I didn’t realise that smallpox was worldwide, just found this interesting.
Wonder how people reacted to a compulsory vaccine when it was In forced back in the 1800’s
The Vaccination Act 1853 introduced compulsory smallpox vaccination in England and Wales.
[72] The law followed a severe outbreak of smallpox in 1851 and 1852. It provided that the
poor law authorities would continue to dispense vaccination to all free of charge, but that records were to be kept on vaccinated children by the network of births registrars.
[73] It was accepted at the time, that voluntary vaccination had not reduced smallpox mortality,
[74] but the Vaccination Act 1853 was so badly implemented that it had little impact on the number of children vaccinated in England and Wales.
[75]
A poster from
Lagos,
Nigeria, to promote the worldwide eradication of smallpox.
[76]
In the
United States of America compulsory vaccination laws were upheld in the 1905 landmark case
Jacobson v. Massachusetts by the
Supreme Court of the United States. The Supreme Court ruled that laws could require vaccination to protect the public from dangerous communicable diseases. However, in practice the United States had the lowest rate of vaccination among industrialized nations in the early
20th century. Compulsory vaccination laws began to be enforced in the United States after
World War II. In 1959 the
World Health Organization (WHO) called for the eradication of smallpox worldwide, as smallpox was still endemic in 33 countries. In the 1960s six to eight children died each year in the United States from vaccination-related complications. According to the WHO there were in 1966 about 100 million cases of smallpox worldwide, causing an estimated two million death. In the 1970s there was such a small risk of contracting smallpox that the
United States Public Health Servicerecommended for routine smallpox vaccination to be ended. By 1974 the WHO smallpox vaccination program had confined smallpox to parts of
Pakistan,
India,
Bangladesh,
Ethiopia and
Somalia. In 1977 the WHO recorded the last case of smallpox infection acquired outside a laboratory in Somalia. In 1980 the WHO officially declared the world free of smallpox.
[77]