URL added The Anti-Vaccination Society of America: Correspondence

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The Anti-Vaccination Society of America: Correspondence

http://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/blog/anti-vaccination-society-america-correspondence

March 8, 2012 by Project Staff

Anti-vaccination handout, no date. The Historical Medical Library of the

College of Physicians of Philadelphia

We set ourselves the task yesterday of examining a set of materials in

the College’s Historical Medical Library from the Anti-Vaccination

Society of America. This organization was active in the late 1800s and

early 1900s, along with a collection of other anti-vaccination leagues of

somewhat confusing overlap and origin. The materials we have seem to come

from the period that the society was active from the Terre Haute,

Indiana, home of D. Blue. Blue served as secretary of the society

and seems to have been responsible for much of its day-to-day activity,

including editing the society’s periodical, Vaccination. The

society’s president at the time, L.H. Piehn, was a Nora Springs, Iowa,

banker whose daughter was reported to have died from the effects of

smallpox vaccination in 1894. One of our sources says that Blue took over

the presidency from Piehn in the early 1900s, but we haven’t found

independent documentation of that (Walloch KL. “A hot-bed of the

anti-vaccine heresy”: opposition to compulsory vaccination in Boston and

Cambridge, 1890-1905. Dissertation published 2007, The University of

Wisconsin-Madison. Available on Google Books.)

Blue corresponded widely with other anti-vaccination societies, including

the American Anti-Vaccination League in New York and societies in

Pennsylvania, land, Massachusetts, and England. Moreover, he seems to

have been involved with a collection of other reform groups active at the

time, including anti-vivisectionists (who often objected to the idea that

rabies was an infectious disease), temperance advocates, vegetarians,

homeopaths, phrenologists, “scientific palmists,” and a society for the

prevention of premature burial (that latter was a particular interest of

British anti-vaccinator

Tebb).

One document in the collection is a clipping of an article by Blue (no

date) in Vaccination about effective ways that activists could

respond to the resurgence of smallpox epidemics that occurred around the

turn of the century. Blue says that he’s taking direction from a report

of the American Humane Society and advocates measures including

widespread circulation of the anti-vaccination periodical Vaccination

(including specifically to newspaper editors and judges),

establishing more anti-vaccination societies across the country,

distributing tracts and other propaganda to the public, sponsoring prizes

for essays and fiction on the “evils of vaccination,” and

establishing a “press writing corps to write newspapers regarding

vaccination facts.” Not mentioned in Blue’s essay is lobbying lawmakers,

though in the collection is an English pledge intended for legislators to

sign: “Will you vote AGAINST the enforcement of the Compulsory Clauses of

the Vaccination Acts?...Will you vote AGAINST the practice of Vaccinating

Children born in the Workhouse…” (dated 189X).

From Vaccination. The Historical Medical Library of the College of

Physicians of Philadelphia

Copies of some of Blue’s letters are included in the materials. He

appears to have followed the news of smallpox outbreaks around the

country and then written to local newspapers and judges to encourage them

to resist public calls for vaccination in response to the outbreaks. (See

Willrich’s excellent

POX: An American History for more on this time period.) Oddly,

there’s no documentation of the 1900 lawsuit that Blue brought against

the Terra Haute school board, attempting to invalidate the exclusion of

his son from school for not having been vaccinated. The suit went to the

Indiana Supreme Court, which found that the school board was justified in

excluding unvaccinated children during epidemics (Blue v

Beach).

Anti-vaccination hymn, no date. The Historical Medical Library of the

College of Physicians of Philadelphia

We often read that the proliferation of information on the Internet helps

to amplify anti-vaccination arguments and misinformation about vaccines.

That, of course, is very likely true. But the collection of materials in

our archives is evidence of a thriving public information campaign around

the turn of the century, with widespread circulation and seemingly

effective public relations strategies (if it’s fair to use that term

ahistorically). And while the Internet makes possible circulation of

songs by the anti-vaccination band The

Refusers, it’s interesting to know that the turn-of-century

anti-vaccination movement had an equivalent. We found the sheet music for

“The Anti-Compulsory Vaccination Hymn,” which we are happy to share with

you here.

As we process images from the Anti-Vaccination Society collection, we’ll

make them available in our Gallery and on our

Flickr stream.

[Added 12:03 pm, 3/8/12] Some of you have asked for words to the hymn,

since the photograph is small. Here they are:

Brothers in heart united,/Raise we our voice today/Now let our vow be

plighted,/To sweep this law away./Say shall our little children/Suffer

around us still,/Curs’d by a cruel custom,/Doomed by a despot

will.

Brothers, we’re marching onward/Progress lies on before;/Fain would the

hand of terror/Close up the burning door./Seizing our new-born

infants,/Blighting their lives with pain;/Filling their veins with

poison,/Tainting each tender brain

Brothers, our fathers suffered,/Died that we might be free;/Died that a

faith unfettered,/Right of each soul should be,/Yet doth a dark

superstition/Peril the health of all;/Built on the sands of error,/Pray

we it soon may fall!

Sheri Nakken, former R.N., MA, Hahnemannian

Homeopath

Vaccination Information & Choice Network, Washington State, USA

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