Historical
The influential Massachusetts preacher Cotton Mather was the first known person to attempt inoculation on a large scale, inoculating himself and over 200 members of his congregation with the help of a local doctor. While his pro-health view became standard, he also caused the first reaction against the practice. Several Boston clergymen and devout physicians formed the Anti-vaccination Society in 1798. Others complained that the practice was dangerous, going so far as to demand that doctors who carried out these procedures be tried for attempted murder. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts was the first state in America to make vaccination mandatory, in 1908.
Iceland in 1816 made the clergy responsible for small pox vaccination and gave them the responsibility of keeping vaccination records for their parishes, Sweden also had similar practices.
When vaccination was introduced into UK public policy, and adoption followed overseas, there was opposition from social cranks and trade unionists, including sectarian ministers and those interested in self help and alternative medicines like homeopathy.
Anti-vaccination proponents were most common in Protestant countries; those that were religious often came from minority religious movements outside of mainstream Protestantism, including Quakers in England and Baptists in Sweden.
Catholic and Anglican missionaries vaccinated Northwest Coast Indians during an 1862 smallpox epidemic.
In the UK, vaccination was provided free from 1840 under the Vaccination Act. In 1873, a further Vaccination Act made vaccination compulsory. Resistance to compulsion grew, and in 1885, after riots in Leicester, a Royal Commission sat and reported 7 years later, recommending the abolition of cumulative penalties. This was accomplished in the 1898 Act, which introduced a conscience clause that allowed parents who did not believe vaccination was efficacious or safe to obtain exemption. This extended the concept of the "conscientious objector" in English law.
Read more about this topic: Vaccination And Religion
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