War of conscience
Antivaccination and the battle for medical freedom during World War I
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12692009 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Susan Mcpherson (0000-0002-9478-9932, University of Essex, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 47 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | e7-e7 |
| Publication date | 2021-05-24 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Medical Humanities (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1468-215X • E-ISSN: 1473-4265 |
| Publisher | BMJ (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1136/medhum-2020-012069 |
| PMID | 34031185 |
| OpenAlex | W3164243958 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 19 |
The nineteenth century British antivaccination movement attracted popular and parliamentary support and ultimately saw the 1853 law which had made smallpox vaccination compulsory nullified by the 1898 'conscientious objector' clause. In keeping with popular public health discourse of the time, the movement had employed rhetoric associated with sanitary science and liberalism. In the early twentieth century new discoveries in bacteriology were fuelling advances in vaccination and the medical establishment was increasingly pushing for public health to move towards more interventionist medical approaches. With the onset of war in 1914, the medical establishment hoped to persuade the government to introduce compulsory typhoid inoculation for soldiers. This article analyses antivaccination literature, mainstream newspapers and medical press along with parliamentary debates to examine how the British antivaccination movement engaged with this new threat of compulsion by expanding the rhetoric of 'conscience' and emphasising medical freedom while also asserting scientific critique concerning the effectiveness of vaccines and the new laboratory based diagnostic practices. In spite of 'conscience' fitting well with an emerging public health discourse of individual subjectivity, the mainstream press ridiculed the idea of working-class soldiers having a conscience, coalescing around the idea that 'conscientious objection' be reserved for spiritual, philosophical and educated men who objected to military service. Moreover, in spite of engaging in reasoned scientific critique, parliament and press consorted in the demarcation of scientific knowledge as exclusive to medical scientists, reflecting a growing allegiance between the state and the medical establishment during the war. Any scientific arguments critical of medical orthodoxy were subjugated, labelled as 'crank' or 'faddist' as well as unpatriotic. The antivaccination narratives around conscience contributed to or were part of an evolving discourse on consent and ethics in medicine. Potential parallels are drawn with current and likely future debates around vaccination and counterhegemonic scientific approaches
Conscience · Conscientious objector · Freedom of thought · Mainstream · Newspaper · Political science · Rhetoric · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · Historical Medical Research and Treatments · Law · Medical History and Innovations · Yersinia bacterium, plague, ectoparasites research
The National Press during the First World War
Reconfiguring health knowledges? Contemporary modes of self-care as ‘everyday fringe medicine’
Bodily Matters
"Straight Back to Barbarism"
Ignoring the First Draft of History
Vaccination Policy Against Smallpox, 1835-1914
Class, Gender, and the Conscientious Objector to Vaccination, 1898–1907
Lies, Damn Lies, and Manchester's Recruiting Statistics
Was Typhoid Inoculation Safe and Effective during World War I? Debates within German Military Medicine
The Prevention of Diphtheria in Canada and Britain 1914-1945
Matters of moment
Public Health Spaces and the Fabrication of Identity
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |