December 3, 2025 • 35 mins
Many Americans have turned their backs on the vax, but early Early Americans would literally have killed for some vaccines.
In this episode, we explore the history of America's first vaccines, which can be traced to a mandate from none other than General George Washington. Dr. Kathryn Olivarius (author of Necropolis: Disease, Power, and Capitalism in the Cotton Kingdom) explains the surprising story of how vaccines shaped American life — from smallpox inoculations during the Revolution to modern-day debates over public health and personal freedom.
We're going to poke and jab at history to see why vaccine resistance isn’t new, and how the fight between science, religion, and politics has defined 250 years of American medicine.
GUEST: Kathryn Olivarius, author of Necropolis: Disease, Power, and Capitalism in the Cotton Kingdom
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is quite disgusting. I hope everyone come to listen
to disgusting things. You take a pustrol of somebody with smallpox,
it's pussing. You try it, you will. You put into
a more impuzzle and basically grind it down and then
you snort it. Or you put that into your arm,
or you put a fresh puss into your arm basically too.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
So how did they figure this out?
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Trial and error? I suppose.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
You've reached American History Hotline. You asked the questions, we
get the answers, leave a message. Hey, they're American History Hotliners.
Your host, Bob Crawford here, happy to be joining you
again for another episode of American History Hotline. You're the
(00:47):
ones with the questions. I'm a guy trying to get
some answers and keep those questions coming. The best way
to get us a question is to record a video
or a voice memo on your phone and email it
to American History hot Line Line at gmail dot com.
That's American History Hotline at gmail dot com. Okay, today's
(01:08):
question is about medicine and vaccines. Here to help me
answer this question about vaccines is our old friend Catherine
Oliverius She's an associate professor of history at Stanford University,
specializing in nineteenth century US history. Catherine, thanks for joining
me today.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Delighted as always.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Okay, Catherine, here's a question we were hoping you could
answer for us. This comes from Henry from Duluth, Minnesota.
I was wondering what was the first vaccine mandate in
the United States.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
It's a great question, and this was actually the first
vaccine mandate was from General George Washington during the American
the American Revolution. So when we think about the history
of vaccinations, really the disease that we're thinking about is
the long history is smallpox. So I can guarantee you
(02:03):
that nobody listening to this podcast has actually personally experienced smallpox.
This is an amazing feat of modern public health. The
fact that we have not had to had any experience
with this personally and cross fingers of that persists that
the eradication of this, which has happened since the nineteen eighties,
persist into the future. So smallpox was this is caused
(02:26):
by the variola virus, and this was this had been
a it's been it's been with us for about ten
thousand years. But Akime to North America on ships European
ships during the colonial period, and we see various outbreaks
of smallpox throughout the eighteenth century. So Boston, for example,
(02:49):
has a series of very very serious outbreaks of smallpox
in their early seventeen hundreds, seventeen fifties, all the way
up into the Lutionary period. And smallpox is honestly one
of the most horrifying diseases that's ever existed. You will
be infected, you don't necessarily know that you're infected for
(03:11):
some time. Then you suddenly developed this horrible, this horrible
rash across these pustules all over your body, and you know,
it's extremely painful, it's sort of hideous to behold. Many
many accounts we have, you know, from Don Adams, for example,
who innocuated himself and we'll talk about that in the
second from Smallpox. He just wrote these disgusting sort of
(03:34):
accounts of what it was like to actually see somebody
who had to experience a serious case of smallpox. And
this is a really serious disease. So if you were
to contract smallpox in the eighteenth century, if you were
in you know, Massachusetts Colony, you had about the chances
of dying were about thirty percent, so that's that's pretty high. Now,
(03:55):
enter a few different things. So we know that smallpoxes
existed for a long time. We also known that humans
have developed ways to not vaccinate yet but to seek
to control it, so through inoculation or through what was
called vari elation. So this happened to nation China. This
also happened in the Middle East, and certainly happened in
(04:16):
West Africa where basically, you take a pustrel what are it?
This is quite disgusting. I hope everyone likes to listen
to disgusting things. When you take a pustrol of somebody
with smallpox that's pussing, you dry it, you will, you
put into a more impustle and basically grind it down
and then you snort it, or you put that into
your arm, or you put a fresh puss into your
(04:38):
arm basically too.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
So how did they figure this out?
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Trial and error? I suppose this is this is this
is the idea that basically, and this is one of
the most amazing things about the history of medicine and
history of public health is that you you know, we
don't we don't have any one single account of who
the person who decided that this was the good idea
to do this the first time. This is kind of
clearly like it's kind of folk knowledge that exis that
people knew that this was a way that you could
(05:03):
defend against, you know, a more serious case of smallpox.
And so actually the person who's most credited with this
is Lady Mary Montague. She was the wife of the
ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, a British woman, and she
developed smallpox, became very scarred herself. She survived, but she
decided she brought this knowledge back with her to England
when she when they returned, and she decided to inoculate
(05:24):
her three year old daughter. So that means basically taking
a person who has got a mild case, a mild
case of smallpox, grinding up this the pushles or else
taking puss from there and then cutting your cutting, you know,
cutting yourself and putting that puss into your own hoping
basically because it's this a mild case that yield a
novele mild case. And this also was this came to
(05:46):
the United States. Cotton Mather, who was a very famous
Puritan minister, was told how to do this by his
enslaved man, an inslaved man from the person he owned
from West Africa named Owniesmis who basically hold cotton Mather
this how to do this? That clearly is suggesting that
this has been done in West Africa where he's from
(06:06):
from he was a corp ante man. And so we
see this this idea basically that you can reduce you know,
you can't entirely get rid of the risk, but you
can reduce the risk if you introduce a sort of milder,
seemingly milder version of this disease. And so we see
this is this comes to Boston. It's controversial at the
time because it is safer. It's certainly safer. So if
(06:27):
you do this, if you inoculate, you have you know,
the death rate drops from thirty percent to one to
two percent, so it's certainly safer. But you know, one
to two percent still is significant. And so this is
controversial too.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
So didn't Jonathan Edwards, who was a theologian and I
think he was the head of what became Princeton University,
he actually died from the back from inoculating himself.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
This is this is actually not uncommon, right, So that's like, yes,
so this is this is this is not that uncommon
that you would, you know, in seeking to cure or
seeking to protect yourself long term, you actually then kill yourself.
And for this reason, so a lot of people, you know,
very riggious people actually thought that they you know, at
one point, you know, many many times cotton ether, for example,
(07:13):
was basically assaulted on the streets where people saying, this
is your interrupting God's will. If God wants you to
die for small pox, you should of course, you know
this is this is trying to plead God. You're interfering with,
you know, the divine will. People also said, and this
is correct too, which is that you know this is
this is a this is basically an uncontrolled experiment. So
(07:33):
you had to combine inoculation with quarantine. So if you
inoculate yourself, then you have got to go into quarantine
and be apart from other people who are vulnerable. Otherwise
you could unwittingly start spreading this infection. And that did happen.
