An 'arsenal for the supply of ammunition for the defence of vaccination': the Jenner Society and anti-anti-vaccinationism in England, 1896-1906.

Abstract

Although historians have given close attention to the anti-vaccination movement that gripped late-Victorian England, relatively little scholarship explores how doctors and health officials responded or asks what strategies and assumptions structured how they might oppose the vaccine opponents. This article traces the advent and actions of the Jenner Society, a smallpox vaccination advocacy group founded in 1896 by Dr. Francis Bond. His goal was to publicly confront the leading anti-vaccinationists and to effectively conduct an anti-anti-vaccination campaign. The Jenner Society appeared amidst disputes over how and even whether vaccination should be publicly debated - disputes shaped both by long-standing attitudes toward professional propriety and also by indecision about what sorts of political advocacy were suitable for medical practitioners. Vaccination was shifting toward a more voluntary administration, and the Jenner Society represents how civil society, the popular press, and the modern tools of persuasion were becoming increasingly central to public health governance. The Jenner Society encapsulated the profession's disdainful attitude toward populist medical dissent, and this essay argues that the tone and deportment of anti-anti-vaccinationism had the effect of encouraging doctors to overlook and neglect other, probably more significant, sources of vaccine skepticism. Preoccupied with rebutting and attacking vaccination's enemies, public "controversialists" like Bond waged the first true large-scale pro-vaccination propaganda campaign, but they ultimately were unable to address the underlying dynamics of vaccine evasion. This history holds important lessons today for those interested in constructing more effective ways to effectively counteract medical misinformation and anti-vaccinationist beliefs.