Vaccination

“Criticism of vaccinations during this period must be viewed as part of a broader social criticism of the ‘unholy alliance’ between law enforcement personnel and physicians in the enforcement of vaccination that was ‘trespassing’ on the vaccinated person’s body through the sanction of a legal decree while social reforms that would reduce poverty and improve sanitation were neglected in favor of a ‘magic bullet’ solution. . . . the vaccination – imprinted mainly on the bodies of children at the command of the state – constitutes an excellent case study for the understanding of the politicization of the body. These contests over citizens’ bodies helped to shape a classed identity. Vulnerable bodies, such as those of immigrants and the working class, became an object of surveillance and monitoring by the state. . . . Vaccine was produced form the arm of a child who had been not immunized earlier, and the material was then transferred to other children. Thus public health officials used children as a sort of walking laboratory for manufacturing vaccine. We should also remember that at the outset of the twentieth century there was no laboratory capable of establishing whether a child was immunized against small pox. The procedure was accompanied by pain and, at times, other side effects due to contamination of the wound site. Such complications, and especially the scarification process, were an important component in the rhetoric of vaccination opponents” (Davidovitch, 23, 24; cf. 27 re role of vaccinations in “the emerging public health paradigm”).