Alfred Russel Wallace and the Antivaccination Movement in Victorian England

Co-Discoverer of Natural Selection Soundly Questioned Smallpox Vaccination, Set Historical Parallels for Today

By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH

The COVID States Program demonstrated ~25% of Americans resisted COVID-19 vaccination. I am constantly being reminded by family, friends, and patients what a relief it was to know declining vaccination was the right medical decision. I wondered if there were any historical parallels.

The smallpox vaccine was variously deployed by doctors in the nineteenth century using lymphatic fluid from animals or from arm to arm of humans. It could hot have been sterilized from bacteria such as staphylococci, streptococci, tetanus, syphilis, or viruses such as hepatitis B. The dose of cowpox virions could not have been measured or controlled. So there were obvious safety concerns such as fatal iatrogenic infections and great debate over whether the procedure worked at all.