This 1802 cartoon by English caricaturist James Gillray (1756–1815) is a striking reminder that the controversy surrounding vaccination is nothing new. Indeed, it is as old as the earliest days of the procedure itself.

British physician Edward Jenner (1749–1823) was the first to develop an effective smallpox vaccine —using a related cowpox virus as the inoculant. Soon thereafter, fear of the unknown continued despite the vaccine’s success in preventing transmission. Gillray’s 1802 cartoon depicts a startled crowd of vaccinees who have seemingly morphed into a cow-human chimera, with the front ends of cattle leaping out of their mouths, eyes, ears, and behinds 😊.

Credit: The Trustees of the British Museum
www.britishmuseum.org/collection/image/146958001

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Puck, 1880

Fear of the use of the related cowpox virus to vaccinate against smallpox.

archive.org/details/Puck_v07n171_Keppler_and_Schwarzmann_...

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Title:A goat-headed man caresses a sleeping ewe-headed woman; sati
Description:A goat-headed man caresses a sleeping ewe-headed woman; satirizing the notion of animal magnetism and its application by physicians.
Etching after M. Voltz (?), 1815.

commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_goat-headed_man_caresse...

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www.loc.gov/resource/ppmsca.28209/

Title: Scientists assert that all diseases can be prevented by inoculation / J. Keppler.
Summary
•Illustration shows Puck standing on a stack of bound PUCK volumes between a row of people on the left identified as a "Bank President, Cashier, Teller, Clerk, [and] Janitor" as well as a scrub-woman and an office boy and a row of known criminals on the right identified as "Scott, O.L. Baldwin, F. Ward, J.D. Fish, H.W. Howgate, [and] Eno", and Fredericka Mandelbaum identified as "M". Between the two rows are bottles of "Virus from Thieving Office-Boy, Light-Fingered Scrub-Woman, Defaulting Bank Cashier, Receiver of Stolen Goods, [and] Corruptible Janitor", "Lymph from Swindling Bank President [and] Embezzling Bank Clerk", and "Vaccine from Speculating Bank Teller". O.L. Baldwin was a cashier at the Mechanics' National Bank in Newark, Henry W. Howgate (1834-1901) was a Disbursing Officer in the U.S. Signal Service, and Fredericka Mandelbaum was a known fence for stolen property.
Names
•Keppler, Joseph Ferdinand, 1838-1894, artist
Created / Published
•N.Y. : Published by Keppler & Schwarzmann, 1885 June 24.

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www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/393320

Title: The Head Ache
Artist: George Cruikshank (British, London 1792–1878 London)
Artist: After Captain Frederick Marryat (British, 1792–1848)
Publisher: George Humphrey (British, 1773?–1831?)
Published in: London
Date: February 12, 1819

Cruikshank physically embodies the pains of a severe headache as a group small demons who here attack a man collapsed in a chair next to a fireplace, holding a bottle of medicine.

Tags:   caricatures comics cartoons vintage history tylenol medicine drugs Bioknowlogy

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