Vaccination-Induced Syphilis and the Hübner Malpractice Litigation

Abstract

This article examines smallpox vaccination in the 19th century as background for a notorious medical malpractice case that occupied Bavarian courts from April 1853 until May 1854. Dr. Georg Hübner, the defendant, was accused of having initiated a small epidemic of syphilis by using the lymph of a syphilitic infant to vaccinate 13 infants. The litigation and its published contemporaneous discussion demonstrate conflicts in the understanding of syphilis, the hazards of having to make a purely clinical diagnosis, the effect of obsolete legal wording in medical litigation, and the attitude of leading physicians to a guilty colleague. This case ultimately led to efforts to make arm-to-arm smallpox vaccination safer, and by 1898 to abandon the technique in favor of bovine sources that were sterilized and stabilized by various methods.