Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts with the label Smallpox

The Leicester Method, Smallpox, and the Unvaccinated

Origin of Vaccination, c. 1800 I recently posted about the "Pilot comparative study on the health of vaccinated and unvaccinated 6- to 12- year old U.S. children." I learned of this study at the exact time I was re-reading a few chapters from Suzanne Humphries' book:  Dissolving Illusions: Disease, Vaccines, and the Forgotten History . The chapters (6 and 7) go into the history of the Smallpox vaccine and its resistance in Leicester, England in the 1860s-1880s. To summarize: at this time, there was a great push for vaccines in England. The "1867 Vaccination Act [had] consolidated existing laws regarding vaccination and instituted a fine for parents who did not present their children for vaccination within three months of birth" (Humphries, 114). Even with this push for mass vaccination, a smallpox epidemic hit England in the early 1870s. This caused a great loss of faith in vaccinations: "It must strike the reflective observer as rather singular t...