an uniform national character, on account of their liberty and independence, which enables every man to follow his own humour.”21 The English resolved the seeming contradiction by adopting the idea of “eccentricity,” which by assuming a norm of behavior allowed for individual diversity without threatening social harmony. Eccentricity was “a kind of safety valve for pursuits that might be plausibly tolerated.” In practice, a departure from the norm was tolerated so long as it could be “classified as harmless.”22 Cavendish’s departure from the norm met the test.

Langford organizes his study of national character around six “supposed traits of Englishness”: eccentricity, taciturnity, reserve, candor, decency, and energy. He acknowledges an arbitrariness in his selection; for example, for candor he could as well have used other traits such as honesty, simplicity, sincerity, and directness. Cavendish scores high on all of these traits, if higher on some than others. By making eccentricity an English trait, Cavendish is seen both as a model of an eighteenth-century Englishman and as someone who differs in some striking ways from the average Englishman.

Some traits of the eighteenth-century English national character look eccentric today, and because Cavendish shared them he looks more eccentric to us than he did to his contemporaries. In what follows, we place Cavendish in his social setting. We look to the national character for help in clarifying what was seen as eccentric in his behaviors. For our purposes, we regard the national character as behaviors that were commonly observed in England and which foreigners and the English alike saw as characteristic. In addition, we compare Cavendish’s behaviors with those of Englishmen who lived in or around Cavendish’s time who were seen as eccentric, giving us an idea of the range of eccentric behaviors. We view Cavendish’s eccentric behaviors as departures from an assumed norm, leaving aside the possibility of their arising from a neuropsychological condition.

We know the names of many English eccentrics of the eighteenth century thanks to a genre of popular biography that began about 1800 and is still going strong: collections of biographical sketches, each a group of anecdotes, more or less jumbled together, demonstrating eccentricity of various sorts. The subjects were a catchall of persons who showed odd ideas, habits, or physical traits. They included persons who today are considered eccentric such as misers and recluses, but also giants, hermaphrodites, strong men, and freaks of all kinds. They included both male and female eccentrics, the latter often for masculine traits and irrationality. They often included Irish, Scots, and Welsh as well as English.23 Their criteria for eccentricity were vague, as seen in the advertisement in the revised second edition of Eccentric Biography, Or, Memoirs of Remarkable Characters. Evidently in response to criticism of the first edition, the editor removed characters whose “peculiarities are not sufficiently striking,” replacing them with characters whose “eccentricities render them truly worthy of insertion.” His decisions about removing and adding characters were based on what readers wanted, striking peculiarities. The purpose of his collection of eccentric characters was to entertain and instruct, with care taken to exclude any account that has the “least umbrage to delicacy.” “Singularities of human nature” is as close as he came to defining eccentricities.24 Timbs, in English Eccentrics and Eccentricities, a mid-nineteenth century standard of the genre, began his sketch of Cavendish, “Eccentricity in men of science is not rare,” following which he mentioned Cavendish’s demonstration of the composition of water. Discovery could possibly count as an eccentricity, seeing things that others do not, but discovery is not why Timbs included Cavendish. To portray Cavendish’s eccentricity, he strung together entertaining anecdotes from what he called Wilson’s “clever memoir.”25

Footnotes

1

Victoria Caroll, Science and Eccentricity: Collecting, Writing and Performing Science for Early Nineteenth-Century Audiences (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2008), 164.

2

Young, “Cavendish,” 444.

3

Wilson, Cavendish, 170.

4

We can imagine another scale, with traits associated with absolute conformity at one end and those associated with absolute eccentricity at the other. Such a scale is considered in Weeks and James, Eccentrics, 11.

5

Pickover thinks that obsessive behavior like Cavendish’s is probably a “disorder” as well as an eccentricity, having its origin in abnormal physical characteristics of the brain. He also thinks that eccentricity probably plays a positive role in some great scientists. Clifford A. Pickover, Strange Brains and Genius: The Secret Lives of Eccentric Scientists and Madmen (New York: Quill, 1999), xi, 106 112, 252.