So where you see sort of campaigns for variolation, inoculation,
this kind of thing. Suddenly you see outbreaks of smallpox
(07:54):
that happened that kill many people, so it can get
out of control. So for these reasons, but you know,
fast forward to the revel we see small smallpox is
a problem that afflicts many, many soldiers, many Continental soldiers
who do have never had exposure to this virus. And
again they're moving, moving around the country, they're sort of
stirring this biotic soup. And Washington in particular is very
(08:17):
very nervous about this because smallpox did prove to be
a problem during various sieges in Canada with Benedict Arnold,
with many ass with many regiments during this war. You
see basically smallpox being so serious that it again impedes
the Continental army is ability to actually fight and wage war.
(08:38):
So quite controversially, and he did stick to his guns
on this, but Washington mandated that the entire Continental Army
would be but would be inoculated for smallpox.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
So this is a vaccine mandate.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
It's well, it's not a vaccine yet, but this is
an inocula. We call it an inoculation mandate. This is
the sort of four runner to vaccines.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Yeah, and this is the first of its kind.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Yeah, first of its kind, and it was controversial at
the time. A lot of people. My goodness, a lot
of people were really nervous about this, and also it
was kept secret because Washington rightly said, my goodness, we
have to do this really carefully, because if the British
find out that we are doing this campaign of sort
of mass inoculation, keeping all of these soldiers sort of
(09:21):
away from the front in quarantine, being quartered in individuals
private homes, it would leave all manner of cities very
vulnerable to attack. So this was this is a massive
undertaking to try to get as many soldiers as possible
inoculated with from smallpox. But it did eventually pay off
in the end, but it was small you know. And
Washington himself, in fact, there's some speculation about this from historians,
(09:45):
but when he was nineteen, he traveled to the West Indies.
He contracted smallpox on this trip and almost died himself.
And this is probably actually some historian suggest that this
is what made him infertile so that he could never
have biological children. In fact, to you so ever, it's
one of these interesting things where every single person has
this kind of personal experience with this disease, and everyone
(10:08):
recognizes too that once you become infected with the disease.
If you die, you die, but if you survive, you
become immune. And this is a really effect. You know,
this is going to be one of the most important
weapons in the Continental Army's arsenal.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
So at one point though, there was a mandate for
smallpox inoculation.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
Yeah, so this is in seventeen seventy seven. This is
when Washington puts in this mandate saying that all soldiers
would have to be inoculated, and you would do it
in stages so that you know, you wouldn't basically you
wouldn't be compromising in the entire army all at once.
And so this is this is really effective. Of course,
the Americans, we you know, win the Revolutionary War and
(10:49):
soon thereafter in the seventeen nineties, this is when Jenner's
very famous vaccine, vaccine for small box that get came about.
So what we're dealing with for this is this process
of variolation or inoculation. It's a little bit different from vaccination.
So with the smallpox vaccination, this is the first of
its kind. And so basically what happened is so Jenner
(11:13):
isn't He's an Englishman, and he notices that women who
were milkmaids who were contracting cowpox, this much less serious disease,
were quite resistance, quite resistant to smallpox. And so he
decides essentially that he sees a connection here, and other
people had seen this connection in the past and had
(11:34):
sort of tried to had sort of worked at creating
kind of early vaccines, but he was the first to
really document this and then make it into a kind
of usable technology that could be used for other diseases
going forward. So Jenner then decides basically he's gonna take
the pus from a small pop from a cowpox victim
(11:54):
and give it to inoculate somebody, a young boy who
then and then he then introduce smallpox to them, and
they did not contract this disease. So this is the
first vaccine, which is basically that this is where this
is a vaccine that's based on a bovine smallpox, a
smallpox virus, this cowpox, and this is actually the origin
of the word vaccine vadka cow So that's that's where
(12:18):
that comes from. So there thereafter, this is the first
major vaccine in world history and it saved you know,
three It's estimated that approximately three in tred million people
have died of smallpox. This is basically the population of
the United States today. So this is obviously a huge
public health victory in you know, one of the one
(12:38):
of the really key turning points in the history of
disease and humanity.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
What what what were the first states to embrace this
vaccine so all over the place?
Speaker 1 (12:49):
So it actually this is this is this is one
of these interesting things too, where not every this was
not necessarily done by you know, the state was not
necessarily involved in a sort of large capacity necessarily. You know,
this was often done by sort of individual hospitals or
if you were rich, you might pay for it. You
might pay a private doctor to do this. But this is,
this is not necessarily this was not the state implementing
(13:14):
any kind of vaccine mandate. There. We don't see that
again until much much much later, until the twentieth century actually,
where we have sort of vaccine mandates coming back into
play again. But you have you know, then what we
sort of we're sitting here to you with the smallpox vaccine.
These I think quite familiar debates to us about these
(13:35):
sort of ethics of public health and the ethics of
being against vaccines and what it means to have individual
rights versus the public good and getting to that sort
of crucial stage of herd immunity, so that you know,
basically that means that enough people in a society, in
a community have immunity to this disease that it can't
really set in, it can't ever really penetrate, so you
(13:58):
don't have epidemics, and that's getting that threshold is really difficult.
But throughout the nineteenth century this was controversial. It was
controversial back then. It wasn't as controversial as it is
perhaps today. But we see these kinds of you know,
the sort of the seeds of anti vaccine on this
this ideology that really take place, that really sort of
(14:18):
take hold in the end of the eighteenth century nineteenth century.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
So so we can say that smallpox was the first vaccine, yes, yes,
in the United States, What was the next one to
come along?
Speaker 1 (14:31):
So what happens We sort of have like a break
for about almost a century at this point then and
then we have a sort of slew of vaccines that
come on to the scene, all basically because of Louis Pastor.
And so Louis Pastor, he is so very famous for
pasteurizing milk, pasteurizing actually wine and beer at the time
(14:53):
to basically to make things safer to ingest and make
them last long. What ended up having He was looking
for a cure for rabies, and he was looking for
a cure for cholera, and he was doing experiments. And
this is you know, this actually did happen. It's really
quite serendipitous and sort of the magic of the way
(15:14):
that scientific discoveries happen, which is that they were working
on basically trying to find a cure isolated cure for
chicken cholera foul colera in his lab. And he told
one of his assistants before he went on holiday, inject
this live culture into like into the into these chickens.
(15:34):
The assistant forgot to do it, came back a month
later after being on holiday and said, oh my goodness, okay,
so he then injected this material into the chickens. This
the the cow the excuse me of the chicken colera.
And they noticed that then these chickens did not get
sick with cholera. There was something about this this virus
(15:55):
that had been sitting out for a month made it
less virulent and how and it also again then gave
an unity. So this is the first live attenuated what
we call a live attenuated virus a vaccine. So we
have basically here we have Lea Paster coming up with
the with these live attenuated vaccines for not just chicken cholera,
but then for rabies, and then we see other doctors
(16:17):
take on, you know, they're as sort of vaccine technology
is developing. We see a vaccine come in by eighteen
ninety six for typhoid fever, then for cholera, also then
for bubotic plague, tuberculosis a massive killer worldwide, still a
massive killer worldwide. We see a vaccine for that diphtheria, tetanus,
(16:39):
pertussis or whooping cough. As we're going into the sort
of the early twentieth century, yellow fever a big one,
and then probably the one that most people most listeners
are sort of familiar with, the probably had themselves. Actually
were the polio vaccines that these are either these were
by Saban and Salk, the salt vaccine. This was basically
instead of a polio had been this horrible disease that
(17:03):
had you know, afflicted many, many, many thousands of people,
especially in the late summer. Of course, our president FDR
developed polio almost dictroment, but was therefore incapacitated for the
rest of his life after contracting polio. So this was
a huge just a huge step forward to have the
sort of salt you know, the vaccine which you know
(17:24):
was basically still given up until very recently, which is
just a few drops of the vaccine on a sugar cube.
