How Was the Hundredth Anniversary of the Smallpox Vaccine Celebrated?
The Edward Jenner Centenary was celebrated in 1896
How do you think the hundredth anniversary of Edward Jenner’s discovery of the smallpox vaccine in 1796 was celebrated?
You might be surprised…
How Was the Hundredth Anniversary of the Smallpox Vaccine Celebrated?
You see, Edward Jenner, who had discovered his smallpox vaccine in 1796, was from Gloucestershire, a county in South West England.
He lived in Berkeley, a town that was close to Gloucester, where in 1896, there was the last big smallpox epidemic in England.
An epidemic of smallpox that mostly affected folks who were either not vaccinated or not re-vaccinated!
But wasn’t vaccination against smallpox compulsory in the UK with the Vaccination Act of 1853?
Vaccination was compulsory at the time, but it was up to a local governing board to enforce fines if parents didn’t vaccinate their kids. And in Gloucester, the local governing board, the Board of Guardians, ignored the Vaccination Acts.
“The troubles which so often occur in infant life about the time when vaccination is enforced, and which in most cases have no necessary connection with vaccination itself, were magnified and distorted, so that anxious parents were led to believe that the complication of the operation by them was the rule instead of being the rare exception; whilst the awful slaughter of the innocents which small-pox inflicted before the time of Jenner was carefully ignored.”
The Story of the Gloucester Epidemic of Small-Pox : Showing How It Arose, the Facts Which Make It Notable, and the Lessons It Teaches, With Full Statistics, Diagrams, &C. / Told by Francis T. Bond
This began in 1887, when the Guardians, influenced by a local anti-vaccination society, had voted by a majority of 12 votes to 10 to stop prosecuting anyone who didn’t get vaccinated.
“Owing to the refusal of the guardians of late years to enforce the Vaccination Acts as well as to anti-vaccination propagandism in the city, Gloucester has rivalled Leicester in regard to its neglect of vaccination. The last published returns (1891) give as many as 84.7 percent of children not finally accounted for.”
The Small-Pox Epidemic at Gloucester.
And this led to the smallpox epidemic of 1896…
An epidemic of smallpox that was triggered by an anti-vaccination movement that succeeded in scaring people away from getting vaccinated and protected after cases of smallpox had dropped.
An epidemic that led to a lot of unvaccinated children dying or ending up blinded when they got smallpox!
An epidemic that paralyzed a city.
An epidemic that wasn’t controlled until most everyone finally got vaccinated.
An epidemic that led to the formation of the first Jenner Society on the hundredth anniversary of Edward Jenner’s smallpox vaccine.
An epidemic that never should have happened.
“…as the danger from smallpox epidemics decreased, the anti-vaccinationists became bold…”
Does Vaccination Prevent Smallpox? A Lesson Taught from the Gloucester Epidemic
An epidemic whose lessons were learned the hard way!
“It can now be claimed that Gloucester, which in 1892 headed the record of badly vaccinated communities in England and Wales, showing a percentage of 86g of children born during the year and not accounted for in the vaccination returns, is now, in regard both to its infantile and adult population, probably one of the best vaccinated towns in the Kingdom. When the reports are before the public there will be plenty of statistical and other evidence to prove again, for the thousandth the efficacy of the vaccination system when efficiently carried out. No doubt anti-vaccinators will argue about it till they are black in the face. We do not wish to enter into the controversy here. The fact about which there can be no possible dispute is that Gloucester, under the stern and costly teaching of experience, has returned to vaccination. There has seldom been an instance of a conversion so widespread and thorough on the part of any community. It is Jenner's Centenary triumph.”
Jenner's Centenary Triumph
An epidemic whose lessons should have endured and prevented the rise of the modern anti-vaccine movement.
An epidemic that was eventually forgotten…
References
Gloucestershire Chronicle. April - May 1896
The Story of the Gloucester Epidemic of Small-Pox : Showing How It Arose, the Facts Which Make It Notable, and the Lessons It Teaches, With Full Statistics, Diagrams, &C. / Told by Francis T. Bond
The Lancet Volume 147, Issue 3778, 25 January 1896, Pages 250-251 The Small-Pox Epidemic at Gloucester.
A lecture (Does Vaccination Prevent Smallpox? A Lesson Taught from the Gloucester Epidemic) delivered by Charles Robert Drysdale (1829-1907) before the London Vegetarian Society on May 28th, 1896, at the Memorial Hall, Farringdon Street, London.
Jenner's Centenary Triumph. North British Daily Mail, Aug. 13th, 1896. (from What the Press Has Said About the Gloucester Epidemic and the Report of the Royal Commission On Vaccination.)