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| Corrupt Your Flesh and Blood with a Festering, Sickening Pus:” The Politics of the Family and the Anti-Vaccination Movement in the United States, 1890-1920
Dr. Julia Bowes DATE: November 24, 2020 (Tuesday)
When smallpox epidemics spread like wildfire across the United States at the turn of the century, public health reformers looked to the public school as the perfect site for vaccination campaigns. Building on existing compulsory schooling laws, municipal ordinances and state laws made vaccination a condition of entry to public schools, seeking to make the twenty million children enrolled in schools’ immune to the disease. As a result, the classroom took center stage in the anti-vaccination movement in the United States as parents railed against the authority of the state to make medical decisions on behalf of their children. This paper explores the collision of sentimentality, skepticism of science and suspicion of state power that made up the anti-vaccination movement in the United States. It argues that a deeply held belief in the sovereignty of the family formed a foundational building block in the development of an anti-statist movement against compulsory vaccination at the turn of the century, one that was grounded in women’s moral authority as mothers and men’s rights as citizens. All are welcome; for attending in person or via Zoom, please register at http://bit.do/fKJ9s Should you have any enquiries, please feel free to contact Mr. Adrian Kam by email at adkam@hku.hk or by phone at 39172867. |
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