3 In a useful short account, Jonathan Liebenau has examined the vaccine controversy as an important moment in the consolidation of the pharmaceutical industry in the United States; Medical Science and Medical Industry (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), 79–88. Arthur Allen provides a brisk narrative of the episode in Vaccine, 79–82, 92–96. A thinner account, with errors, is David E. Lilienfeld, “The First Pharmacoepidemiologic Investigations: National Drug Safety Policy in the United States, 1901–1902,” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine , 51 (Spring 2008): 188–98.
4 “No Vaccination in Camden’s Boundaries,” NYT, Nov. 19, 1901, 7. “Vaccine and Antitoxin,” ibid., Dec. 8, 1901, 6. “Vaccination and Lockjaw,” NYS, Nov. 21, 1901, 6. F. M. Wood, “The Various Methods of Vaccination and Their Results,” PMJ, 9 (Mar. 22, 1902), 541–42. “The Cleveland Experiment,” Cincinnati Lancet-Clinic, May 31, 1902, 580–82.
5 “Rubbed Off Vaccine Virus,” NYT, Dec. 7, 1901, 2. See, for example, “Death Follows Vaccination,” NOP, Dec. 15, 1893, 4; “Death Caused by Vaccination,” Interocean (Chicago), Feb. 15, 1894, 3; “Parents Fear Vaccination,” Milwaukee Sentinel, Feb. 16, 1894, 8; “Caused by Vaccination: A School Girl’s Awful Suffering,” Bismarck Daily Tribune, Aug. 10, 1895; “Danger in Vaccination,” Macon Telegraph (Georgia), Dec. 24, 1897; “Died of Virus Poisoning,” PNA, Nov. 17, 1899, 7; “Death Probably Due to Vaccination,” WP, Mar. 21, 1901, 3. See, generally, Sir Graham S. Wilson, The Hazards of Immunization.
6 On the implications of progressive thinking about social interdependence, see Thomas L. Haskell, The Emergence of Professional Social Science (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977). Michael Willrich, City of Courts.
7 Wyatt v. Rome, 105 Ga. 312 (1898). Even after the enactment of the federal Biologics Control Act of 1902, state and local governments remained insulated from liability for unsafe vaccines. “The State is not a guarantor of the purity of such biological products and is not liable for injury caused by impure ones.” James A. Tobey, Public Health Law, 58. See ibid., 175–76. On the regulatory environment as it existed in 1901, see Charles V. Chapin, Municipal Sanitation in the United States (Providence: The Providence Press, 1901), 573–98, esp. 580–84. On the growth of social intervention in American law during this period, see Willrich, City of Courts.
8 Walter Wyman, “Précis upon the Diagnosis and Treatment of Smallpox,” PHR, 14, Jan. 6, 1899, 37. “Vaccination and Revaccination,” CMJ, 1 (July 1902), 381. On more recent developments in U.S. vaccine regulation, see Thomas F. Burke, Lawyers, Lawsuits, and Legal Rights: The Battle over Litigation in American Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 142–70; Vincent A. Fulginiti et al., “Smallpox Vaccination: A Review, Part II. Adverse Effects,” Clinical Infectious Diseases, 37 (2003), 251–71; and Julie B. Milstein, “Regulation of Vaccines: Strengthening the Science Base,” Journal of Public Health Policy, 25 (2004): 173–89.
9 “Commercial Virus and Antitoxin,” NYT, Nov. 18, 1901, 6.
10 A burgeoning field of social science research has shed new light on the mental strategies—or “heuristics”—that ordinary people use to understand the risks of their world. For an introduction, see Paul Slovic, “Perception of Risk,” SCI, new ser. 236 (1987): 280–85. For an interesting critique of Slovic’s ideas, see Cass R. Sunstein, “The Laws of Fear,” review of Paul Slovic, The Perception of Risk (2000), Harvard Law Review, 115 (2002): 1119–68.
11 “Vaccinia is a specific disease, the cause of which has not been determined. We are, therefore, working somewhat in the dark.” Milton J. Rosenau of the federal Hygienic Laboratory, in USROSENAU, 6.
