ABOUT THIS BOOK

Bodily Matters explores the anti-vaccination movement that emerged in England in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth in response to government-mandated smallpox vaccination. By requiring a painful and sometimes dangerous medical procedure for all infants, the Compulsory Vaccination Act set an important precedent for state regulation of bodies. From its inception in 1853 until its demise in 1907, the compulsory smallpox vaccine was fiercely resisted, largely by members of the working class who interpreted it as an infringement of their rights as citizens and a violation of their children’s bodies. Nadja Durbach contends that the anti-vaccination movement is historically significant not only because it was arguably the largest medical resistance campaign ever mounted in Europe but also because it clearly articulated pervasive anxieties regarding the integrity of the body and the role of the modern state.

Analyzing historical documents on both sides of the vaccination debate, Durbach focuses on the key events and rhetorical strategies of the resistance campaign. She shows that those for and against the vaccine had very different ideas about how human bodies worked and how best to safeguard them from disease. Individuals opposed to mandatory vaccination saw their own and their children’s bodies not as potentially contagious and thus dangerous to society but rather as highly vulnerable to contamination and violation. Bodily Matters challenges the notion that resistance to vaccination can best be understood, and thus easily dismissed, as the ravings of an unscientific “lunatic fringe.” It locates the anti-vaccination movement at the very center of broad public debates in Victorian England over medical developments, the politics of class, the extent of government intervention into the private lives of its citizens, and the values of a liberal society.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Nadja Durbach is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City.

REVIEWS

“All too often the large-scale resistance to compulsory vaccination in England has been treated as a quaint case study in ‘anti-modern’ or ‘irrational’ opposition to scientific progress. Nadja Durbach has made a key contribution to modern British history in particular and to the analysis of class culture more generally by rescuing this resistance to state medicine from what E. P. Thompson memorably termed ‘the enormous condescension of posterity.’”—George Behlmer, author of Friends of the Family: The English Home and Its Guardians, 1850–1940

“This fascinating book uses the anti-vaccination movement to illuminate our understanding of the major themes in nineteenth-century British history: the nature of liberalism, class tensions, and resistance to state intervention. Beautifully written, it brings the movement to life.”—Anna Clark, author of Scandal: The Sexual Politics of the British Constitution

“Bodily Matters is a sophisticated and persuasive project; it evokes timely questions on the body and the state and suggests some thought-provoking answers. The book will certainly be of value to any of us interested in the sociology of medicine, the sociology of the body, social movements, and British history.”

-- Sigal Gooldin American Journal of Sociology

“Durbach's account of the anti-vaccination movement is clearly and forcefully written and provides an authoritative survey of Victorian debates about the role of the state in disease prevention. Bodily Matters will engage anyone interested in public health and the history of epidemiology, and post–9/11 fears about bioterrorism and the looming threat of a bird flu pandemic may broaden the audience for this text.”

-- Solveig C. Robinson Perspectives in Biology and Medicine

“Nadja Durbach’s Bodily Matters is a rigorously researched and sensitive account of antivaccinationism in Victorian and Edwardian England that combines the insights of the history of medicine, political history, and the social and cultural histories of class and gender.”

-- Ian Burney Journal of Modern History

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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