4. The Emergence of Mass Immunization in Wartime Kunming

Abstract

This chapter examines the immunological community that formed at Kunming, reconstructing a world that pulled its members from local health administrations, research laboratories, medical school clinics, and local factories. This diversity of perspectives and actors accords with recent trends toward understanding immunology in the context of medical practice and production as well as within the laboratory. It also helps articulate the involvement of researchers and medical workers in health initiatives that supported state-building processes. The sera and solutions they produced required distribution to populations often unfamiliar with the techniques of vaccination, and orders to immunize encompassed both coercive and persuasive methods. The increasing use of force to compel vaccination reflected the growing power of the Nationalist state—especially at provincial and national borders, where the examination and enforcement of immunization requirements contributed to the increasing control of political authorities. It also suggested the significance of biological characteristics such as one's immunization status in shaping individual rights and freedoms to travel.