Pox

An American History

By: Michael Willrich

Narrated by: K. Todd Freeman

The untold story of how America's Progressive-era war on smallpox sparked one of the great civil liberties battles of the twentieth century.

At the turn of the last century, a powerful smallpox epidemic swept the United States from coast to coast. The age-old disease spread swiftly through an increasingly interconnected American landscape: from southern tobacco plantations to the dense immigrant neighborhoods of northern cities to far-flung villages on the edges of the nascent American empire. In Pox, award-winning historian Michael Willrich offers a gripping chronicle of how the nation's continentwide fight against smallpox launched one of the most important civil liberties struggles of the twentieth century.

At the dawn of the activist Progressive era and during a moment of great optimism about modern medicine, the government responded to the deadly epidemic by calling for universal compulsory vaccination. To enforce the law, public health authorities relied on quarantines, pesthouses, and "virus squads"-corps of doctors and club-wielding police. Though these measures eventually contained the disease, they also sparked a wave of popular resistance among Americans who perceived them as a threat to their health and to their rights.

At the time, anti-vaccinationists were often dismissed as misguided cranks, but Willrich argues that they belonged to a wider legacy of American dissent that attended the rise of an increasingly powerful government. While a well-organized anti-vaccination movement sprang up during these years, many Americans resisted in subtler ways-by concealing sick family members or forging immunization certificates. Pox introduces us to memorable characters on both sides of the debate, from Henning Jacobson, a Swedish Lutheran minister whose battle against vaccination went all the way to the Supreme Court, to C. P. Wertenbaker, a federal surgeon who saw himself as a medical missionary combating a deadly-and preventable-disease.

As Willrich suggests, many of the questions first raised by the Progressive-era antivaccination movement are still with us: How far should the government go to protect us from peril? What happens when the interests of public health collide with religious beliefs and personal conscience? In Pox, Willrich delivers a riveting tale about the clash of modern medicine, civil liberties, and government power at the turn of the last century that resonates powerfully today.

Sometimes a little too narrow sometimes too broad

This is a pretty good overview of outbreaks and reactions to outbreaks of smallpox in the United States from the 1860s to 1904. I wish it went into more detail on how variola minor involved and what it's epidemiology was in relation to variola Major. this would have scored a four but the ending was just incredibly poor: briefly discussing the increase in numbers of vaccines people get without discussing your life saved from the decrease in disease. To top it off the author mentions the HPV vaccine bringing up issues of mores which is just dumb. Even the most devout young Christian or Muslim who knows they will never have sex with anyone other than their spouse cannot prevent that spouse from cheating. Their perfect spouse could also get run over by a truck and then they might get a replacement spouse who might have had sex with other people. also, the idea that getting the HPV vaccine would encourage promiscuity is equally insane: nobody is thinking of chance of getting cancer 20 years in the future when they are evaluating whether to have sex with someone or not.

Probably always going to be timely

As long as humans get sick with communicable diseases this story is going to be relevant. Written in 2011 about the small pox outbreaks in 1900 it brings up almost all the issues the United States has experienced and rehashed during our latest pandemic. I found this riveting.

Best book on smallpox

Not only is this a thorough and critical history of smallpox in the US but it gives tremendous insight into the early causes of vaccine hesitancy

How hard life was back in 1900.

I liked the coverage of the anti-vaccinationists. Important part of legal history. The evolution of the legalese is somewhat interesting.