The Meetjesland in the north of East-Flanders, Belgium

How soldiers were treated — or
Scurvy and prejudice 

If soldiers didn't always treat civilians with courtesy and respect, it doesn't follow that they themselves were treated any better by their superiors.  Neglect, disease, ignorance and prejudice took an appalling toll amongst these young men.  And let's not forget this: the handicapped need not apply for the army.  In other words: only the very best cannon fodder please.

In his magnum opus Human Action (third revised edition, Henry Regnery Company, Chicago, 1966) Prof. Dr. Ludwig von Mises, one of the greatest economists who ever lived, gives us a hint: he wrote (on p. 619): "In the Seven Years' War 1,512 British seamen were killed in battle while 133,708 died of disease or were missing. Cf. W.L. Dorn, Competition for Empire 1740-1763 (New York, 1940)"

We quote at some length from G. Edward Griffin's book World Without Cancer published by American Media in 1974.

Between 1600 and 1800 the casualty list of the British Navy alone was over one million sailors. ...  And yet, for hundreds of years, the cure was already known and written in the record.

In the winter of 1535, when the French explorer Jacques Cartier found his ships frozen in the ice off the St. Lauwrence River, scurvy began to take its deadly toll.  Out of a crew of one hundred and ten, twenty-five already had died and most of the others were so ill they weren't expected to recover.

And then a friendly Indian showed them the simple remedy. Tree bark and needles from the white pine -- both rich in ascorbic acid, or vitamin C -- were stirred into a drink which produced immediate improvement and swift recovery.

Upon returning to Europe, Cartier reported this incident to the medical authorities.  But they were amused by such "witch-doctor cures of ignorant savages" and did nothing to follow it up. ...

Finally, in 1747, John Lind, a young surgeon's mate in the British Navy discovered that oranges and lemons produced relief from scurvy, and recommended that the Royal Navy include citrus fruits in the stores of all its ships.  And yet, it still took forty-eight  more years before his recommendation was put into effect.

According to the best estimates England had only about 8.5 million people in 1770.

All that is a long time ago isn't it ?  Sure.  So what happened to Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis (1818-1865)?  Griffin again: Ignaz Semmelweis was fired from his Vienna hospital post for requiring his maternity staff to wash their hands.

1865 !  Long time ago !

Here is what Melvin J. Grayson & Thomas R. Shepard, Jr. have to say about a case of ongoing genocide (The Disaster Lobby by Melvin J. Grayson & Thomas R. Shepard, Jr.,  Follett Publishing Company/Chicago, 1973):

What she [Rachel Carson in Silent Spring, 1962] failed to do was point out that single doses of five grams of DDT--and even more--have been administered to human beings in the successful treatment of barbiturate poisoning, according to Walter Ebeling, U.C.L.A.  And, notes Professor Ebeling, five grams of DDT are roughly four times as much as the average American will assimilate in a 70-year lifetime.

It would seem likely that, if a person can accept without ill effects five grams of DDT in one spoonful, we should all be able to tolerate one-fourth of that amount over a 70-year span.  But Miss Carson neglected to incorporate this interesting item in her book.

Genocide I said.  Yes !  Allow me to quote now from the November 2000 edition of a really excellent newsletter called Access to Energy by Dr. Arthur B. Robinson, President and Research Professor, Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine.

The United States National Academy of Sciences concluded that the use of DDT for the suppression of mosquitoes that carry malaria had saved 500 million lives.  The world-wide malaria eradication program, based almost entirely upon DDT, was well on the way, two decades ago, to eradicating this disease.  For these reasons, the scientist whose work initiated the use of DDT was given the Nobel Prize.

Since the ban of DDT by the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the extension of that ban throughout the world by various U.S. agencies that tied the ban to American foreign aid and foreign policies, more than 60 million children have died, and about one-quarter billion adults have been kept in states of perpetual suffering—from DDT-preventable malaria.

This ban, which was never based upon science and which even the EPA's own scientific review board advised against, has become the single greatest act of genocide—technological genocide—in the history of man, with the possible exception of the mid-20th century slaughter of the Chinese people by their Communist government.

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