12 USCB 1900, Vol. I: Population: Part I: Population of States and Territories, 1900, 430, 513, 549. Ibid., Vol. 8: Manufactures: States and Territories, 556. NJBOH 1901, 152.
13 “Camden’s Lockjaw Panic,” NYS, Nov. 16, 1901, 4. The Sun mistakenly reported the family surname as Ludwig. See U.S. Census Bureau, Twelfth Census of the United States (1900): Schedule No. 1—Population: Camden, New Jersey, Supervisor’s District No. 6, Enumeration District No. 63.
14 NJBOH 1901, 371. NJBOH 1902, 39–42. PBOH 1901, 14–18, 37–48. “Smallpox Situation in Philadelphia and Camden,” MN, Nov. 30, 1901, 867–68.
15 “Camden’s Lockjaw Panic.” “Smallpox,” MN, Oct. 26, 1901, 667. On sore arms during this epidemic, see F. M. Wood, M.D. [city physician of Camden], “The Various Methods of Vaccination and Their Results,” PMJ, 9 (Mar. 22, 1902), 541–42; Alexander McAllister, M.D. [of Camden], “The Cause of Sore Arms in Vaccination,” Transactions of the Medical Society of New Jersey, 1902 (Newark, 1902), 153–57.
16 NJBOH 1901, 371–72.
17 “Vaccinated Boy, Tetanus Stricken, May Recover,” PNA, Nov. 11, 1901, 1. “Five Victims of Lockjaw,” NYT, Nov. 17, 1901, 3. W. J. Lampton, “Tetanus Epidemics” (letter to the editor), NYS, Nov. 21, 1901, 6. George Miller Sternberg, Infection and Immunity: With Special Reference to the Prevention of Infectious Diseases (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1903), 272–78, esp. 277. William Brown, “Tetanus in Toy-Pistol Wounds,” BRMJ, 1 (1934): 1116–17. See also Frederic S. Dennis, ed., System of Surgery (Philadelphia: Lea Brothers & Co., 1895), vol. 1, 426–27; William Hallock Park and Anna Wessels Williams, Pathogenic Micro-organisms: Including Bacteria and Protozoa; a Practical Manual for Students, Physicians and Health Officers (Philadelphia: Lea Brothers & Co., 1905), 222. The contemporaneous accounts of the unfolding Camden tetanus outbreak that were published in newspapers, medical journals, and the Camden Board of Health’s official report, contain a number of discrepancies (including some conflicting dates, different spellings of the victims’ names, and differing ages for the children). I have been able to locate most of these children in the 1900 census. In my own account, I have wherever possible used information that I have been able to confirm in at least two sources. For the Camden Board of Health report, which appears to contain a few factual errors about the cases, see “Official Report of the Camden Board of Health Concerning the Cases of Tetanus Which Occurred in Patients Who Had Been Vaccinated,” Nov. 29, 1901, reprinted in Bulletin of the North Carolina Board of Health, 16 (Dec. 1901): 112–18. (Hereafter: “Camden Board of Health Report.”)
18 Mrs. Brower and Dr. Kensinger quoted in “Vaccinated Boy, Tetanus Stricken, May Recover.” Dr. Kensinger’s name is mispelled as “Kinsinger” in this newspaper story. On the Brower family, see Twelfth Census of the United States (1900): Schedule No. 1: Population, Camden, NJ, Supervisor’s District No. 6, Enumeration District No. 77.
19 “Camden’s Lockjaw Panic.” Twelfth Census of the United States (1900): Schedule No. 1—Population: Camden, NJ, Supervisor’s District No. 6, Enumeration District No. 77. “Camden Board of Health Report,” 114.
20 “Another Death from Lockjaw,” NYTRIB, Nov. 14, 1901, 6. “Camden’s Lockjaw Panic.” “Vaccination and Lockjaw,” NYT, Nov. 14, 1901, 2. “Vaccination Leads to a Boy’s Death,” PNA, Nov. 14, 1901, 3. Twelfth Census of the United States (1900): Schedule No. 1—Population: Camden, NJ, Supervisor’s District No. 6, Enumeration District No. 73. “Camden Board of Health Report,” 114.
