Introduction
Children have been crucial to the entire history of vaccinationism. Of course, children are the main recipients of vaccination today, and historically also. However, the use of children by the vaccination paradigm goes beyond this. In this essay we will look at how children were used in inoculation and vaccination experiments, how they were used to bolster the image of inoculation, and with vaccination, how they were transported as a method of maintaining vaccine lymph.
Children as Test Subjects
Inoculation was deliberately infecting someone with smallpox, via taking matter from a live smallpox case (usually a mild case) and inserting it into someone else’s arm in the hopes that they would also get a mild case. This practise was introduced into England by Lady Montagu, after she had observed it being used in Turkey. After the practice was introduced, members of the elite were interested in the procedure, but were not willing to commit to the process. To satisfy the Princess of Wales, 6 charity children were inoculated. After they survived the procedure, she had her own children inoculated.
In vaccination too children were important. Edward Jenner’s original testing of vaccination was performed on an 8-year-old child, James Phipps. John Baker was another child that Jenner carried out experiments upon, and it is a plausible interpretation of the facts that he died as a result of the experiment. These children were from poorer backgrounds.
There are many other examples of doctors testing vaccination upon children in different countries. For example, in Calcutta in 1805, the British wanted to convince the traditional Indian inoculators to switch to vaccination. As such, they ran a public test where they vaccinated children publicly and then performed the variolous test by inoculating them with smallpox to demonstrate immunity. A similar demonstration also happened in France in 1801.
Children as Example
In the adoption of inoculation, the use of elite children as an ‘example’ of the effectiveness and value of inoculation was common. A publicised inoculation of a child of the elite was used as a means to bolster the practice and to demonstrate an elite belief in its safety. It could also serve as a means of signalling status to other elites and the population at large.
This was the case with Lady Montagu, who had her own son and daughter inoculated as a means of introducing the procedure to England. Maitland, Lady Montagu’s physician, promoted inoculation as parental love. In 1722, the British royal princesses were inoculated.
Inoculation fell out of favour until the 1750s, when it had a resurgence. The Duke of Orleans had his children inoculated in 1756, and these children were cheered when taken to the opera after recovering from the procedure. in 1760, the King of Denmark had his son inoculated which showed his belief in the procedure.
After the introduction of vaccination in 1798 onwards, the example of individual aristocrats seems less important and is less heavily emphasised. This could be due to the changing times, where aristocratic families would start to play second fiddle to the rising capitalist class.
Children as Carriers of Lymph
In inoculation, preservation and maintenance of smallpox matter was not a concern. One could always get new inoculation matter from a smallpox case. However, in vaccination, maintaining an active supply of lymph was a real problem. Cowpox was not a very common disease, which meant extracting matter from the cow whenever vaccinations were required was not feasible. There were attempts to preserve cowpox for a longer term by soaking it in threads, but when this method was tried to send lymph over long distances, the lymph often lost its potency (ability to form the vesicles by which vaccination success was judged). As such alternative methods were considered to carry vaccine lymph over long distances.
In 1803, King Carlos of Spain announced a vaccine expedition to Spanish America and the Philippines, using children as a means to preserve vaccine lymph. Children would be taken on the boat and vaccinated in sequence across the ocean journey, to ensure active vaccine lymph at the end of the journey. This trip went from Tenerife to Puerto Rico as well as Cuba, Mexico and Peru. During certain parts of the land trip, freshly vaccinated children were also used to convey lymph.
In India in 1803, there was a plan to send vaccination to Sumatra. Vaccination had successfully reached India a year prior. 14 children were recruited to be vaccinated two at a time on the voyage. Children were taken from the Military Orphan School, which was a school for the children of military Europeans in India (the children may not have been orphans in the literal sense).
Conclusion
Children are vital to modern vaccinationism as its purported beneficiaries and serve a vital ideological function in the promotion of vaccines. This article seeks to show that this has always been the case.
The book M. Bennett, War against Smallpox, and the Article “Carrying the Pox: The Use of Children and Ideals of Childhood in Early British and Imperial Campaigns Against Smallpox” were used to compile this article.
