The Antivaccine Heresy

In 1902 the Cambridge, Massachusetts, pastor Henning Jacobson refused to comply with a health department order requiring his vaccination against smallpox. His refusal set in motion a series of legal battles that culminated in the 1905 Supreme Court decision in Jacobson v. Massachusetts, which affirmed states' power to compel citizens to submit to medical procedures to protect public health. Jacobson and the 1905 decision are frequently referenced in histories of vaccination and public health in the United States; Karen L. Walloch's The Antivaccine Heresy sets both within their legal, social, and medical historical contexts. By the time Jacobson's battle began, the Supreme Court had spent more than three decades determining the permissible extent of state police power. As Walloch notes, after the Fourteenth Amendment passed in 1868, the Supreme Court “had to answer again and again how far states could go to regulate the affairs of their citizens” in pursuit of the general welfare of all (p. 188

Battle · Heresy · Political science · Power (physics · Smallpox · State (computer science · Supreme court · Vaccination · History · Law · Medicine · Vaccine Coverage and Hesitancy · Virology