@article{ART002905102},
author={Haejoo Kim},
title={Anti-Vaccination Parent’s Citizenship and the “Syphilitic Child” in Nineteenth-Century Britain},
journal={Journal of Humanities, Seoul National University},
issn={1598-3021},
year={2022},
volume={79},
number={4},
pages={7-36},
doi={10.17326/jhsnu.79.4.202211.7}
TY - JOUR
AU - Haejoo Kim
TI - Anti-Vaccination Parent’s Citizenship and the “Syphilitic Child” in Nineteenth-Century Britain
JO - Journal of Humanities, Seoul National University
PY - 2022
VL - 79
IS - 4
PB - Institute of Humanities, Seoul National University
SP - 7
EP - 36
SN - 1598-3021
AB - This article examines the anti-vaccination periodicals and pamphlets published in England from the 1850s to the 1890s with a focus on the figure of the “syphilitic child.” In this period, a fierce anti-vaccination movement centering working-class parents emerged in England in response to a series of Vaccination Acts that made smallpox vaccines mandatory for newborns. Criticizing medical professionalization as medical tyranny and monopoly, anti-vaccination parents believed in the notion of natural health and preferred what were understood as natural healing methods, a penchant suggestive of their political pursuit for self-sufficient individuality.
Anti-vaccination literature often blamed vaccines for spreading hereditary syphilis, a sexually transmitted disease that also provoked eugenic anxiety over racial degeneration in this period. For the urban working class with increasing political consciousness, a potential exposure to syphilis by mixing bodily fluids in a public vaccination station suggested a deterioration into the unclean and helpless urban masses--“the great unwashed”--or, the anti-citizen. By examining the ways in which the notion of hereditary syphilis is appropriated in anti-vaccination literature, this article reveals antivaccinationism’s self-referential rhetorical structure, a structure in which the parent’s individual integrity guarantees the child’s health and the child’s health proves the parent’s individual integrity in turn. I argue that this selfreferential logic in tension with state power sustains the anti-vaccination parent’s political agency.
KW - Vaccine;Anti-vaccination;Smallpox;Working Class;Individuality;Citizenship;Parental Rights;Medical Professionalization
DO - 10.17326/jhsnu.79.4.202211.7
ER -
Haejoo Kim. (2022). Anti-Vaccination Parent’s Citizenship and the “Syphilitic Child” in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Journal of Humanities, Seoul National University, 79(4), 7-36.
Haejoo Kim. 2022, "Anti-Vaccination Parent’s Citizenship and the “Syphilitic Child” in Nineteenth-Century Britain", Journal of Humanities, Seoul National University, vol.79, no.4 pp.7-36. Available from: doi:10.17326/jhsnu.79.4.202211.7
Haejoo Kim "Anti-Vaccination Parent’s Citizenship and the “Syphilitic Child” in Nineteenth-Century Britain" Journal of Humanities, Seoul National University 79.4 pp.7-36 (2022) : 7.
Haejoo Kim. Anti-Vaccination Parent’s Citizenship and the “Syphilitic Child” in Nineteenth-Century Britain. 2022; 79(4), 7-36. Available from: doi:10.17326/jhsnu.79.4.202211.7
Haejoo Kim. "Anti-Vaccination Parent’s Citizenship and the “Syphilitic Child” in Nineteenth-Century Britain" Journal of Humanities, Seoul National University 79, no.4 (2022) : 7-36.doi: 10.17326/jhsnu.79.4.202211.7
Haejoo Kim. Anti-Vaccination Parent’s Citizenship and the “Syphilitic Child” in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Journal of Humanities, Seoul National University, 79(4), 7-36. doi: 10.17326/jhsnu.79.4.202211.7
Haejoo Kim. Anti-Vaccination Parent’s Citizenship and the “Syphilitic Child” in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Journal of Humanities, Seoul National University. 2022; 79(4) 7-36. doi: 10.17326/jhsnu.79.4.202211.7
Haejoo Kim. Anti-Vaccination Parent’s Citizenship and the “Syphilitic Child” in Nineteenth-Century Britain. 2022; 79(4), 7-36. Available from: doi:10.17326/jhsnu.79.4.202211.7
Haejoo Kim. "Anti-Vaccination Parent’s Citizenship and the “Syphilitic Child” in Nineteenth-Century Britain" Journal of Humanities, Seoul National University 79, no.4 (2022) : 7-36.doi: 10.17326/jhsnu.79.4.202211.7