And this saved generations of children from having to be
an iron lungs or from death for many many centuries.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Yeah, let's talk about vaccines and school children. Hm, so
when did this idea of vaccinating young children or even
vaccine mandates in schools become become in vogue.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
This is, this has been arived for many many years,
certainly since the early twentieth century, This idea that you
have a vaccine for a what is now you know,
for these incredibly contagious, very dangerous, very fatal childhood elements
like measles or mumps or rubella, these kinds of diseases
that actually this should be something that all children should
(18:16):
have from a young age. And this is by the way,
drastically reduced child and for mortality across the board. So
this is you know, we are talking just a massive
drop in the number of children that die from what
are today now highly curable or you know, highly sort
of preventable infectious diseases like measles, for example. And so
(18:37):
there's no one moment when these sort of what schools,
for example, would adopt requirements for vaccine mandates for children
and happens in pathworks, and it of course doesn't happen.
There's always been exceptions in the American system that are
either you know, sort of basically granted by the state
religious exceptions to getting a vaccine or else otherwise personal
(18:59):
except that you can sort of apply for that apply
to have your kid not be vaccinated. But we're talking
about you know, really from the nineteen thirties, nineteen forties,
ninteen fifties, and the idea of also vaccinating children. You know,
parents would line their children up for this aft vaccine,
for polio vaccine because this is such a you know,
a terrifying disease that would you know, just you know,
(19:23):
it would cause so much pain and angst and apparent
too that you know, they were people were adamant that
they wanted to get as you know, get their child
vaccinated as quickly as possible to prevent such a terrible thing.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
So there was less vaccine hesitation in the nineteen thirties
and forties.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Yes, it existed, certain and it most certainly existed. But
I think the sort of the perhaps the real moment
for vaccine hesitation, this came with the MMR. This came
with measles, and this now highly discredited paper that linked measles,
the measle vaccine with autism. And this has now since
been discredited many, many many times over in various large
(20:05):
scale academic in many large scale studies. And you know
this is there is no connection. I mean, there are
risks associated with vaccinations, certainly, most certainly nothing is totally
perfect or totally one hundred percent safe. But you know, fundamentally,
the you know, it's about balancing risk with reward, which
(20:26):
is the risk is contracting a disease, and also the
reward is not just saving your child or yourself potentially
from a disease that has killed millions of people in
the past. That people, you know, if you lived two
hundred years ago, mothers and fathers would have killed for
a vaccine for you know, measles. If they you know,
if they had access to it, because I've seen many,
(20:47):
many letters with this effect of parents who are just
you know, watching their child die, you know, from the
eighteen forties, from New Orleans or from New York. It's
just it's it's you know this, this is a universal
and sort of timeless experience of not wanting your children
to have pain. So, you know, this is there's you know,
there are risks associated with vaccines, certainly, and some people
do have adverse reactions, but the disease is worse. Just
(21:09):
the disease is worse, and so that's really that sort
of back to headn't seen. Of course, this took off
during COVID, especially fueled by social media and by you know,
everyone being a sort of armchair position themselves becoming a
self styled expert.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
This is American History Hotline. I'm your host, Bob Crawford. Today.
My guest is Catherine Olivarius. She's an associate professor of
history at Stanford University, specializing in nineteenth century US history.
We're talking about repeating history over and over again and
never seeming to learn any lessons when it comes to vaccines.
(21:51):
Your first book, Necropolis, Disease, Power and capitalism in the
Cotton Kingdom isn't so much about vaccines, but it's it's
about a way to inoculate yourself from yellow fever.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
Yes, and so again the vaccine for yellow fever, it
will come about until nineteen thirty seven. So and I
deal with the nineteenth century. So we're dealing with, you know,
with a century before. And this is a mosquito born illness,
yellow fever that was during the nineteent century, probably the
most terrifying disease in the Atlantic world. This is a disease,
you know, you get bitten by a mosquito within a
(22:27):
few days, and they did not know that it was
spread by mosquitos. But within a few days or a
few hours, you developed these symptoms of nausea, you back pain.
Eventually you sort of you developed jauntice as your organs
start to fail, and then the sort of telltale symptom happens,
which is black vomit where you regurgitate up this sort
of partly coagulated blood that looks a lot like coffee groans,
(22:50):
and then patients would lapse into a coma and die.
It's a very very painful way to die in many
in many ways the sort of most similar, sort of
similar symptomatically disease that most people would be familiar with
today would be ebola. Of course, yellow fever still exists,
but so there's no cure, there's no inoculation, there's no
vaccination for this disease. People did not understand how it
(23:13):
was spread or why some people developed only very mild
cases while other people died, But they did understand that
if you survived a case of yellow fever, you would
become a mean for a life. You have a very thorough,
very durable immunity, and your chances, by the way of
acquiring this immunity are not good. If you became sick
with yellow fever in the nineteenth century, you had basically
(23:35):
a fifty to fifty chance of survival. So that's really
that's extraordinarily high, high chance of dying, very very high.
But again, if you survived, you became a mean for
a life. And so my first book, Necropolis, was all
about people basically seeking out this immunity. It was so valuable,
so important to the sort of social and economic structure
(23:58):
of the cotton kind, where you know, if you wanted
to be basically, if you wanted to be a successful person,
you had to demonstrate somehow that you were immune to
yellow fever, because otherwise people wouldn't invest in you. You
couldn't get a job, you can get credit, because you
were just going through to be too risky. So my
whole book is basically about how this desire to chase
this disease, to acquire this very valuable immunity to it,
(24:22):
how this permeated the entire sort of ethos of the
Cotton Kingdom.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
And what I thought was really fascinating about your research
was how some cities got better than others at instituting
public health measures. Yes, talk about those who were successful
i GAT versus those who were not.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Yeah, So this is so the nineteenth century in many ways,
we can sort of consider this to be the kind
of the genesis moment for the states seeking to know
the state the nation or individual states seeking to try
to control or at the very least ameliorate disease for citizens.
(25:06):
So you'll see, for example, in cities like New York
or Philadelphia where a you know, yellow fever actually was
occasionally a problem in these cities. It can go all
the way up to temperate zones, though it's most associated
with tropical or subtropical climates, but it can go you know.
So we have periodic outbreaks of yellow fever, but also
of cholera in the eighteen thirties and eighteen forties and fifties.
(25:29):
We also have smallpox outbreaks, things like this, and so
we have basically doctors in public health specialists thinking, okay,
so what are our options. We don't really understand how
these diseases are spread. Some of them are quite obviously contagious,
and by contagious, what they meant was spread by humans
human contact, so me touching you, for example, and giving
(25:50):
you smallpox or giving you syphilis. Some diseases they also said,
were maismatic, basically the kind of organic result of dirty
city living. So basically, you know, of organic matter under
the sun baking and creating these foul vapors. They thought
that literally this bad smell was the cause of disease.
