The Long View of the Anti-Vaccination Movement ........ with its modern parallels

Now the anti-vaccine lobby is stalking social media, emboldened by urban myths, with more than a little conspiratorial theories and perhaps a degree of ignorance.

Not that I would want to suggest that their motives or their actions are entirely fueled by that.

So it is timely that yesterday Radio 4 broadcast The Long View of the Anti-Vaccination Movement, which like all the ones in the series was informative and a joy to listen to.

Leaving me just to add the sleeve notes from the broadcast.

"In 1798 Gloucestershire doctor Edward Jenner successfully proved that a dose of relatively mild cowpox infection gave protection from smallpox, one of the greatest killers in history. Within five years, Jenner's discovery was being used across Europe and a decade later it had gone global.

But opposition to the vaccine in Britain was fierce. 

By the late 19th Century, tens of thousands of people took to the streets in opposition to compulsory smallpox vaccinations.

In this episode of The Long View, Jonathan Freedland draws parallels between the smallpox anti-vaccination movement and todays' Covid-19 anti-vaxxers.

Producer: Sarah Shebbeare"

Picture; The Cow-Pock—or—the Wonderful Effects of the New Inoculation!—vide. the Publications of ye Anti-Vaccine Society, James Gillray, published June 12, 1802 by H. Humphrey, St. James's Street, and Jenner and his two colleagues seeing off three anti-vaccination opponents, the dead are littered at their feet. Coloured etching by I. Cruikshank, 1808, Welcome Collection, https://wellcomecollection.org/works?query=x7kbxaef&search=images

*The Long View of the Anti-Vaccination Movement, The Long View, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000pffk