The antivaccine heresy : Jacobson v. Massachusetts and the troubled history of compulsory vaccination in the United States / Karen L. Walloch.

Author
Walloch, Karen L. [Browse]
Format
Book
Language
English
Published/​Created
  • Rochester, NY : University of Rochester Press, 2015.
  • ©2015
Description
1 online resource (x, 339 pages) : illustrations

Availability

Available Online

Details

Subject(s)
Series
Rochester studies in medical history [More in this series]
Summary note
We celebrate vaccination today as a great achievement, yet many nineteenth-century Americans regarded it uneasily, accepting it as a necessary evil forced upon them by their employers or the law. States had to make vaccination compulsory because of great popular distaste for it. Why? How did such a promising innovation come to induce such anxiety? This book explores the history of vaccine development, revealing that, at the end of the nineteenth century, many Americans had good reason to fear vaccination. A century of tinkering had created vaccines that did not live up to claims made for their safety and effectiveness. They induced pain, disability, and grim or even fatal infections. Parents hesitated to vaccinate their children, and health departments had to rely on coercion and sometimes even force to vaccinate a reluctant populace. Antivaccination societies formed to oppose compulsory laws, ultimately arriving at the United States Supreme Court when it upheld these laws in a landmark decision, Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1905). Antivaccinationists did not give up, however, creating a legacy of doubt about vaccination that still resounds on the American political landscape.--Description from amazon.com.
Bibliographic references
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Source of description
Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (EBSCO, viewed December 2, 2015).
Contents
  • List of Illustrations
  • Acknowledgments
  • Abbreviations
  • Introduction
  • 1. Vaccination in nineteenth-century America
  • 2. Problems with vaccination in the nineteenth century
  • 3. The 1901-2 smallpox epidemic in Boston and Cambridge
  • 4. The hazards of vaccination in 1901-2
  • 5. Massachusetts antivaccinationists
  • 6. Immanuel Pfeiffer versus the Boston Board of Health
  • 7. The 1902 campaign to amend the compulsory vaccination laws
  • 8. Criminal prosecution of the antivaccinationists
  • 9. 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.
ISBN
  • 9781782046851 ((electronic bk.))
  • 1782046852 ((electronic bk.))
  • 9781782048787 ((electronic bk.))
  • 1782048782 ((electronic bk.))
OCLC
930600961
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