21 “Camden’s Lockjaw Panic,” NYS, Nov. 16, 1901, 4. “Vaccination Claims Another,” NYTRIB, Nov. 15, 1901. Twelfth Census of the United States (1900): Schedule No. 1—Population: Camden, NJ, Supervisor’s District No. 6, Enumeration District No. 59. “Camden Board of Health Report,” 114.
22 Davis quoted in “Vaccination Claims Another.” Dowling quoted in “Epidemic of Lockjaw Arouses a Whole City,” NYW, Nov. 20, 1901, 6.
23 “Vaccination Claims Another.” “Camden’s Lockjaw Panic.” See Twelfth Census of the United States (1900): Schedule No. 1—Population: Camden, NJ, Supervisor’s District No. 6, Enumeration District No. 73 (Warrington); ibid., Enumeration District No. 49 (Cavallo). “Camden Board of Health Report,” 114. The unnamed victim appears to have been William J. Bauer, aged seven, who according to Camden officials was the tetanus outbreak’s first fatality: vaccinated October 12, he sh
owed tetanus symptoms on November 1 and died two days later. Ibid., 113. On the Bauer family, see Twelfth Census of the United States (1900): Schedule No. 1—Population: Camden, NJ, Supervisor’s District No. 6, Enumeration District No. 85.
24 “Lockjaw Deaths Continue,” NYT, Nov. 17, 1901, 6. “Five Victims of Lockjaw,” NYT, Nov. 17, 1901, 3. “Camden Board of Health Report,” 114.
25 “Five Victims of Lockjaw.” “Camden’s Lockjaw Panic.”
26 “Ibid. Other newspaper accounts and medical journal articles intimated that a single maker had been involved in the tetanus cases in Camden, but refrained from revealing the maker’s identity. On Mulford see Liebenau, Medical Science and Medical Industry, esp. 57–78, 80–81.1.
27 “Camden’s Lockjaw Panic.” Cochran did not have many dollars to spare. The fifty-one-year-old teamster lived in a rented house on Mechanic Street, about a mile from the Delaware River, with his wife Sarah and their children. In their twenty-six years of marriage, Sarah had given birth to six children. Annie was their second to die. James was going to know who was responsible for this loss. Twelfth Census of the United States (1900): Schedule No. 1—Population: Camden, NJ, Supervisor’s District No. 6, Enumeration District No. 59. “Epidemic of Lockjaw Arouses a Whole City,” NYW, Nov. 20, 1901, 6.
28 “Camden’s Lockjaw Panic.” “No Vaccination in Camden’s Boundaries.” Cooper v. Shore Elec. Co., 63 N.J.: 558 (1899). See John Fabian Witt, “From Loss of Services to Loss of Support: The Wrongful Death Statutes, the Origins of Modern Tort Law, and the Making of the Nineteenth-Century Family,” Law and Social Inquiry, 25 (2000), 717–55; Vivian A. Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children (New York: Basic Books, 1985), ch. 5.
29 “Camden’s Lockjaw Panic.” “No Vaccination in Camden’s Boundaries.” “Epidemic of Lockjaw Arouses a Whole City.” “Tetanus Following Vaccination,” MN, Nov. 23, 1901, 829.
30 “Tetanus in Philadelphia,” NYT, Nov. 19, 1901. “Commercial Virus and Antitoxin,” ibid., Nov. 18, 1901, 6. On Atlantic City (Bessie Kessler, age nine), see “Death in Atlantic City,” NYT, Nov. 19, 1901. “Vaccination Proves Fatal,” SFC, Nov. 19, 1901, 4. On Bristol (Joseph Goldie), see “Tetanus Follows Vaccination,” CO, Nov. 19, 1901, 4. See also “St. Louis; Camden, N.J.; Bristol, Pa.,” Duluth News Tribune (Minnesota), Nov. 15, 1901, 4; “Compulsory Vaccination Exciting Camden, N. J.,” Wilkes-Barre Times, Nov. 20, 1901, 1. On Cleveland, see Martin Friedrich, “How We Rid Cleveland of Smallpox,” CMJ, 1 (Feb. 1902), 77–83, esp. 79. Joseph McFarland, “Tetanus and Vaccination: An Analytical Study of 95 Cases of the Complication,” Lancet, Sept. 13, 1902, 730–35, esp. 731.
