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Christine E. Hallett

Some nurses chose to work independently. Trained British nurse, Elsie Knocker, established, with her untrained associate, Mairi Chisholm, an aid post in the village of Pervyse behind the Belgian front-line trenches. Her memoir, Flanders and Other Fields, documents her innovative treatment for wound-shock as well as her experiences close to the front lines of war. Violetta Thurstan, a highly-trained professional British nurse, served with the Order of St John of Jerusalem in Belgium, with the Russian Red Cross in a flying column on the Polish Front, and then, again, on the Western Front. Her writings include one of the few technical manuals of wartime nursing practice to be published during the war.

in Nurse Writers of the Great War
Caring for newborns in early modern England
Leah Astbury

There have been several important studies about the bodily experience of pregnancy in early modern Europe. However, the infant, its body and health, have been entirely absent. This chapter addresses these absences by showing how babies were medically unique, demanded their own specific care, and how this changed over time after birth. Understanding the ways in which the infant body was readied for later life, and the role that Non-Naturals played in preventative health care, is important not just to the study of childbirth and parturition, but also to deciphering the ways early modern people thought about well-being. The chapter also draws on a group of sources which have been termed 'life-writing', that is, family correspondence, diaries and journals, which allow the historian to access the ways in which prescription and practice interacted.

in Conserving health in early modern culture
Convalescent care in early modern England
Hannah Newton

This chapter focuses on how doctors and laypeople measured the patient's growing strength after illness, and analyses the physiological processes through which this restitution was thought to occur. It shows that both the measures and the mechanisms for the restoration of strength were intimately connected to the 'six Non-Natural things': excretion, sleep, food, passions, air and exercise. Patients' sleeping patterns, appetites for foods, and emotions, along with other inclinations and behaviours that related to the Non-Naturals, were used to track their progression on 'the road to health'. The Non-Naturals played two vital functions during convalescence in early modern England. The first was prognostic: the manifestation of each Non-Natural acted as a measure of the patient's growing strength. The second role was therapeutic: the manipulation of the Non-Naturals was the chief means through which strength and flesh were restored.

in Conserving health in early modern culture
South Korea’s development of a hepatitis B vaccine and national prevention strategy focused on newborns
Eun Kyung Choi
and
Young-Gyung Paik

For several decades South Korea has been recognised as a country in which hepatitis B is endemic, but it has also become famous for its controlled hepatitis epidemic, using a well-organised vaccination plan.The social determinants surrounding the vaccination plan have not been studied, however. In the 1980s, the hepatitis issue was a major concern in Korea, involving various actors, including medical doctors, the government, foreign scholars, and international institutions. While the domestic production of hepatitis B vaccines and the vaccination campaigns focused on newborns, combined with extensive prenatal screening have been counted as key success factors, the adoption of these specific measures was not simply based on scientific analysis. In this sense, when an anti-hepatitis plan was finally introduced in South Korea, it was not just a reaction to the prevalent hepatitis B but also a reflection of the nation’s future-oriented, developmentalist imaginaries.

in The politics of vaccination
Open Access (free)
Vaccine policy and production in Japan
Julia Yongue

Factors such as climate and geography were important determinants of the types vaccines selected for use and the prevalence of certain infectious diseases in Japan. However, as shown in this chapter, there is strong evidence that preventive vaccination policies that were strongly influenced by foreign health authorities, changing societal expectations, pressure from special interest groups, and new scientific discoveries played as an important, if not a more significant role in the formation of Japan’s approach to immunisation and vaccine production. By delineating the principal features and influences on the development of Japan’s vaccine policies and production using a wide range of illustrations, the writer argues that Japan’s approach differed markedly from the ones adopted by the health authorities in other nations. This distinctiveness stems from Japan’s unique history of disease, policies and institutions, whose centerpiece is the Preventative Vaccination Law (PVL) introduced in 1947 during the Allied occupation (1945-52). This chapter will trace these influences—both past and present—on Japan’s vaccination policies in order to shed light on its unique approach to immunisation and production.

in The politics of vaccination
The case of the Netherlands
Stuart Blume

A century ago, state institutes of public health played an important role in the production of sera and vaccines. In The Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries they continued to do so until after World War II. Focusing in particular on The Netherlands, this chapter examines their withdrawal from vaccine production in the past 20 years. In the 1980s the Dutch government was still committed to maintaining the state’s ability to produce the vaccines needed by the national vaccination programme. A series of legal and institutional changes sought to protect the public sector vaccine producer against the threat of privatisation. These changes ultimately proved inadequate. Not only was the Institute’s ability to meet demand for new vaccines being eroded by global developments, but policy makers were increasingly convinced that vaccination practices should be harmonised with those of other European countries. The decision to sell off the Dutch state’s vaccine production facilities, taken in 2009, has to be understood in historical context. It was the outcome of globalisation processes that for two decades had worked simultaneously on both the supply and the demand sides

in The politics of vaccination
The cultural construction of opposition to immunisation in India
Niels Brimnes

While the history of immunisation in India is mainly about some of the world’s most extensive programmes, this article focusses on four instances of well-articulated opposition to immunisation from elite sections of Indian society. Analysing an anti-vaccination pamphlet from 1921, Gandhi’s writings on immunisation and medicine, protests against BCG vaccination in the first decades after independence, and Debabar Banerji’s vociferous criticism of immunisations programmes since the 1970s, it explores how the opposition was culturally constructed and linked to imaginations of the Indian nation. The article finds that a recurrent theme is the notion that immunisation is – due to distinctive features of Indian society and culture – particularly problematic in India, rather than strengthening the national body, immunisation threatens to destroy it.

in The politics of vaccination
Open Access (free)
Paul Greenough
,
Stuart Blume
, and
Christine Holmberg
in The politics of vaccination
Vaccine scares, statesmanship and the media
Andrea Stöckl
and
Anna Smajdor

This chapter discusses the MMR vaccination controversy in the UK following the publication of a paper in Lancet which linked the MMR triple jab to childhood autism. We discuss the response of the British media to the paper’s claims, and its subsequent retraction, and the way that the actions of the then Prime Minister contributed to the debates. We analysed media reports from that time and draw on policy papers on science communication in order to show how a combination of events before and after the publication of Wakefield’s paper influenced public debates on science, trust and personal responsibility for health protection, and thus also had an impact on public health policy making. We follow a historical thread on actions of public figures on health policy issues and situate the debate in the context of British science policy in general to better understand vaccine controversies and debates in the British context.

in The politics of vaccination
Britta Lundgren
and
Martin Holmberg

During 2010 an increasing incidence of narcolepsy in children and adolescents was reported in Sweden and Finland, associated with the pandemic vaccine Pandemrix. Vaccination has since the 1940s been seen as a magic bullet to protect from flu. During past influenza pandemics in Sweden, the vaccine was, however, either absent or in short supply. Since the pandemic 2009-10 – caused by the Influenza A(H1N1) virus – production increased and mass vaccination campaigns were launched in many countries. Sweden was the most successful, with over sixty per cent coverage in what became the largest public health intervention in Swedish history.

Facing the A(H1N1) pandemic, Swedish mass vaccination efforts were preceded by consensual decision-making relying on historically successful vaccination campaigns. Paradoxically, both the efficiency of the response as well as the approach to consensual decision-making may have harmed instead of strengthened public trust.

The aim is to discuss pandemic influenza as an old and a contemporary problem and place it within the framework of national and international flu vaccination practices, pandemic preparedness, and nation building. This work is built on research on flu pandemics, on public documents and on interviews with parents of children suffering vaccination-induced narcolepsy and with officials working on pandemic preparedness.

in The politics of vaccination