What harm can be done by a scientist or public health official agreeing to debate an anti-vaccination huckster? It's not just a thought execise. The damage has been done before. Let's look at Minnesota's "Vaccination Debate" of 1902. 1/ The Minnesota anti-vaccination league challenged physicians and public health officials to a stage debate. Minnesota had passed a compulsory vaccination law for school children in 1883, which the league hoped to overturn.

Here’s an example of how rural counties and small towns halted smallpox epidemics in the early 20th century. After smallpox broke out in Langdon, ND in 1902, the county board of commissioners published a record of its expenses during the epidemic in the newspaper. The county spared no expense to stop the outbreak. They established strict quarantines and paid guards to keep the infected in their homes. The county paid doctors and nurses but also the guards and got all medical supplies, firewood, and food needed by both patients and guards.

Here’s an idea (and an interesting story from St. Louis in 1923): 1/5 In 1923, St. Louis ordered that rail passengers from the South (including Black people moving north in the Great Migration) show proof of vaccination for smallpox or be vaccinated by health officials. 2/5

After a bit of searching, I found the text of what is generally considered the first compulsory vaccination order for school children in the United States. The Boston School Committee ordered in Nov. 1827 ordered each child to show proof of vaccination by March 1828. 1/ Boston had a strong quarantine system and had conducted a general vaccination of the city 10 years before, but to keep smallpox out (it had been spreading in New York and Philadelphia), they ordered children to be vaccinated. 2/

In the spring of 1903, newspapers around the country started printing a quack assertion that lettuce prevented smallpox better than vaccination. It was presented as fact and went mostly unchallenged by newspapers editors. Here's the Knoxville Journal Tribune March 13, 1903: 1/ The claim originated in a quack medical publication called "Medical Talk" printed in Columbus, Ohio, by medical grifter Samuel Brubaker Hartman. The Cleveland Medical Journal in 1900 warned readers not to be fooled by anything published in "Medical Talk" 2/

In researching vaccine mandates for epidemics in the past, I also came across another scourge of cities large and small. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, many local governments banned the hated "peanut whistle." Join me as I explain. 1/11 Now, I'm not talking about about harmless little toy Mr. Peanut whistle like this that you could get from Planters Peanuts, but loud steam whistles attached to peanut carts by street vendors. 2/

Here's a thread on how one town in Ohio destroyed the threat of smallpox in just two weeks in 1898 by taking swift action to shut things down for 2 weeks and initiating a mass vaccination. I think there are some lessons, and echoes, and telling differences here. 1/16 In 1898 Hamilton, OH, was a town of 20,000 people just 20 miles north of Cincinnati. Its reaction to the threat of smallpox was not particularly unique, a lot of cities and towns did similar general vaccinations. Hamilton's was particularly quick, safe, & well-documented. 2

Wow! Because this tweet thread has gotten so much attention, here's another thread about Missouri Representative W. J. Salts a year before he broke out with smallpox in the Missouri Capitol. It also echoes loudly with the present. 1/7

https://twitter.com/ProfWehrman/status/1417466012715438081

Salts represented Phelps County and lived in Rolla. Rolla as Missourians know (I grew up in Missouri) is home to Missouri University of Science and Technology formerly UM-Rolla, and in Salt's day the Missouri School of Mines. 2/7

That delta cases exploded in Missouri, a state with one of the lowest vaccination rates proves that the "Show-Me" state didn't learn from one of the wildest stories in the history of smallpox in the United States. A short thread 1/8 In 1907, a member of the Missouri House of Representatives, W. J. Salts, broke out with a bad case of smallpox on the floor of the Missouri capitol. Salts said he thought he had a cold, but another representative who was a doctor knew it was smallpox. 2/8

Bostonians in the 18th century did not specifically close down churches during epidemics. They didn't have to. They didn't have germ theory, but with smallpox their system of close watch and quarantine was so effective that they managed to control most outbreaks. If you had smallpox, you were required to tell a city official or selectman. The selectmen would either take you to a closely guarded pest house or build a fence around your house with a posted guard so that no one could enter or exit, usually for 21 days.

"Trick-or-treating" is a relatively recent compromise between pranksters on one side and gun-wielding property owners on the other. Newspapers from the late 19th & early 20th centuries are filled with stories of horrible Halloween violence. Here's a thread: 1/15 Observances of Halloween or Hallowe'en or All Hallow's Eve, the night before the Feast of All Saints came to the US with Scottish and Irish immigrants from remnants of the Celtic festival of Samhain. The earliest newspaper reference I found was from Wilmington, DE in 1823. 2/

1. I'd like to add my thoughts to the conversation about David McCullough's problematic new book "The Pioneers." McCullough's book is centered on the town of Marietta, OH, and for 4 years I lived and worked in Marietta as a professor of early American history at Marietta College. 2. Marietta was and remains a great place to teach and learn history. It was the first capital of the Northwest Territory. Marietta College’s Library has an amazing collection of 18th Century documents that McCullough used to write his history.