Rhetoric and Resistance: Debates over Inoculation and Vaccination since the 18th Century

Immunization practices have been the subject of heated debate since coming to the attention of Western European medicine and societies more broadly in the eighteenth century. Modern discussions of immunization have adopted the theme of conflict to frame both the past and present within narratives of resistance, assuming the polarization of those for and against. Rhetoric of resistance obscures the complex range of positions between resistance and acceptance, as well as diverse understandings of power. The study of debates over inoculation against smallpox in the eighteenth century reveals overlapping factors such as gender, socio-economic status, religion, race, and political affiliation. In this paper, we will examine how differing concepts of resistance and various socio-cultural factors played a role in uniting and dividing people on immunization in France and across Western Europe since the eighteenth century.