31 “A Health Board Arraigned,” NYT, Nov. 19, 1901. “The St. Louis Tragedy,” Medical Dial (Minneapolis), 3 (December 1901), 301–2. “St. Louis; Camden, N.J.; Bristol, Pa.,” Duluth News-Tribune, Nov. 15, 1901, 4. A separate committee, appointed by the St. Louis Board of Health, later confirmed the coroner’s judgment and recommended that the Health Department stop making antitoxin. The department complied. Ramunas A. Kondratas, “The Biologics Control Act of 1902,” in The Early Years of Federal Food and Drug Control, ed. James Harvey Young (Madison, WI: American Institute of the History of Pharmacy, 1982), 15.
32 “A Tempest in Rochester: Frightened Parents Refuse to Allow School Children to Be Vaccinated,” NYTRIB, Nov. 20, 1901, 6.
33 “No Vaccination in Camden’s Boundaries.” “Resolutions of the Camden Board of Health,” MN, Nov. 23, 1901, 828. “Lockjaw Checks All Vaccination,” PNA, Nov. 19, 1901, 3.
34 See Louis Galambos with Jane Eliot Sewell, Networks of Innovation: Vaccine Development at Merck, Sharp & Dohme, and Mulford, 1895–1995 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Liebenau, Medical Science and Medical Industry; John P. Swann, Academic Scientists and the Pharmaceutical Industry: Cooperative Research in Twentieth-Century America (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988).
35 For a lucid short discussion, see Ian Glynn and Jenifer Glynn, The Life and Death of Smallpox, 177–89.
36 NCBOH 1897–98, 35. Chapin, Municipal Sanitation, 580. Donald R. Hopkins, Princes and Peasants, 77–81. Fenner et al., Smallpox and Its Eradication, 263.
37 George Henry Fox, A Practical Treatise on Smallpox, 26. Herbert Spencer, Facts and Comments (New York: D.Appleton and Co., 1902), 271, 107. USROSENAU, 6. Hopkins, Princes and Peasants, 85. The persistent association of vaccination with syphilis persisted long after the curtailment of the arm-to-arm method ended the problem. See, e.g., Sylvanus Stall, What a Young Man Ought to Know, rev. ed. (Philadelphia: Vir Publishing Company, 1904), 142.
38 Francis G. Martin, “The Propagation, Preservation, and Use of Vaccine Virus,” address to the American Medical Association, May 7, 1896, in IBOH 1897, 169.
39 Samuel W. Abbott, “Vaccination,” in A Reference Handbook of the Medical Sciences, rev. ed. by Albert H. Buck, vol. 8 (New York: William Wood and Company, 1904), 111–53, esp. 133–34.
40 Abbott, “Vaccination,” 133–34.
41 Martin ad in BMSJ, unpaginated advertising sheet, Aug. 29, 1872. “A Vaccination Farm,” Arkansas Gazette, Sept. 25, 1877. “Animal Vaccination: Dr. Martin’s Vaccine Farm at Brookline, Mass.,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper (New York), Aug. 6, 1881, 382.
42 “Virus: The Difference Between Humanized and Animal Matter—Rearing Calves for Purposes of Vaccination,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat [orig. from Brooklyn Eagle], Jan. 6, 1876, 3. John Duffy, A History of Public Health in New York City, 1866–1966, 151. Massachusetts enacted the nation’s first compulsory education law in 1852 and its first compulsory vaccination law in 1855. By 1918, every state had compulsory education. Compulsory vaccination spread far less uniformly, with many state legislatures leaving the matter to local communities and their boards of health.
43 J. W. Compton & Son advertisement, Transactions of the Indiana State Medical Society, 1882 (Indianapolis, 1882), 331. Wyeth advertisement, Drugs and Medicines of North America (Cincinnati, 1884–1885), Vol. 1: 21. “A Vaccination Farm,” Arkansas Gazette, Sept. 25, 1877. “Animal Vaccination,” 382. Oscar C. DeWolf, “Remarks on Sources and Varieties of Vaccine Virus,” Chicago Medical Journal and Examiner, 42 (1881): 481–86. J. W. Hodge, “What Is the Stuff Variously Termed ‘Vaccine Virus,’ ‘Bovine Virus,’ ‘Animal Lymph,’ ‘Calf Lymph,’ ‘Pure Calf-Lymph,’ Etc.,” Medical Advance, March 1908, 160–71, esp. 168.
