Life, 1911-05-11 · page 40 of 44
Life — May 11, 1911 — page 40: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page is primarily **advertising and reader correspondence**, not political satire. The main advertisement (left) promotes United States Tires, featuring a testimonial from a Texas motorist claiming 9,000 miles with minimal trouble. The "Service Bureau" offer provides free tire-care advice. The significant editorial content is a letter from S. Kubota, Director of Japan's Bureau of Sanitary Statistics. It presents **anti-vaccination arguments** using Japanese smallpox mortality data from 1889-1908. The writer sarcastically calls vaccines "lifeboats" and argues they failed to prevent smallpox deaths—even citing higher fatality rates in vaccinated Japan versus pre-vaccination eras, claiming vaccination was ineffective. This represents **early anti-vaccine sentiment** published in *Life* magazine. The letter uses selective statistical comparison to question vaccination's value, a rhetorical strategy that predates modern vaccine hesitancy but follows identical logical patterns. The page also includes advertisements for Philip Morris cigarettes and C.S. Hammond state maps, plus brief reader letters.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
LIFE: This Man Knows How Chis tires 9,000 miles with no trouble but a puncture “1 purchased two 35 x 61.2 Hartford Clincher Rousld Tread casings and tubes on Nepteraber 18, Jioo, and placed them on the rear wheels of Toy roadster, which welghs 240 pounds. T have hed This caf In courant se, with theso casings, falles with one hail pacts alles wittr one ball paactae.” WRG LOVETT, Austin, Tex. "THERE is nothing extraor- dinary about getting such mileage from United States Tires, if you know how to take care of ‘them, The business of the Service Bureau of the United States Tire Company is to show motorists how to get from these good tires Continental Hartford G&J Morgan & Wright the long mileage built into them by their makers. You can have all the helpful suggestions of the Service Bureau with- out cost, except for the stamp to Beno In THis COUPON teeweee: orseoweneroserecroor=| § Service Bureau United States Tire Com, 1796 Broadway, New York Please send me all literature issued § § by your Service Bureau. From Our Readers (Concluded from page 935) From $. Kubota, Director of the Bureau of Sanitary Statistics at Tokio, Japan, I recently received the following official data from the Japa- nese Government records: During the last two decades, intervening between the years 18% and 1908, Japan has had 171,611 cases of smallpox notified, of which cases 47,919 resulted fatally. Will S. B. Wiggins kindly inform the readers of Lire why it was that — = STATE Maps| 1910 CENSUS | and details wit postal villages ant hamlets, to Taps aro. printed in tight colors, allow: all itertba nd steam ralltoads, steamboat lines, etc. Any State, in pocket form. 15 cents at booksellers’, staconers and now raters iby or mailed Cc. S. HAMMOND & co. 142 Fulton St., New York the vaccination “lifeboats” — which were in active service during all the above-mentioned period failed to res- cue a single one of those 47,919 vac- cinated and revaccinated smallpox pa- tients from being engulfed in smallpox vortex? In the official Japanese rec- ords it is stated that during the single year 1893 there were officially notified in thoroughly revaccinated Japan 41.- 88 cases of smallpox, of which 183 cases resulted fatally. In 1897. thoroughly — revaccinated Japan had 41,946 cases of smallp officially notified, of which cases 12,- 6 terminated fatally in spite of the ifeboat” service. This was a case fatality of about 32 per cent., double the fatality rate which pre- vailed among smallpox patients in pre- Jennerian times before vaccination “lifeboats” had been heard of—at a time when nobody was vaccinated and at a period in which people lived in filth and ignorance of the laws of hygiene. Even as late as the year 19¢8 Japan suffered severely from epi- demic smallpox, of which disease 18.- 067 cases were officially notified and $837 of which smallpox cases resulted in death, It would be interesting to know where the millions of vaccine “life: hoats” were plying and what. they were doing at the time of these terrible smallpox disasters which scourged the most thoroughly vacci- nated, revaccinated and re-revacet- nated nation on the globe. o~- Cigarettes !: Try them, and see what 7 you've been missing. § CAMB Sborewotten = 25C AMBASSADOR 35c after-dinner size tn Cork and Plain Tips "The Little Brown Box "* BOM ESTA Passed Our Cambridge friends will be interested to know that fe has arranged for an Exhibition and Sale (at very moderate prices) of Original Drawings in their city, from May 15th to May 27th, in the win- dow of the Harvard Co-operative Society, Branch Store, 1322 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, Mass. of Lire a little light upon the rious workings of his “lifeboat W. Vay R. Bucutos, M.D. Nortit Toxawanpa, N. Y., April 24, 1911. We Trained Him Ourselves Dear Sirs: As to cover of week April 27, 1911, the Breadwinner, there are very few squirrels that run on a fence of any description on a single foot or | Yours respectfully. Davin J. Arson Wyncore, Pa., April 25, 1911. comicbooks.com