Alfred Russel Wallace and the Antivaccination Movement in Victorian England

The COVID States Program demonstrated ~25% of Americans resisted COVID-19 vaccination.

I am constantly being reminded by family, friends, and patients what a relief it was to know declining vaccination was the right medical decision. I wondered if there were any historical parallels.

The smallpox vaccine was variously deployed by doctors in the nineteenth century using lymphatic fluid from animals or from arm to arm of humans. It could hot have been sterilized from bacteria such as staphylococci, streptococci, tetanus, syphilis, or viruses such as hepatitis B.

The dose of cowpox virions could not have been measured or controlled. So there were obvious safety concerns such as fatal iatrogenic infections and great debate over whether the procedure worked at all.

See more here Substack

Please Donate Below To Support Our Ongoing Work To Defend The Scientific Method

PRINCIPIA SCIENTIFIC INTERNATIONAL, legally registered in the UK as a company incorporated for charitable purposes. Head Office: 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX. 

Trackback from your site.

Leave a comment

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.
Share via