44 More recently DNA analysis has confirmed that vaccinia, cowpox, and smallpox are distinct. See Glynn and Glynn, The Life and Death of Smallpox, 177–89.
45 Walter Reed, “What Credence Should Be Given to the Statements of Those Who Claim to Furnish Vaccine Lymph Free of Bacteria,” Journal of Practical Medicine, 5 (July 1895), 532–34. W. F. Elgin, “The Propagation of Vaccine and Glycerinated Lymph,” Proceedings of the Fifteenth Annual Meeting of the Conference of State and Provincial Boards of Health of North America, Atlantic City, June 1–2, 1900 (Providence, 1900), 51.
46 R. L. Pitfield, “Report on the Vaccine Farms and Antitoxin Propagating Establishments of the United States, and Their Products, and on Certain Imported Antitoxins,” Twelfth Annual Report of the State Board of Health and Vital Statistics of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (1896) vol. 1 (State Printer, 1897), 186, 193, 196, 154.
47 Abbott, “Vaccination,” 142. USROSENAU, 6. Glynn and Glynn, Life and Death of Smallpox, 172–73. J. J. Kinyoun, “The Action of Glycerin on Bacteria in the Presence of Cell Exudates,” Journal of Experimental Medicine, 7 (1905): 725–32.
48 Mulford Company display advertisements, Medical World, 19 (December 1901), 17. On the connection between cities and hinterlands in the late nineteenth century, see William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1991).
49 Richard Hofstadter wrote, “The United States was born in the country and has moved to the city.” The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F. D. R. (New York: Random House, 1955), 23. Liebenau, Medical Science and Medical Industry, 57–
78; Galambos with Sewell, Networks of Innovation, 9–32. Curiously, the latter work does not mention the Camden episode.
50 Mulford display advertisement, Medical Dial, 2 (Apr. 1900), xii. Galambos with Sewell, Networks of Innovation, 9–32.
51 Mulford display advertisement, Medical Dial, 2 (Apr. 1900), xii.
52 Elgin, “Propagation of Vaccine,” 46–55. See also, “How Mulford’s Vaccine Is Made,” display advertisement, ILLMJ, 51 (May 1902), pages not numbered. To compare Mulford’s production practices with those of other makers, see esp. Abbott, “Vaccination,” 138–44; Chapin, Municipal Sanitation, 584; Francis C. Martin, “The Propagation, Preservation, and Use of Vaccine Virus,” MR, 49 (May 30, 1896), 757–59; “The Public Health Laboratories of New York City and Their Products,” New York State Journal of Medicine, 2 (Feb. 1902): 37; Theobald Smith, “The Preparation of Animal Vaccine,” MC, Jan. 1, 1902, 101–16; “Virus and Antitoxin of the Health Board,” NYT, Nov. 24, 1901, 5. On Canadian practices, see Pierrick Malissard, “ ‘Pharming’ à l’ancienne: les Fermes Vaccinales Canadiennes,” Canadian Historical Review, 85 (2004): 35–62. See “Vaccine Calves on Market,” CT, Mar. 3, 1901, 14.
53 Chapin, Municipal Sanitation, 580–84. Abbott, “Vaccination,” 138, 147–49.
54 John Duffy, A History of Public Health in New York City 1866–1966, 242.
55 W. B. Clarke, “The Pot Calls the Kettle Black,” American Homeopathist, 26 (May 1900), 159, 160. Otis Clapp & Son display advertisement, New England Medical Gazette, Dec. 1897, unnumbered page in advertising section. Parke, Davis & Company display advertisement, ILLMJ, 51 (Feb. 1902), unpaginated advertising page.
56 John Anderson, Art Held Hostage: The Battle over the Barnes Collection (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2003), 7–30. Richard J. Wattenmaker, “Dr. Albert C. Barnes and the Barnes Foundation,” in Great French Paintings from the Barnes Foundation: Impressionist, Post-impressionist, and Early Modern (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), 3–27.
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