“A Splendid Delusion:” Reassessing Vaccination in England, 1796-1853

Abstract

Often characterized as a ground-breaking and well-integrated innovation, the smallpox vaccine encountered popular apprehension and resistance at the turn of the nineteenth century. Prior contemporary accounts relegate the bulk of England’s vaccination resistance movement in this period to the late nineteenth century, ignoring vocalized resistances in the technology’s first few decades. Additionally, whatever discussion exists of vaccination in the early-nineteenth century is progressive in tone, praising Jenner for developing a technology that would later eradicate smallpox in 1980. Scientific publications and archived parliamentary debates of the early 1800s reveal a fragmented consensus concerning vaccination value.