6

Sophie Aymes-Stokes and Laurent Mellet, “Introduction,” In and Out: Eccentricity in Britain, eds. S. Aymes-Stokes and L. Mellet (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012), 5. Caroll, Science and Eccentricity, 12–13. Anon., “Eccentricity (Behavior),” http:// en. wikipedia. org/ wiki/ Eccentricity_ (behavior).

7

Ibid., 107–8. An atypical eccentric in their sample, Cavendish was an introvert who held normal ideas, whereas most of their eccentrics were extroverts who held eccentric ideas.

8

David Weeks and Jamie James, Eccentrics: A Study of Sanity and Strangeness (New York: Villard, 1995), 10–12, 42, 49–50.

9

Ibid., 27–28, 32–33, 181–82. The empirical findings of Weeks’s studies tell us about categories of eccentricity and about the personality traits that accompany them, but his method of selection of eccentric persons fails to identify some kinds of eccentrics. If Cavendish had been alive at the time of his studies, he would not have been included, for he would not have volunteered as a self-defined eccentric to undergo an interview with the researchers.

10

Paul Langford, Englishness Identified: Manners and Character 1650–1850 (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 301–6. Miranda Gill, “Rethinking Eccentricity,” http:// www. cam. ac. uk/ research/ features/ rethinking-eccentricity.

11

Edward Wortley Montague, author, politician, and world traveler, had a wife at home and also “wives of almost every nation.” Anon., Biographical Sketches of Eccentric Characters (n.p., 1832), 121.

12

An example is Jonathan Wild, who headed a gang of thieves, and was hanged at Tyburn. Ibid., 338–44.

13

The Reverend Mr. Trueman of Daventry is included in a collection of eccentrics. He stole from his parishioners when he called on them to offer spiritual comfort. He earned only £400 a year but left £50,000 when he died. Edith Sitwell, English Eccentrics (1933; Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1976), 250–51.

14

14 July 1795, Charles Blagden Diary 3: 65 (back). Pickover, Strange Brains and Genius, 96.

15

John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (London, 1859). Quoted in Carroll, Science and Eccentricity, 11.

16

Edith Sitwell, Taken Care of: The Autobiography of Edith Sitwell (New York: Atheneum, 1965), 145.

17

David Weeks and Kate Ward, Eccentrics, the Scientific Investigation (East Kilbridge, Scotland: Stirling University, 1988); quoted in Pickover, Strange Brains and Genius, 279.

18

Timbs, English Eccentrics 1: iii–iv.

19

Character and temperament have long been distinguished by psychologists: character is what people become intentionally; temperament is their inborn emotional predisposition. For the purposes of psychobiological research, the distinction is put differently, though not incompatibly. Character and temperament each have distinct brain systems, and each has several independent dimensions. Temperament is the “dynamic organization of the psychobiological systems that regulate automatic responses to emotional stimuli,” and it is “moderately heritable and stable throughout life.” Character, by contrast, is “moderately influenced by family environment and only weakly heritable,” and it develops into adulthood. To temperament belong the “automatic associative responses to emotional stimuli that determine habits and moods”; to character belong “self-aware concepts that influence our voluntary intentions and attitudes.” C. Robert Cloninger, “Temperament and Personality,” Current Biology 4 (1994): 266–73, on 266–67.

20

Langford, Englishness, 1–2, 7–8, 26.

21

Ibid., 291. Before Priestley, the philosopher David Hume used almost the same words: because of the “great liberty and independency which every man enjoys,” the English “of any people in the universe, have the least of a national character.” Ibid., 22.

22

Langford, Englishness, 292, 300, 303.

23

Caroll, Science and Eccentricity, 14, 36, 40.

24

Advertisement in Anon., Eccentric Biography, or, Memoirs of Remarkable Characters…, 2d rev. London ed., 1st American ed. (Boston, 1804).

25

Timbs, English Eccentrics 1: 142–46.

TThe Personality of Henry Cavendish - A Great Scientist with Extraordinary Peculiarities

Russell McCormmach