In the early 19th century, British people finally had access to the first vaccine in history, one that promised to protect them from smallpox, among the deadliest diseases of the era. Many Britons were skeptical of the vaccine, however, with fears extending well beyond the fatigue and sore arm that go along with many modern shots. The side effects they dreaded were far more terrifying: blindness, deafness, ulcers, a gruesome skin condition called “cowpox mange” — even sprouting hoofs and horns.
With that, the world’s first anti-vaccination movement was born.
“It was an enormous mass movement, and it built on many traditions, intellectual and otherwise, about liberty,” said Frank Snowden, a historian of medicine at Yale University. “There was a rejection of vaccination on political grounds that was widely considered as another form of tyranny.”
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Despite the anti-vaccine movement, the laws making smallpox vaccination compulsory succeeded by many measures. Smallpox deaths dropped by more than a quarter in the years after the passage of the mandate. Among children, the result was even starker: Their death rate dropped by 50 percent. And by 1934 — some 138 years after [Edward] Jenner’s discovery — smallpox would be considered eradicated in Britain.
