The vaccination controversy : the rise, reign, and fall of compulsory vaccination for smallpox / Stanley Williamson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Williamson, Stanley, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Smallpox--Vaccination--Great Britain--History.

Smallpox.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (264 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Liverpool : Liverpool University Press, 2007.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Smallpox was for several centuries one of the most deadly, most contagious and most feared of diseases. Williamson's extraordinary study charts the history of one of the most controversial techniques in medical history that raises much debate to this day. Originating probably in Africa, smallpox progressed via the Middle and Near East, where it was studied around the end of the first millennium by Arab physicians. It arrived in Britain during the Elizabethan times and was well established by the seventeenth century. During the closing years of the 18th Century a most far reaching and ultimately controversial development took place when Edward Jenner developed an inoculation for Smallpox based on a culture from Cowpox. The Vaccination Controversy examines the astonishing speed at which Jenner's technique of 'vaccination' was taken up, culminating in the 'Compulsory Vaccination Act of 1853'. The Act made a painful and sometimes fatal medical practice for all children obligatory and as a result set an important precedent for governmental regulation of medical welfare. The Act remained in force until 1946 and was only ended after decades of intense pressure from the National Anti-vaccination League, but the issues raised by Williamson's accessible text remain current today in debates about vaccination programs. Meticulously researched, The Vaccination Controversy highlights the social, political and ethical consequences of compulsory vaccination and the massive repercussions that followed the ending of a policy through argued by many to be the most major medical resistance campaign in European medical history.

Contents:

pt. I. Road to Compulsion

1. Byzantine Operation

2. Small Pockes

3. Engrafted Distemper

4. Language of Figures

5. Suttonian System

6. Great Benefactor

7. Speckled Monster

8. Three Bashaws

9. Competent and Energetic Officer

10. Formidable Men

11. Present Non-System

12. Toties Quoties

13. Crotchety People

pt. II. Reign of Compulsion

14. Loathsome Virus

15. Cruel and Degrading Imposture

16. Ten Shillings or Seven Days

17. Death by Non-Vaccination

18. Great Pox

pt. III. Retreat from Compulsion

19. Genuine Conscientious Objection.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 02 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9781781386965

178138696X

9781846314216

1846314216

OCLC:

476210269