142
votes
Is there a historical precedent to the vaccine scare?
My personal favorite is the early history of the lighting rod.
Lightning likes to try to ground itself via the tallest, pointiest thing around. This means that because of their architecture, ...
- 118k
40
votes
Accepted
Where (if anywhere) were X-ray machines put on trains or trolleys to image "Everybody over 14 years old"?
It was in Glasgow in 1957, as part of the city's fight against tuberculosis. It's worth noting that the X-Ray machines weren't actually on the tram. It was simply used to advertise the campaign.
[...
- 77.3k
38
votes
Accepted
Did medieval kingdoms issue health related guidelines?
Missum imperatori de pestilentia is one such guideline, written in 1371 for the emperor Charles IV for dissemination.
It was based on the Paris Plague Concilium Tractate of 1348 written by the faculty ...
- 80.8k
36
votes
Accepted
Is there a historical precedent to the vaccine scare?
Actually, the exact same thing happened in Brazil, but with a real uprising: Vaccine Revolt (Wikipedia).
This is a matter of great discussion in Brazilian history, with most historians arguing that ...
- 476
35
votes
Accepted
Is there a record of a rabid human attacking another human?
Using the historic term for rabies, hydrophobia, and searching 19th century documents, records of infected patients biting caregivers can be found quite readily. The 1879 edition of The Dublin Journal ...
- 38.6k
29
votes
Accepted
Where were ancient Romans supposed to dispose of their waste and garbage?
SHORT ANSWER
The short answer is that, although there were laws concerning the disposal of waste,
there is no evidence of widespread municipal waste management in the
modern sense of the word; there ...
- 108k
29
votes
Is there a historical precedent to the vaccine scare?
In Korea: Fan Death
(dates to the 1920s)
In US and Europe: Poisonous Tomatoes
(dates to their discovery in the New World, but not clear if/when there were "authorities" stating the truth)
Reasons ...
- 3,183
22
votes
Is there a historical precedent to the vaccine scare?
From the 1930s.
Mentioned on Huffington Post. The older blog referred to in the HP article is no longer available, to so prevent the same thing from happening to the HP article, here's the relevant ...
- 329
22
votes
Is there a historical precedent to the vaccine scare?
There is a belief which for want of a better term I will call Draft Theory.
This is the belief that a draft, defined as a stream of air blowing on the
body from one direction, such as from an open ...
- 417
19
votes
Is there a historical precedent to the vaccine scare?
The use of anaesthesia during labour was highly contentious, partly on medical grounds, partly on religious grounds - women were meant to suffer during childbirth - certainly in the opinion of (male) ...
- 7,941
15
votes
Did medieval kingdoms issue health related guidelines?
One famous source for life during medieval pandemic is the introduction of Boccaccio's Decamerone, which describes the Black Death in Florence in 1348:
And against this pestilence no human wisdom or ...
- 8,383
14
votes
Is there a historical precedent to the vaccine scare?
You might consider the first smallpox vaccine. From Voltaire's "Letters on the English":
"IT is inadvertently affirmed in the Christian countries of Europe that the English are fools and madmen. ...
- 2,915
11
votes
Accepted
What's the earliest evidence of drug abuse?
The way that the question is framed is laced with quite modern conceptions of "abuse" and "drugs" that would be completely incomprehensible for earlier people.
Yet the word 'drug' ...
- 80.8k
11
votes
Did medieval kingdoms issue health related guidelines?
It was a little after the medieval period (though very British), but King James' A Counterblaste to Tobacco from 1604 is an oft-cited early example of public health guidance and one of the earliest ...
- 3,534
9
votes
Accepted
When were the first deaths from the Spanish Flu Pandemic?
This is impossible to state with any certainty because:
The exact path of the "Spanish" Flu virus in its early stages is unknown; and
Early deaths from the virus were not recognised at the time and ...
- 97.4k
8
votes
Is there a historical precedent to the vaccine scare?
There was a peasant revolt in the Habsburg Empire in the 1830's, mainly in Galicia and Northern Hungary, caused by peasants believing a cholera outbreak was a deliberate attempt by the government and /...
- 4,741
8
votes
Did starvation or malnutrition occur in indigenous American societies?
Hunter-Gathers
Absolutely all hunter-gatherers live "hand-to-mouth", malnutrition is common, and starvation is not just a "risk" - it is a permanent threat.
This should be obvious because they ...
- 26.9k
8
votes
Were cities that enacted lockdowns during the 1918 flu pandemic successful in preventing any infections?
Denver, Colorado is a good sample of the results when the measures start early, but are revoked too soon.
The goal of the lockdown is to prevent people meeting and transferring the virus on to ...
- 9,504
7
votes
Accepted
How are historical nutrition data gathered?
I don't have any expertise in this field, and the question doesn't provide much detail about what sources Harari may be citing. I did a quick search on Google Books but find no reference to ...
- 18.8k
6
votes
Accepted
Did Ancient China use lead in their food/water industry as much as the Romans?
From a purely numerical perspective of quantifying "often" or "much" we observe that Western lead production peaked in Roman times and fell off sharply afterwards, whereas Chinese lead production was ...
- 80.8k
6
votes
Why was compulsory vaccination abandoned in the UK?
I will refer to the science based claims of the OP questions leaving aside social and political reasons. I think the other answer though factually fair is a little loaded with personal opinions which ...
- 97
6
votes
Is there a historical precedent to the vaccine scare?
The case I have in mind is not as drastic as the others but was one of the first large scale "manually spread health disinformation" in France.
In the 80's a leaflet supposedly authored by the ...
- 737
6
votes
Accepted
Was there a time when it was easier for slaves than citizens to access state-sponsored medical facilities in Ancient Rome?
The information given in the WP article seems a bit misleading and has the occasional error. The army and navy had its special valetudinaria. Therefore a soldier would have been treated there and as ...
- 80.8k
5
votes
Accepted
When did people first started to consider lead poisoning as a possible problem?
According History of Lead Poisoning Around the World by Dr. Herbert L. Needleman, lead poisoning was first knowingly observed and recorded in a means which we can recover as early as 2000 BCE. ...
- 1,258
5
votes
Why would "loose women" give you bad health?
Short answer: Gonorrhea and syphilis, neither of which was curable until around WWII (with the advent of penicillin). There were other lesser-known incurable (at the time) STDs as well. Your ...
- 432
5
votes
Where (if anywhere) were X-ray machines put on trains or trolleys to image "Everybody over 14 years old"?
This was certainly very widespread, with variations, in many places or nations around the world. The purpose was to mass-scan the populace with healthy or harmless X-rays for signs of tuberculosis and ...
- 80.8k
4
votes
Where (if anywhere) were X-ray machines put on trains or trolleys to image "Everybody over 14 years old"?
Though it was not on public transportation, busses were used in Denmark in the 1950's as mobile platforms for tuberculosis detection.
Link in danish about mobile tuberculosis units, including a small ...
- 141
4
votes
Accepted
Which STD did adults & children have in Kamchatka?
Helpful comments above indicate that the disease was syphilis. This is backed up by secondary sources:
Jones's Empire of Extinction describes it as "rampant".
Jochelson's The Kamchadals called it "...
- 27.6k
3
votes
Is there a historical precedent to the vaccine scare?
There is a common belief among auto mechanics (at least here in the US) that if an auto battery is placed on a concrete floor, the concrete will somehow discharge it and quite possibly ruin it. New ...
- 417
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