So they don't really know a lot about how if
(26:12):
epidemiality of these diseases are working in New York. But
they say, Okay, what we're gonna do is we're gonna
experiment because it's better than having, you know, trying and
failing is better than not trying at all. And so
where New Orleans, essentially the political culture was, we can't
prevent yellow fever, We're gonna throw our hands up. We're
never gonna institute quarantines because they're unpopular, because they stemy business,
(26:33):
because they you know, it means that rich people can't
get richer, essentially, and businessmen always hate quarantines no matter
where you are, they always hate them. So New Orleans
they never do them. But New York has many quarantine stations,
in fact, not just for yellow fever, but again for
smallpox or for plague. So if you you know, if
(26:53):
you're a ship coming into port, you would have a
health inspector come on board and determine if there was
any infectious disease on board, and then they would maybe
quarantine the entire ship if there was, or they would
take it to a quarantine station and let the people. Basically,
you know, the people would be in isolation for twenty
forty days depending on the illness. So you see states
(27:16):
and cities seeking to institute these quarantines and build more
robust infrastructure to actually handle quarantines. You also, in addition
to this, have cities that are taking a more active
role in building hospitals that are funded by the state,
not just by private institutions or as was pretty typical,
the church, whether it be a sort of the Methodist
(27:37):
or the Protestant Church or the Catholic Church at this time.
And you also have cities that are now engaged in
data collection, seeing it is their responsibility essentially to say,
what is the incidence of this disease? How often are
people dying from a thing? Where are they dying? Who
is dying? Can we collect the kind of vital data
so that we can draw some patterns to that we
(27:58):
can use for future epidemic to try to prevent disease.
And so you see this this you know, and again
it's not perfect. You know, there are again when you
don't know that germs exist, how can you really prevent
against germs? And you know, people are drinking dirty water,
you know constantly there if you live in a city,
you are living essentially, you know, in close proximity to
(28:18):
people and animals and dirt and filth. Every street was
essentially just a sewer. So you're you know, in constant process.
You know, this is this is the kind of situation
we're dealing with in iron life at this time. But
we see some concervative efforts in certain places, with politicians
and specialists taking sometimes unpopular decisions to try to protect
the public sealth.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
And so just like public health measures like quarantines, yeah,
provoke a backlash. It's always been that vaccines throughout American
history have provoked backlashes as well.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Yeah, and I think that they've certainly produced a backlash.
I think that what we're seeing we've seen a sort
of the volume dialed up in the last five years
with COVID, with COVID nineteen and mRNA vaccines in general,
where we see this kind of vaccine hesitancy co mingle
with a sort of larger distrust with the state, with
(29:16):
a kind of politics that saw state and dimensions during
COVID as uneven or in retrospect overbearing things like this.
So you see this, we've seen a sort of a
massive increase.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
And also, I hate to interrupt you, Catherine, but it
seems also that there is a suspicion against expertise, right,
People are suspicious of expertise.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
Yeah, and so I'm sure that most people have probably
come into contact with us at some point, but it's
the criticism lodged at the COVID nineteen vaccinations, you know,
fairly or unfairly I suppose, or that it happened so quickly,
it came out, you know, so so quickly, And that's
I sort of so like you know, most of the
time with you know, all these vaccines that we're talking
(30:04):
about from the past, smallpox, polio, you know, in doleenza,
these are all vaccines that took many, many years to develop,
and so I think people rightly said, you know, how
can we roll out this vaccine so quickly within in
twenty twenty in some cases, how are we doing this?
And well, I mean, actually what ends up happening is
(30:24):
that during the pandemic, a lot of the sort of
you know, the exhibitencase of this massive public health crisis
around the world meant that a lot of red tape
was cut so that you could sort of move things
through faster. And also one of the sort of most
amazing things is that we had the kind of you know,
mRNA vaccines. These are not you know, we were familiar
with coronaviruses. We know what these are, and so we
had the kind of like superstructure for creating this particular
(30:47):
vaccine already before this, before COVID nineteen came to you know,
came to American shores. This is so you know, we
basically had the kind of software for this and we
could kind of pug and play with the you know,
with this particular virus, COVID nineteen. So it happened quickly,
but it's been you know, hugely effective, and you know,
(31:09):
today public health specialists argue that you know, basically with
the role out of with the rollout of the vaccine Maderna, Orfiser,
Johnson and Johnson, that saved approximately three million American lives.
That's a large number of people. And so it's you know,
it's easy to recall the hardship of social isolation and
being sick and the problem with the economy and schools
(31:30):
and things like this, but also we did save a
lot of lives during COVID nineteen, and it's it's interesting
that how we think about how our perspective changes as
we move sort of further away from this, but that
the vaccine was this is a huge triumph that saved
not just American lives but people around the world.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
Of course, yeah, I know, you specialized in the United
States history, as do we. But do other countries and
governments struggle with opposition to vaccine mandates or is this
a uniquely American thing?
Speaker 1 (31:59):
Oh? Certainly, other countries most certainly do as well. I
would say that these sort of a this is a
particularly American kind of flare right now. That is, it
speaks with you know, the Internet speaks with an American accent,
and what we're seeing, you know, the sort of discourse
on the discourse on vaccines very much as always sort
(32:19):
of put through the lens of the American the particular
American situation. But I grew up in the UK and
vaccinations are not We're not uncontroversial. They were less controversial.
And I remember just as a kid, you know, being
put into the nurs's office and say, like, you know,
give your arm and have a BCD vaccine. And I
don't think my parents ever signed any kind of like,
you know, give any authorization for this, but you know,
(32:41):
this was what you did and so and I and
I don't recall there's there there is pushback that has
been amplified by the Internet, where people who actually have
quite fringe views have been able to find community quite easily.
But you can't, you know, let the people who shout
out on the internet control what it is that you do.
(33:02):
And you know, vaccines are safe, they are reliable, and
my goodness, I don't want to have measles. I don't
want my daughter to have measles. And I don't you
know these are these are diseases that I you know,
it's there's a certain kind of as a historian of
disease and death in this way, you know, I think
if I were to talk to a mom and and
I see this again in letters and diaries from the
(33:23):
eighteen fours and fifties of parents who are watching their
child die from what is today an easily controllable disease,
and I think it's, you know, the sort of the
height of historical arrogance in some sense to say that
we know better, you know, we are. I feel so
much community with that woman actually too. And you know
she would kill for vaccine if she possibly could have
(33:45):
known what that was.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Well said Catherine. I've been talking with Catherine Olivarius. She's
an associate professor of history at Stanford University. Check out
her latest book, Necropolis, Disease, Power and Capitalism in the
Cotton Kingdom. Catherine, thank you for helping us answer this
question today.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
It's been my pleasure. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
You've been listening to American History Hotline, a production of
iHeart Podcasts and Scratch Track Productions. The show's executive producer
is James Morrison. Our executive producers from iHeart are Jordan
Runtall and Jason English. Original music composed by me Bob Crawford.
