In 1853 “Lord Lyttelton, as a private member, brought in a bill to parliament to make vaccination compulsory in England. The bill passed through both Houses without opposition, and with hardly any debate except on points of detail”. This became the first compulsory Vaccination Act 1853. [1, 2]
Stunningly the “Act of Parliament of 1853 had no section devoted to the “Definition of Terms”; there was no definition of cowpox or genuine vaccine, an omission all the more remarkable that variolous matter was then being used as vaccine, on the pretext that it had “ passed through the cow. Although a medical dogma was therein established by the State, the doctrine was not formulated.” The Act was “simply a notorious empirical practice that was established under pains and penalties”, not of any principle of epidemiology or pathology.
“…The vaccinated are safe against smallpox because they, in fact, have had it ”
- In 1853 the Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League (ACVL) was formed in London. By 1860s a national anti-vaccination movement had formed By 1870s ACVL had 103 branches and up to 200,000 members and sympathizers in Britain alone. “Many became actively involved when their child was injured or killed by a smallpox vaccine. The present-day anti-vaccination movement is no different” [3]
The Vaccination Act of 1840 made variolation the method of inoculating with smallpox (variola), illegal. Inoculation with the same procedure but instead using cowpox (vaccinia) contaminated pus, the process called vaccination, was legal and under the Poor Law Act was administered free. [?]