What Is Tetanus? An Essay on a Vaccine in Search of a Disease

[John Hilton]

What Is Tetanus? An Essay on a Vaccine in Search of a Disease

https://unbekoming.substack.com/p/what-is-tetanus

Excerpt/Conclusion:-

Explain It To A 6 Year Old

Imagine a kid steps on a nail. The nail goes deep into the foot. The skin closes back over the hole. Inside the foot, where you can’t see, there’s now a little pocket with no air and some pieces of the nail and some dirt. The pocket gets sick. The body has trouble cleaning it because the way out is too small. The pocket gets sicker. The poisons from the sick pocket spread into the rest of the body. Now the kid has a bad sickness called lockjaw.

For a long time, doctors thought the sickness came from a tiny bug that lived in the dirt on the nail. They made a shot to fight the tiny bug. They gave the shot to every kid in case any kid ever stepped on a nail.

Then some other doctors looked very closely at the wounds of soldiers in a big war. They found the tiny bug in lots of wounds where there was no sickness at all. The bug was just there, cleaning up. It wasn’t the cause of the sickness. The sickness came from the closed-over pocket and the dead bits inside it, not from the bug.

If a kid does step on a nail, the right thing to do is open the wound, let it bleed a little, wash it carefully, take out any dead bits, and let the air get in. That’s how you stop the closed pocket from forming. No shot is needed. No shot helps with this. Doctors who try to give the shot afterwards are giving it after the moment when it would help, even if the shot worked, which it doesn’t really.

And the kid who never steps on a nail, and most kids never do, doesn’t need any of it.

[Satori]

Posted by John Hilton (here)
What Is Tetanus? An Essay on a Vaccine in Search of a Disease

https://unbekoming.substack.com/p/what-is-tetanus

Excerpt/Conclusion:-

Explain It To A 6 Year Old

Imagine a kid steps on a nail. The nail goes deep into the foot. The skin closes back over the hole. Inside the foot, where you can’t see, there’s now a little pocket with no air and some pieces of the nail and some dirt. The pocket gets sick. The body has trouble cleaning it because the way out is too small. The pocket gets sicker. The poisons from the sick pocket spread into the rest of the body. Now the kid has a bad sickness called lockjaw.

For a long time, doctors thought the sickness came from a tiny bug that lived in the dirt on the nail. They made a shot to fight the tiny bug. They gave the shot to every kid in case any kid ever stepped on a nail.

Then some other doctors looked very closely at the wounds of soldiers in a big war. They found the tiny bug in lots of wounds where there was no sickness at all. The bug was just there, cleaning up. It wasn’t the cause of the sickness. The sickness came from the closed-over pocket and the dead bits inside it, not from the bug.

If a kid does step on a nail, the right thing to do is open the wound, let it bleed a little, wash it carefully, take out any dead bits, and let the air get in. That’s how you stop the closed pocket from forming. No shot is needed. No shot helps with this. Doctors who try to give the shot afterwards are giving it after the moment when it would help, even if the shot worked, which it doesn’t really.

And the kid who never steps on a nail, and most kids never do, doesn’t need any of it.

My father was a medic in the Marine Corps in the second world war. When my brothers and I stepped on nails, cut ourselves, fell on TV antennas and perforator ourselves, which happened to one of my brothers, my dad never took us to the doctor. He patched us up himself. No tetanus shot no stitches. Butterfly bandages but often it was just let the wound breathe, dry up and heal itself.

[Brigantia]

I have had tetanus jabs in the past, though I'm told that as I've had 5 in the past I've got immunity now. That said, if I did get a wound of some sort I would clean it out thoroughly and put tea tree oil on it.

The reason I did have the jabs was that my great-grandmother died of tetanus, aka lockjaw, in 1901; for that reason I was told as a kid never to be barefoot in the house. My great-grandmother was barefoot indoors and trod on a rusty nail; a few days later she was dead, aged 32 leaving a widower and two very young boys. It was even reported in the local newspaper; "Death from lockjaw". It's a horrible way to die as it's a slow suffocation.

[John Hilton]

I haven't had any jab (except dental treatment) for about 30 years when I had my last tetanus jab (and, coincidentally, my hair fell out).