Please keep in touch. Our email is Americanhistory Hotline at
(34:35):
gmail dot com. If you like the show, please tell
your friends and leave us a review in Apple Podcasts.
I'm your host, Bob Crawford. Feel free to hit me
up on social media to ask a history question or
to let me know what you think of the show.
You can find me at Bob Crawford Base. Thanks so
(34:56):
much for listening. See you next week.
This is quite disgusting. I hope everyone come to listen
to disgusting things. You take a pustrol of somebody with smallpox,
it's pussing. You try it, you will. You put into
a more impuzzle and basically grind it down and then
you snort it. Or you put that into your arm,
or you put a fresh puss into your arm basically too.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
So how did they figure this out?
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Trial and error? I suppose.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
You've reached American History Hotline. You asked the questions, we
get the answers, leave a message. Hey, they're American History Hotliners.
Your host, Bob Crawford here, happy to be joining you
again for another episode of American History Hotline. You're the
(00:47):
ones with the questions. I'm a guy trying to get
some answers and keep those questions coming. The best way
to get us a question is to record a video
or a voice memo on your phone and email it
to American History hot Line Line at gmail dot com.
That's American History Hotline at gmail dot com. Okay, today's
(01:08):
question is about medicine and vaccines. Here to help me
answer this question about vaccines is our old friend Catherine
Oliverius She's an associate professor of history at Stanford University,
specializing in nineteenth century US history. Catherine, thanks for joining
me today.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Delighted as always.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Okay, Catherine, here's a question we were hoping you could
answer for us. This comes from Henry from Duluth, Minnesota.
I was wondering what was the first vaccine mandate in
the United States.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
It's a great question, and this was actually the first
vaccine mandate was from General George Washington during the American
the American Revolution. So when we think about the history
of vaccinations, really the disease that we're thinking about is
the long history is smallpox. So I can guarantee you
(02:03):
that nobody listening to this podcast has actually personally experienced smallpox.
This is an amazing feat of modern public health. The
fact that we have not had to had any experience
with this personally and cross fingers of that persists that
the eradication of this, which has happened since the nineteen eighties,
persist into the future. So smallpox was this is caused
(02:26):
by the variola virus, and this was this had been
a it's been it's been with us for about ten
thousand years. But Akime to North America on ships European
ships during the colonial period, and we see various outbreaks
of smallpox throughout the eighteenth century. So Boston, for example,
(02:49):
has a series of very very serious outbreaks of smallpox
in their early seventeen hundreds, seventeen fifties, all the way
up into the Lutionary period. And smallpox is honestly one
of the most horrifying diseases that's ever existed. You will
be infected, you don't necessarily know that you're infected for
(03:11):
some time. Then you suddenly developed this horrible, this horrible
rash across these pustules all over your body, and you know,
it's extremely painful, it's sort of hideous to behold. Many
many accounts we have, you know, from Don Adams, for example,
who innocuated himself and we'll talk about that in the
second from Smallpox. He just wrote these disgusting sort of
(03:34):
accounts of what it was like to actually see somebody
who had to experience a serious case of smallpox. And
this is a really serious disease. So if you were
to contract smallpox in the eighteenth century, if you were
in you know, Massachusetts Colony, you had about the chances
of dying were about thirty percent, so that's that's pretty high. Now,
(03:55):
enter a few different things. So we know that smallpoxes
existed for a long time. We also known that humans
have developed ways to not vaccinate yet but to seek
to control it, so through inoculation or through what was
called vari elation. So this happened to nation China. This
also happened in the Middle East, and certainly happened in
(04:16):
West Africa where basically, you take a pustrel what are it?
This is quite disgusting. I hope everyone likes to listen
to disgusting things. When you take a pustrol of somebody
with smallpox that's pussing, you dry it, you will, you
put into a more impustle and basically grind it down
and then you snort it, or you put that into
your arm, or you put a fresh puss into your
(04:38):
arm basically too.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
So how did they figure this out?
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Trial and error? I suppose this is this is this
is the idea that basically, and this is one of
the most amazing things about the history of medicine and
history of public health is that you you know, we
don't we don't have any one single account of who
the person who decided that this was the good idea
to do this the first time. This is kind of
clearly like it's kind of folk knowledge that exis that
people knew that this was a way that you could
(05:03):
defend against, you know, a more serious case of smallpox.
And so actually the person who's most credited with this
is Lady Mary Montague. She was the wife of the
ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, a British woman, and she
developed smallpox, became very scarred herself. She survived, but she
decided she brought this knowledge back with her to England
when she when they returned, and she decided to inoculate
(05:24):
her three year old daughter. So that means basically taking
a person who has got a mild case, a mild
case of smallpox, grinding up this the pushles or else
taking puss from there and then cutting your cutting, you know,
cutting yourself and putting that puss into your own hoping
basically because it's this a mild case that yield a
novele mild case. And this also was this came to
(05:46):
the United States. Cotton Mather, who was a very famous
Puritan minister, was told how to do this by his
enslaved man, an inslaved man from the person he owned
from West Africa named Owniesmis who basically hold cotton Mather
this how to do this? That clearly is suggesting that
this has been done in West Africa where he's from
(06:06):
from he was a corp ante man. And so we
see this this idea basically that you can reduce you know,
you can't entirely get rid of the risk, but you
can reduce the risk if you introduce a sort of milder,
seemingly milder version of this disease. And so we see
this is this comes to Boston. It's controversial at the
time because it is safer. It's certainly safer. So if
(06:27):
you do this, if you inoculate, you have you know,
the death rate drops from thirty percent to one to
two percent, so it's certainly safer. But you know, one
to two percent still is significant. And so this is
controversial too.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
So didn't Jonathan Edwards, who was a theologian and I
think he was the head of what became Princeton University,
he actually died from the back from inoculating himself.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
This is this is actually not uncommon, right, So that's like, yes,
so this is this is this is not that uncommon
that you would, you know, in seeking to cure or
seeking to protect yourself long term, you actually then kill yourself.
And for this reason, so a lot of people, you know,
very riggious people actually thought that they you know, at
one point, you know, many many times cotton ether, for example,
(07:13):
was basically assaulted on the streets where people saying, this
is your interrupting God's will. If God wants you to
die for small pox, you should of course, you know
this is this is trying to plead God. You're interfering with,
you know, the divine will. People also said, and this
is correct too, which is that you know this is
this is a this is basically an uncontrolled experiment. So
(07:33):
you had to combine inoculation with quarantine. So if you
inoculate yourself, then you have got to go into quarantine
and be apart from other people who are vulnerable. Otherwise
you could unwittingly start spreading this infection. And that did happen.
So where you see sort of campaigns for variolation, inoculation,
this kind of thing. Suddenly you see outbreaks of smallpox
(07:54):
that happened that kill many people, so it can get
out of control. So for these reasons, but you know,
fast forward to the revel we see small smallpox is
a problem that afflicts many, many soldiers, many Continental soldiers
who do have never had exposure to this virus. And
again they're moving, moving around the country, they're sort of
stirring this biotic soup. And Washington in particular is very
(08:17):
very nervous about this because smallpox did prove to be
a problem during various sieges in Canada with Benedict Arnold,
with many ass with many regiments during this war. You
see basically smallpox being so serious that it again impedes
the Continental army is ability to actually fight and wage war.
