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Alternative Titles
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Summary
| The untold story of how America's Progressive-era war on smallpox sparked one of the great civil liberties battles of the twentieth century. At the turn of the last century, a powerful smallpox epidemic swept the United States from coast to coast. The age-old disease spread swiftly through an increasingly interconnected American landscape: from southern tobacco plantations to the dense immigrant neighborhoods of northern cities to far-flung villages on the edges of the nascent American empire. In Pox , award-winning historian Michael Willrich offers a gripping chronicle of how the nation's continentwide fight against smallpox launched one of the most important civil liberties struggles of the twentieth century. At the dawn of the activist Progressive era and during a moment of great optimism about modern medicine, the government responded to the deadly epidemic by calling for universal compulsory vaccination. To enforce the law, public health authorities relied on quarantines, pesthouses, and "virus squads"-corps of doctors and club-wielding police. Though these measures eventually contained the disease, they also sparked a wave of popular resistance among Americans who perceived them as a threat to their health and to their rights. At the time, anti-vaccinationists were often dismissed as misguided cranks, but Willrich argues that they belonged to a wider legacy of American dissent that attended the rise of an increasingly powerful government. While a well-organized anti-vaccination movement sprang up during these years, many Americans resisted in subtler ways-by concealing sick family members or forging immunization certificates. Pox introduces us to memorable characters on both sides of the debate, from Henning Jacobson, a Swedish Lutheran minister whose battle against vaccination went all the way to the Supreme Court, to C. P. Wertenbaker, a federal surgeon who saw himself as a medical missionary combating a deadly-and preventable-disease. As Willrich suggests, many of the questions first raised by the Progressive-era antivaccination movement are still with us: How far should the government go to protect us from peril? What happens when the interests of public health collide with religious beliefs and personal conscience? In Pox , Willrich delivers a riveting tale about the clash of modern medicine, civil liberties, and government power at the turn of the last century that resonates powerfully today. | |
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Genre
| NonFiction
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| Historical
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| Medical
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Topics
| American politics and government | |
Setting
Time Period
| 1898-1904 -- 19th-20th century | |
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The untold story of how America's Progressive-era war on smallpox sparked one of the great civil liberties battles of the twentieth century. At the turn of the last century, a powerful smallpox epidemic swept the United States from coast to coast. The age-old disease spread swiftly through an increasingly interconnected American landscape: from southern tobacco plantations to the dense immigrant neighborhoods of northern cities to far-flung villages on the edges of the nascent American empire. In Pox , award-winning historian Michael Willrich offers a gripping chronicle of how the nation's continentwide fight against smallpox launched one of the most important civil liberties struggles of the twentieth century. At the dawn of the activist Progressive era and during a moment of great optimism about modern medicine, the government responded to the deadly epidemic by calling for universal compulsory vaccination. To enforce the law, public health authorities relied on quarantines, pesthouses, and "virus squads"-corps of doctors and club-wielding police. Though these measures eventually contained the disease, they also sparked a wave of popular resistance among Americans who perceived them as a threat to their health and to their rights. At the time, anti-vaccinationists were often dismissed as misguided cranks, but Willrich argues that they belonged to a wider legacy of American dissent that attended the rise of an increasingly powerful government. While a well-organized anti-vaccination movement sprang up during these years, many Americans resisted in subtler ways-by concealing sick family members or forging immunization certificates. Pox introduces us to memorable characters on both sides of the debate, from Henning Jacobson, a Swedish Lutheran minister whose battle against vaccination went all the way to the Supreme Court, to C. P. Wertenbaker, a federal surgeon who saw himself as a medical missionary combating a deadly-and preventable-disease. As Willrich suggests, many of the questions first raised by the Progressive-era antivaccination movement are still with us: How far should the government go to protect us from peril? What happens when the interests of public health collide with religious beliefs and personal conscience? In Pox , Willrich delivers a riveting tale about the clash of modern medicine, civil liberties, and government power at the turn of the last century that resonates powerfully today.
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Willrich (City of Courts: Socializing Justice in Progressive Era Chicago) chronicles the U.S. smallpox epidemic at the turn of the 20th century when American expansionism, migrant work patterns, and cramped tenement living created a massive public health disaster with far-reaching implications. He traces the creation of smallpox vaccine technology, still known as "the most dangerous vaccine," from Edward Jenner's late 18th-century development of the cow pox vaccine to recent freeze-dried versions. He describes the disfiguring suffering of smallpox victims in cringe-worthy, heartbreaking detail. Willrich shines when illuminating the profound civil rights and medical ethics issues that arose at a time when national, state, and local public health authorities were just being formed. Heavy-handed government health-care workers would handcuff resistors to vaccinate them. Poor black and immigrant families routinely revolted against the compulsory vaccinations, either hiding their sick or burning "pest houses" built in their neighborhoods. The anti-vaccinationists of the time parallel a modern movement against vaccines for purported dangers, whether scientifically proven or not. VERDICT There is fertile ground for debate here among public health professionals, medical ethicists, those involved in current health-care issues, and historians.-Megan Curran, Univ. of Southern California Lib., Los Angeles (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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Today's controversies over vaccinations pale beside the pitched battles fought at the turn of the 20th century, to judge by this probing work. Historian Willrich (City of Courts) revisits the smallpox epidemic that ravaged the United States from 1898 to 1904 and sparked a showdown between the burgeoning Progressive-era regulatory regime and Americans fearful of the new Leviathan state and the specter of "state medicine." Anxious to stamp out the contagion, public health officials in the South quarantined African-Americans in detention camps if they were suspected of carrying the disease and vaccinated others at gunpoint; in New York "paramilitary vaccination squads" raided immigrant tenements, forcibly inoculating residents and dragging infected children off to pesthouses; their coercive methods sparked occasional riots and lawsuits that helped remake constitutional law. Willrich sees merit on both sides: draconian public health measures saved thousands of lives, but resisters did have legitimate concerns about vaccine safety and side effects, racial targeting and bodily integrity. He does tend to romanticize anti-vaccine activists, whose movement he associates with feminism, free speech, and abolitionism, styling them as "libertarian radicals" engaging in "intimate acts of civil disobedience." Still, his lucid, well-written, empathetic study of a fascinating episode shows why the vaccine issue still pricks the American conscience. Photos. (Apr. 4) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
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*Starred Review* Willrich's account of the early days of the American progressive movement couldn't be more instructive or timely. In the years leading up to and following the turn of the twentieth century, the U.S. was struggling with questions regarding the limits of government-imposed, compulsory health mandates. As smallpox ravaged America, local governments, in particular, were hard-pressed to deal with the disease. An epidemic had the power to effectively shut down everyday life, shuttering businesses and even, in some cases, quarantining entire towns. Public health tools were limited to reactively quarantining sick individuals and proactively mandating compulsory vaccination. Even though the new-found smallpox vaccine had its drawbacks, including unreliable quality and occasional severe side effects, public health officials felt it was the better option. Battle lines formed. Many, the antivaccinationists, rebelled. They objected to compulsory vaccination on the grounds that it was unconstitutional and socialist. With an increasingly urban population, however, government first local, then state, finally federal determined that this mandate was for the public weal and superseded individual choice. The issue was finally decided when the U.S. Supreme Court reached a landmark decision in Jackson v. Massachusetts, a case still cited. Despite occasionally teetering on the edge of too-much-detail, this is a worthy read.--Chavez, Donna Copyright 2010 Booklist
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