
Bodily Matters: The Anti-Vaccination Movement in England, 1853–1907
Nadja Durbach
Analyzing historical documents on both sides of the vaccination debate, Durbach focuses on the key events and rhetorical strategies of the resistance campaign. She shows that those for and against the vaccine had very different ideas about how human bodies worked and how best to safeguard them from disease. Individuals opposed to mandatory vaccination saw their own and their children’s bodies not as potentially contagious and thus dangerous to society but rather as highly vulnerable to contamination and violation. Bodily Matters challenges the notion that resistance to vaccination can best be understood, and thus easily dismissed, as the ravings of an unscientific “lunatic fringe.” It locates the anti-vaccination movement at the very center of broad public debates in Victorian England over medical developments, the politics of class, the extent of government intervention into the private lives of its citizens, and the values of a liberal society.
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About Nadja Durbach
Reviews for Bodily Matters: The Anti-Vaccination Movement in England, 1853–1907
Sigal Gooldin
American Journal of Sociology
“Durbach's account of the anti-vaccination movement is clearly and forcefully written and provides an authoritative survey of Victorian debates about the role of the state in disease prevention. Bodily Matters will engage anyone interested in public health and the history of epidemiology, and post–9/11 fears about bioterrorism and the looming threat of a bird flu pandemic may broaden the audience for this text.”
Solveig C. Robinson
Perspectives in Biology and Medicine
“Nadja Durbach’s Bodily Matters is a rigorously researched and sensitive account of antivaccinationism in Victorian and Edwardian England that combines the insights of the history of medicine, political history, and the social and cultural histories of class and gender.”
Ian Burney
Journal of Modern History