(08:38):
So quite controversially, and he did stick to his guns
on this, but Washington mandated that the entire Continental Army
would be but would be inoculated for smallpox.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
So this is a vaccine mandate.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
It's well, it's not a vaccine yet, but this is
an inocula. We call it an inoculation mandate. This is
the sort of four runner to vaccines.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Yeah, and this is the first of its kind.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Yeah, first of its kind, and it was controversial at
the time. A lot of people. My goodness, a lot
of people were really nervous about this, and also it
was kept secret because Washington rightly said, my goodness, we
have to do this really carefully, because if the British
find out that we are doing this campaign of sort
of mass inoculation, keeping all of these soldiers sort of
(09:21):
away from the front in quarantine, being quartered in individuals
private homes, it would leave all manner of cities very
vulnerable to attack. So this was this is a massive
undertaking to try to get as many soldiers as possible
inoculated with from smallpox. But it did eventually pay off
in the end, but it was small you know. And
Washington himself, in fact, there's some speculation about this from historians,
(09:45):
but when he was nineteen, he traveled to the West Indies.
He contracted smallpox on this trip and almost died himself.
And this is probably actually some historian suggest that this
is what made him infertile so that he could never
have biological children. In fact, to you so ever, it's
one of these interesting things where every single person has
this kind of personal experience with this disease, and everyone
(10:08):
recognizes too that once you become infected with the disease.
If you die, you die, but if you survive, you
become immune. And this is a really effect. You know,
this is going to be one of the most important
weapons in the Continental Army's arsenal.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
So at one point though, there was a mandate for
smallpox inoculation.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
Yeah, so this is in seventeen seventy seven. This is
when Washington puts in this mandate saying that all soldiers
would have to be inoculated, and you would do it
in stages so that you know, you wouldn't basically you
wouldn't be compromising in the entire army all at once.
And so this is this is really effective. Of course,
the Americans, we you know, win the Revolutionary War and
(10:49):
soon thereafter in the seventeen nineties, this is when Jenner's
very famous vaccine, vaccine for small box that get came about.
So what we're dealing with for this is this process
of variolation or inoculation. It's a little bit different from vaccination.
So with the smallpox vaccination, this is the first of
its kind. And so basically what happened is so Jenner
(11:13):
isn't He's an Englishman, and he notices that women who
were milkmaids who were contracting cowpox, this much less serious disease,
were quite resistance, quite resistant to smallpox. And so he
decides essentially that he sees a connection here, and other
people had seen this connection in the past and had
(11:34):
sort of tried to had sort of worked at creating
kind of early vaccines, but he was the first to
really document this and then make it into a kind
of usable technology that could be used for other diseases
going forward. So Jenner then decides basically he's gonna take
the pus from a small pop from a cowpox victim
(11:54):
and give it to inoculate somebody, a young boy who
then and then he then introduce smallpox to them, and
they did not contract this disease. So this is the
first vaccine, which is basically that this is where this
is a vaccine that's based on a bovine smallpox, a
smallpox virus, this cowpox, and this is actually the origin
of the word vaccine vadka cow So that's that's where
(12:18):
that comes from. So there thereafter, this is the first
major vaccine in world history and it saved you know,
three It's estimated that approximately three in tred million people
have died of smallpox. This is basically the population of
the United States today. So this is obviously a huge
public health victory in you know, one of the one
(12:38):
of the really key turning points in the history of
disease and humanity.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
What what what were the first states to embrace this
vaccine so all over the place?
Speaker 1 (12:49):
So it actually this is this is this is one
of these interesting things too, where not every this was
not necessarily done by you know, the state was not
necessarily involved in a sort of large capacity necessarily. You know,
this was often done by sort of individual hospitals or
if you were rich, you might pay for it. You
might pay a private doctor to do this. But this is,
this is not necessarily this was not the state implementing
(13:14):
any kind of vaccine mandate. There. We don't see that
again until much much much later, until the twentieth century actually,
where we have sort of vaccine mandates coming back into
play again. But you have you know, then what we
sort of we're sitting here to you with the smallpox vaccine.
These I think quite familiar debates to us about these
(13:35):
sort of ethics of public health and the ethics of
being against vaccines and what it means to have individual
rights versus the public good and getting to that sort
of crucial stage of herd immunity, so that you know,
basically that means that enough people in a society, in
a community have immunity to this disease that it can't
really set in, it can't ever really penetrate, so you
(13:58):
don't have epidemics, and that's getting that threshold is really difficult.
But throughout the nineteenth century this was controversial. It was
controversial back then. It wasn't as controversial as it is
perhaps today. But we see these kinds of you know,
the sort of the seeds of anti vaccine on this
this ideology that really take place, that really sort of
(14:18):
take hold in the end of the eighteenth century nineteenth century.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
So so we can say that smallpox was the first vaccine, yes, yes,
in the United States, What was the next one to
come along?
Speaker 1 (14:31):
So what happens We sort of have like a break
for about almost a century at this point then and
then we have a sort of slew of vaccines that
come on to the scene, all basically because of Louis Pastor.
And so Louis Pastor, he is so very famous for
pasteurizing milk, pasteurizing actually wine and beer at the time
(14:53):
to basically to make things safer to ingest and make
them last long. What ended up having He was looking
for a cure for rabies, and he was looking for
a cure for cholera, and he was doing experiments. And
this is you know, this actually did happen. It's really
quite serendipitous and sort of the magic of the way
(15:14):
that scientific discoveries happen, which is that they were working
on basically trying to find a cure isolated cure for
chicken cholera foul colera in his lab. And he told
one of his assistants before he went on holiday, inject
this live culture into like into the into these chickens.
(15:34):
The assistant forgot to do it, came back a month
later after being on holiday and said, oh my goodness, okay,
so he then injected this material into the chickens. This
the the cow the excuse me of the chicken colera.
And they noticed that then these chickens did not get
sick with cholera. There was something about this this virus
(15:55):
that had been sitting out for a month made it
less virulent and how and it also again then gave
an unity. So this is the first live attenuated what
we call a live attenuated virus a vaccine. So we
have basically here we have Lea Paster coming up with
the with these live attenuated vaccines for not just chicken cholera,
but then for rabies, and then we see other doctors
(16:17):
take on, you know, they're as sort of vaccine technology
is developing. We see a vaccine come in by eighteen
ninety six for typhoid fever, then for cholera, also then
for bubotic plague, tuberculosis a massive killer worldwide, still a
massive killer worldwide. We see a vaccine for that diphtheria, tetanus,
(16:39):
pertussis or whooping cough. As we're going into the sort
of the early twentieth century, yellow fever a big one,
and then probably the one that most people most listeners
are sort of familiar with, the probably had themselves. Actually
were the polio vaccines that these are either these were
by Saban and Salk, the salt vaccine. This was basically
instead of a polio had been this horrible disease that
(17:03):
had you know, afflicted many, many, many thousands of people,
especially in the late summer. Of course, our president FDR
developed polio almost dictroment, but was therefore incapacitated for the
rest of his life after contracting polio. So this was
a huge just a huge step forward to have the
sort of salt you know, the vaccine which you know
(17:24):
was basically still given up until very recently, which is
just a few drops of the vaccine on a sugar cube.
