Main description:

Explores the history of vaccine development and the rise of antivaccination societies in late-nineteenth-century America.

Most people today celebrate vaccination as a great achievement, yet many nineteenth-century Americans opposed it, so much in fact that states had to make vaccination compulsory. In response, antivaccination societies formed all over the United States, lobbying state legislatures and bringing lawsuits to abolish these laws. One such lawsuit ultimately arrived at the United States Supreme Court, which upheld the laws in a landmark decision, Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1905). In this study, Karen Walloch examines the history of vaccine development in the United States, the laws put in place enjoining the practice, and the popular reaction against them. Walloch finds that at theend of the nineteenth century Americans had good reason to fear vaccination. Vaccines simply did not live up to claims made for their safety and effectiveness. They induced pain, disability, and grim or even fatal infections. Inthis critical history of the antivaccine movement and of Jacobson v. Massachusetts in particular, Walloch locates the beginnings of a legacy of doubt about vaccination -- one that affected legislation in all fifty states and is still very much alive today.

Karen Walloch is a historian who teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Contents:

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction
Vaccination in the Nineteenth-Century America
Problems with Vaccination in the Nineteenth Century
The 1901-2 Smallpox Epidemic in Boston and Cambridge
The Hazards of Vaccination in 1901-2
Massachusetts Antivaccinationists
Immanuel Pfeiffer versus the Boston Board of Health
The 1902 Campaign to Amend the Compulsory Vaccination Laws
Criminal Prosecution of the Antivaccinationists
Jacobson v. Massuchusetts
Conclusion
Appendix A: Boston Health Department Vaccinations, 1872-1900
Appendix B: Voting Records for Samuel Durgin's Vaccination Bill before the Massachusetts State Senate
Notes
Bibliography
Index