Killing the Speckled Monster: Riots, Resistance, and Reward in the Story of Smallpox Vaccination

Abstract

138 Health & History, 2016. 18/2 Museums and Media Killing the Speckled Monster: Riots, Resistance, and Reward in the Story of Smallpox Vaccination Vaccination: Medicine and the Masses. An exhibition at the Qvist Gallery, Hunterian Museum, Royal College of Surgeons, 35–43 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London WC2A 3PE, UK On display 19 April to 17 September 2016. https://www.rcseng.ac.uk/museums/hunterian/exhibitions Viewed on 14 June 2016. En route to the vaccination exhibition, it was easy to get distracted by the impressive variety of preserved specimens on display in one of London’s most fascinating museums, the Hunterian. Jar upon jar of human and animal body parts as well as medical tools, skeletons, and other paraphernalia are enough to keep a visitor absorbed for hours. Happily, the Qvist gallery exhibition of Vaccination: Medicine and the Masses was equally captivating. The focus of this exhibit was the relationship between the medical profession and the public on the topic of vaccination. A striking object on display is a draft manuscript of the report written in 1798 by Dr Edward Jenner, the father of vaccination, that was to influence the global approach to combating infectious diseases.1 Jenner experimentally inoculated a young boy called Edward Phipps with cowpox virus in an attempt to show that this so-called ‘vaccination’ with the mild disease, cowpox, could protect Phipps against the deadly smallpox virus. Jenner’s report of his success was recognised by the medical fraternity for its potential in delivering the masses from the scourge of smallpox; however, community concerns relating to safety of the procedure were rife. This is exemplified in the exhibition by George Cruikshank’s ‘The Cowpox Tragedy’, a cartoon depicting people growing horns after being vaccinated with cowpox. Moreover, the introduction of vaccination was accompanied by resistance and scepticism about state-organised mass vaccination programs. The exhibition included gruesome images of children and adults affected by smallpox, the ‘speckled monster’, demonstrating the devastating and permanent scarring of those ‘fortunate’ to survive Health & History ● 18/2 ● 2016 139 Image 1: The Cowpox Tragedy by George Cruikshank (1812), Hunterian Museum, at the Royal College of Surgeons. Image courtesy of Hunterian Museum. 140 EXHIBITION REVIEWS the infection. These images were accompanied by some interesting commentary on the broader social implications of smallpox such as women finding it more difficult to find a partner if they had survived the disease but were physically scarred.2 Jenner’s thesis on the protection afforded by vaccination was a turningpointinglobalpublichealthhistory,butthisexhibitionreminds us that it wasn’t a new idea. Hunterian visitors are introduced to Lady Mary Montagu, wife of the British Ambassador to Turkey. In the early 1700s she observed the Ottoman practice of inoculation against smallpox, known as ‘variolation’, and encouraged the practice on her return to England in about 1720.3 Whereas Jenner’s vaccination involved the use of the cowpox virus, which is immunologically similar to smallpox but less dangerous, variolation involved inoculation with a small dose of smallpox virus, usually taken from the lesion or pustule of a mild case of the disease. This practice had been employed for hundreds of years in Europe and Asia, reportedly even as early as the tenth century in China, and certainly there by the mid-1550s.4 Lady Montagu was a staunch proponent of variolation and her influence resulted in members of the Royal Family being Image 2: Wax models showing the development of pustules following vaccination for smallpox. These are on loan from the Gordon Museum of Pathology, King’s College London. Image courtesy of Hunterian Museum. Health & History ● 18/2 ● 2016 141 ‘variolated’ when she returned to England.5 Tools for vaccination are always interesting and the exhibit had some good examples. While most people have experienced vaccination using a sterile needle, this was certainly not the practice in the 1800s. It was common for practitioners to use one of the various vaccination tools to first break the skin by scraping, scratching, puncturing or lancing. Some of the cowpox vaccine material was then applied to the broken skin.6 Vaccine was obtained from lesions on a calf infected with cowpox or from a pustule from someone vaccinated in the weeks...