And this saved generations of children from having to be
an iron lungs or from death for many many centuries.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Yeah, let's talk about vaccines and school children. Hm, so
when did this idea of vaccinating young children or even
vaccine mandates in schools become become in vogue.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
This is, this has been arived for many many years,
certainly since the early twentieth century, This idea that you
have a vaccine for a what is now you know,
for these incredibly contagious, very dangerous, very fatal childhood elements
like measles or mumps or rubella, these kinds of diseases
that actually this should be something that all children should
(18:16):
have from a young age. And this is by the way,
drastically reduced child and for mortality across the board. So
this is you know, we are talking just a massive
drop in the number of children that die from what
are today now highly curable or you know, highly sort
of preventable infectious diseases like measles, for example. And so
(18:37):
there's no one moment when these sort of what schools,
for example, would adopt requirements for vaccine mandates for children
and happens in pathworks, and it of course doesn't happen.
There's always been exceptions in the American system that are
either you know, sort of basically granted by the state
religious exceptions to getting a vaccine or else otherwise personal
(18:59):
except that you can sort of apply for that apply
to have your kid not be vaccinated. But we're talking
about you know, really from the nineteen thirties, nineteen forties,
ninteen fifties, and the idea of also vaccinating children. You know,
parents would line their children up for this aft vaccine,
for polio vaccine because this is such a you know,
a terrifying disease that would you know, just you know,
(19:23):
it would cause so much pain and angst and apparent
too that you know, they were people were adamant that
they wanted to get as you know, get their child
vaccinated as quickly as possible to prevent such a terrible thing.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
So there was less vaccine hesitation in the nineteen thirties
and forties.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Yes, it existed, certain and it most certainly existed. But
I think the sort of the perhaps the real moment
for vaccine hesitation, this came with the MMR. This came
with measles, and this now highly discredited paper that linked measles,
the measle vaccine with autism. And this has now since
been discredited many, many many times over in various large
(20:05):
scale academic in many large scale studies. And you know
this is there is no connection. I mean, there are
risks associated with vaccinations, certainly, most certainly nothing is totally
perfect or totally one hundred percent safe. But you know, fundamentally,
the you know, it's about balancing risk with reward, which
(20:26):
is the risk is contracting a disease, and also the
reward is not just saving your child or yourself potentially
from a disease that has killed millions of people in
the past. That people, you know, if you lived two
hundred years ago, mothers and fathers would have killed for
a vaccine for you know, measles. If they you know,
if they had access to it, because I've seen many,
(20:47):
many letters with this effect of parents who are just
you know, watching their child die, you know, from the
eighteen forties, from New Orleans or from New York. It's
just it's it's you know this, this is a universal
and sort of timeless experience of not wanting your children
to have pain. So, you know, this is there's you know,
there are risks associated with vaccines, certainly, and some people
do have adverse reactions, but the disease is worse. Just
(21:09):
the disease is worse, and so that's really that sort
of back to headn't seen. Of course, this took off
during COVID, especially fueled by social media and by you know,
everyone being a sort of armchair position themselves becoming a
self styled expert.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
This is American History Hotline. I'm your host, Bob Crawford. Today.
My guest is Catherine Olivarius. She's an associate professor of
history at Stanford University, specializing in nineteenth century US history.
We're talking about repeating history over and over again and
never seeming to learn any lessons when it comes to vaccines.
(21:51):
Your first book, Necropolis, Disease, Power and capitalism in the
Cotton Kingdom isn't so much about vaccines, but it's it's
about a way to inoculate yourself from yellow fever.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
Yes, and so again the vaccine for yellow fever, it
will come about until nineteen thirty seven. So and I
deal with the nineteenth century. So we're dealing with, you know,
with a century before. And this is a mosquito born illness,
yellow fever that was during the nineteent century, probably the
most terrifying disease in the Atlantic world. This is a disease,
you know, you get bitten by a mosquito within a
(22:27):
few days, and they did not know that it was
spread by mosquitos. But within a few days or a
few hours, you developed these symptoms of nausea, you back pain.
Eventually you sort of you developed jauntice as your organs
start to fail, and then the sort of telltale symptom happens,
which is black vomit where you regurgitate up this sort
of partly coagulated blood that looks a lot like coffee groans,
(22:50):
and then patients would lapse into a coma and die.
It's a very very painful way to die in many
in many ways the sort of most similar, sort of
similar symptomatically disease that most people would be familiar with
today would be ebola. Of course, yellow fever still exists,
but so there's no cure, there's no inoculation, there's no
vaccination for this disease. People did not understand how it
(23:13):
was spread or why some people developed only very mild
cases while other people died, But they did understand that
if you survived a case of yellow fever, you would
become a mean for a life. You have a very thorough,
very durable immunity, and your chances, by the way of
acquiring this immunity are not good. If you became sick
with yellow fever in the nineteenth century, you had basically
(23:35):
a fifty to fifty chance of survival. So that's really
that's extraordinarily high, high chance of dying, very very high.
But again, if you survived, you became a mean for
a life. And so my first book, Necropolis, was all
about people basically seeking out this immunity. It was so valuable,
so important to the sort of social and economic structure
(23:58):
of the cotton kind, where you know, if you wanted
to be basically, if you wanted to be a successful person,
you had to demonstrate somehow that you were immune to
yellow fever, because otherwise people wouldn't invest in you. You
couldn't get a job, you can get credit, because you
were just going through to be too risky. So my
whole book is basically about how this desire to chase
this disease, to acquire this very valuable immunity to it,
(24:22):
how this permeated the entire sort of ethos of the
Cotton Kingdom.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
And what I thought was really fascinating about your research
was how some cities got better than others at instituting
public health measures. Yes, talk about those who were successful
i GAT versus those who were not.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Yeah, So this is so the nineteenth century in many ways,
we can sort of consider this to be the kind
of the genesis moment for the states seeking to know
the state the nation or individual states seeking to try
to control or at the very least ameliorate disease for citizens.
(25:06):
So you'll see, for example, in cities like New York
or Philadelphia where a you know, yellow fever actually was
occasionally a problem in these cities. It can go all
the way up to temperate zones, though it's most associated
with tropical or subtropical climates, but it can go you know.
So we have periodic outbreaks of yellow fever, but also
of cholera in the eighteen thirties and eighteen forties and fifties.
(25:29):
We also have smallpox outbreaks, things like this, and so
we have basically doctors in public health specialists thinking, okay,
so what are our options. We don't really understand how
these diseases are spread. Some of them are quite obviously contagious,
and by contagious, what they meant was spread by humans
human contact, so me touching you, for example, and giving
(25:50):
you smallpox or giving you syphilis. Some diseases they also said,
were maismatic, basically the kind of organic result of dirty
city living. So basically, you know, of organic matter under
the sun baking and creating these foul vapors. They thought
that literally this bad smell was the cause of disease.
