Category: Resources

~Kelly Hacker Jones

I’ve spent the first month of my fellowship culling through documents in the Medical Heritage Library Collections that illustrate moments in the history of vaccine development and use. These have ranged from notices in state medical society journals about new serums and state laws to scientific reports to anti-vaccination tracts. In selecting items for inclusion in the exhibit, I gravitated towards those that were representative of key events or themes in vaccine history and that had visual appeal. 

I want this collection to meet two goals: 1) making primary sources on the history of vaccines more accessible to the public, and 2) showcasing the different types of sources that are available through the MHL’s collections. This is why, for example, I chose to feature three editorials from state medical society journals to depict trials of the Salk polio vaccine trials in the early 1950s. I also leaned heavily, whenever possible, towards documents that clearly lay out a position (e.g. for or against vaccination) or that explain a development using case studies and statistics (Edward Jenner’s 1798 pamphlet is, conveniently, a useful example). This is for the benefit of K-12 instructors who may be looking for materials that students can evaluate for argument or to explain the scientific method. 

These mini exhibits do not contain all there is to find on the history of vaccines; researchers with an interest in public policy and federal aid to promote vaccination will find ample sources documenting that history. Nor are the MHL collections – despite including nearly 300,000 items – comprehensive on this topic. I especially wanted to find more public education ephemera and PSAs, but few have been added to the collection to date. Such is the nature of historical collections.