ISSUES IN THE ANTI-VACCINATION MOVEMENT IN ENGLAND

Abstract

ALTHOUGH criticism of the public vaccination movement in England had been common ever since it was introduced in I840, an organized movement to repeal compulsory vaccination did not develop until after 1871.If one studies the history of the English public and compulsory vaccination, one is surprised to detect references to moral and political ideas as frequently as discussions of medical issues.Sometimes it seems as though the method used in the fight against vaccination would become more important than the abolition of small- pox itself.An attempt is made in this paper to scrutinize the background of the move- ment for the repeal of compulsory vaccination and to examine the issues which influenced the leading supporters and opponents of vaccination.What makes this phase in the history ofBritish vaccination so interesting is the fact that those who wrote about vaccination, the doctors who practised it, the officials who administered the laws, and the public that was subjected to it, were influenced in their attitudes by their political views, by religious convictions, by their own interpretations of medical theories, by dogmatic views on sanitation and by their acceptance or rejection of the new science of bacteriology.The most striking fact is that the anti-vaccination movement ran against the trends of the time which Goschen illustrated in 1885 by stating as self-evident that the old saying that a man could not be made sober by Act of Parliament sounded to contemporary ears like old-world nonsense.A brief survey of vaccination legislation in the nineteenth century will help to comprehend the issues which are to be discussed.Between i8oi and 1825 Jenner's method of cowpox vaccination competed with inoculation as practised in the eighteenth century.Both methods had their defenders.The London Inoculation Hospital, however, abandoned inoculation after 1807 for its out-patients, and after 1821 for its in-patients.'During this time doctors, clergy- men and laymen took sides in favour of one or the other method.Dr. Gregory, in a sober report presented to the semi-annual meeting of governors of the London Smallpox Hospital in I824 spoke of the 'true value of the inestimable blessing which it was the glory of Jenner to have diffused' in spite of the often imperfect performance of vaccination.2A few years later Dr. Clutterbuck attributed the wonderful mitigation ofsmallpox to inoculation and regretted that the Vaccine Board under the guidance ofthe heads of the colleges lacked practical experience and did not use the C3,ooo granted by Parliament in a more satisfactory way.3Medical opinion continued to be divided and the many 310

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