So they don't really know a lot about how if
(26:12):
epidemiality of these diseases are working in New York. But
they say, Okay, what we're gonna do is we're gonna
experiment because it's better than having, you know, trying and
failing is better than not trying at all. And so
where New Orleans, essentially the political culture was, we can't
prevent yellow fever, We're gonna throw our hands up. We're
never gonna institute quarantines because they're unpopular, because they stemy business,
(26:33):
because they you know, it means that rich people can't
get richer, essentially, and businessmen always hate quarantines no matter
where you are, they always hate them. So New Orleans
they never do them. But New York has many quarantine stations,
in fact, not just for yellow fever, but again for
smallpox or for plague. So if you you know, if
(26:53):
you're a ship coming into port, you would have a
health inspector come on board and determine if there was
any infectious disease on board, and then they would maybe
quarantine the entire ship if there was, or they would
take it to a quarantine station and let the people. Basically,
you know, the people would be in isolation for twenty
forty days depending on the illness. So you see states
(27:16):
and cities seeking to institute these quarantines and build more
robust infrastructure to actually handle quarantines. You also, in addition
to this, have cities that are taking a more active
role in building hospitals that are funded by the state,
not just by private institutions or as was pretty typical,
the church, whether it be a sort of the Methodist
(27:37):
or the Protestant Church or the Catholic Church at this time.
And you also have cities that are now engaged in
data collection, seeing it is their responsibility essentially to say,
what is the incidence of this disease? How often are
people dying from a thing? Where are they dying? Who
is dying? Can we collect the kind of vital data
so that we can draw some patterns to that we
(27:58):
can use for future epidemic to try to prevent disease.
And so you see this this you know, and again
it's not perfect. You know, there are again when you
don't know that germs exist, how can you really prevent
against germs? And you know, people are drinking dirty water,
you know constantly there if you live in a city,
you are living essentially, you know, in close proximity to
(28:18):
people and animals and dirt and filth. Every street was
essentially just a sewer. So you're you know, in constant process.
You know, this is this is the kind of situation
we're dealing with in iron life at this time. But
we see some concervative efforts in certain places, with politicians
and specialists taking sometimes unpopular decisions to try to protect
the public sealth.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
And so just like public health measures like quarantines, yeah,
provoke a backlash. It's always been that vaccines throughout American
history have provoked backlashes as well.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Yeah, and I think that they've certainly produced a backlash.
I think that what we're seeing we've seen a sort
of the volume dialed up in the last five years
with COVID, with COVID nineteen and mRNA vaccines in general,
where we see this kind of vaccine hesitancy co mingle
with a sort of larger distrust with the state, with
(29:16):
a kind of politics that saw state and dimensions during
COVID as uneven or in retrospect overbearing things like this.
So you see this, we've seen a sort of a
massive increase.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
And also, I hate to interrupt you, Catherine, but it
seems also that there is a suspicion against expertise, right,
People are suspicious of expertise.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
Yeah, and so I'm sure that most people have probably
come into contact with us at some point, but it's
the criticism lodged at the COVID nineteen vaccinations, you know,
fairly or unfairly I suppose, or that it happened so quickly,
it came out, you know, so so quickly, And that's
I sort of so like you know, most of the
time with you know, all these vaccines that we're talking
(30:04):
about from the past, smallpox, polio, you know, in doleenza,
these are all vaccines that took many, many years to develop,
and so I think people rightly said, you know, how
can we roll out this vaccine so quickly within in
twenty twenty in some cases, how are we doing this?
And well, I mean, actually what ends up happening is
(30:24):
that during the pandemic, a lot of the sort of
you know, the exhibitencase of this massive public health crisis
around the world meant that a lot of red tape
was cut so that you could sort of move things
through faster. And also one of the sort of most
amazing things is that we had the kind of you know,
mRNA vaccines. These are not you know, we were familiar
with coronaviruses. We know what these are, and so we
had the kind of like superstructure for creating this particular
(30:47):
vaccine already before this, before COVID nineteen came to you know,
came to American shores. This is so you know, we
basically had the kind of software for this and we
could kind of pug and play with the you know,
with this particular virus, COVID nineteen. So it happened quickly,
but it's been you know, hugely effective, and you know,
(31:09):
today public health specialists argue that you know, basically with
the role out of with the rollout of the vaccine Maderna, Orfiser,
Johnson and Johnson, that saved approximately three million American lives.
That's a large number of people. And so it's you know,
it's easy to recall the hardship of social isolation and
being sick and the problem with the economy and schools
(31:30):
and things like this, but also we did save a
lot of lives during COVID nineteen, and it's it's interesting
that how we think about how our perspective changes as
we move sort of further away from this, but that
the vaccine was this is a huge triumph that saved
not just American lives but people around the world.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
Of course, yeah, I know, you specialized in the United
States history, as do we. But do other countries and
governments struggle with opposition to vaccine mandates or is this
a uniquely American thing?
Speaker 1 (31:59):
Oh? Certainly, other countries most certainly do as well. I
would say that these sort of a this is a
particularly American kind of flare right now. That is, it
speaks with you know, the Internet speaks with an American accent,
and what we're seeing, you know, the sort of discourse
on the discourse on vaccines very much as always sort
(32:19):
of put through the lens of the American the particular
American situation. But I grew up in the UK and
vaccinations are not We're not uncontroversial. They were less controversial.
And I remember just as a kid, you know, being
put into the nurs's office and say, like, you know,
give your arm and have a BCD vaccine. And I
don't think my parents ever signed any kind of like,
you know, give any authorization for this, but you know,
(32:41):
this was what you did and so and I and
I don't recall there's there there is pushback that has
been amplified by the Internet, where people who actually have
quite fringe views have been able to find community quite easily.
But you can't, you know, let the people who shout
out on the internet control what it is that you do.
(33:02):
And you know, vaccines are safe, they are reliable, and
my goodness, I don't want to have measles. I don't
want my daughter to have measles. And I don't you
know these are these are diseases that I you know,
it's there's a certain kind of as a historian of
disease and death in this way, you know, I think
if I were to talk to a mom and and
I see this again in letters and diaries from the
(33:23):
eighteen fours and fifties of parents who are watching their
child die from what is today an easily controllable disease,
and I think it's, you know, the sort of the
height of historical arrogance in some sense to say that
we know better, you know, we are. I feel so
much community with that woman actually too. And you know
she would kill for vaccine if she possibly could have
(33:45):
known what that was.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Well said Catherine. I've been talking with Catherine Olivarius. She's
an associate professor of history at Stanford University. Check out
her latest book, Necropolis, Disease, Power and Capitalism in the
Cotton Kingdom. Catherine, thank you for helping us answer this
question today.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
It's been my pleasure. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
You've been listening to American History Hotline, a production of
iHeart Podcasts and Scratch Track Productions. The show's executive producer
is James Morrison. Our executive producers from iHeart are Jordan
Runtall and Jason English. Original music composed by me Bob Crawford.
Please keep in touch. Our email is Americanhistory Hotline at
(34:35):
gmail dot com. If you like the show, please tell
your friends and leave us a review in Apple Podcasts.
I'm your host, Bob Crawford. Feel free to hit me
up on social media to ask a history question or
to let me know what you think of the show.
You can find me at Bob Crawford Base. Thanks so
(34:56):
much for listening. See you next week.
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