Vaccinations: Rites of Passage
Vaccination—introducing dead or weakened versions of germs into the body to promote the production of antibodies and create immunity to a disease—has been practiced for at least 200 years, making it a chronological "peer" of the United States. Which childhood diseases do the American public health announcements below address?
1. 
Rubella
Rubella, otherwise known as German measles, causes only very mild symptoms in most people with healthy immune systems (largely a rash and swollen glands in the neck), but can be fatal or crippling to unborn children. If a woman contracts rubella while pregnant, there is, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), "an 80% chance that her baby will be born deaf or blind, with a damaged heart or small brain, or mentally retarded." Miscarriage is also possible.
This 1970 image promotes vaccination against the disease, which became available in 1969. In 1964-1965, during a major rubella outbreak, more than 20,000 children were born with disorders from the disease.
2. 
Diphtheria
Diphtheria, a highly-contagious bacterial disease, causes flu-like symptoms—but, left untreated, the CDC says that it "produces a toxin that can cause serious complications such as heart failure or paralysis" and kills one out of 10 of its victims.
In the 1920s, diphtheria killed approximately 15,000 victims a year, many of them children. With widespread use of the vaccine, the disease is now very rare in the U.S.. This poster dates from 1941.
3. 
Smallpox
The highly contagious smallpox virus causes fever, headache, vomiting, and a severe skin rash, killing many of its victims and scarring survivors. Today, smallpox cases are virtually unknown, due to a global vaccination campaign that has its roots centuries ago—the English physician Edward Jenner first vaccinated against smallpox at the end of the 18th century.
In 1809, Massachusetts became the first state to require vaccination. Vaccinations for smallpox in the U.S. continued until 1972. This image is from 1941, eight years before the last recorded case in the country.
4. 
Polio
The polio virus can cause symptoms ranging from those of the common cold to severe muscle pain followed by partial paralysis (often in the legs, but sometimes in other muscles). According to the CDC, a 1916 outbreak killed 6,000 people and paralyzed 27,000 others, while the National Network for Immunization Information reports that an epidemic in 1952 affected 21,000 people.
Vaccines for polio came out in 1955 and 1961; the last U.S.-originating case occurred in 1979, and the disease no longer exists in the western hemisphere. This poster is from 1963, and features "Wellbee," a CDC mascot used to promote vaccination and public health.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website provides resources on (largely present-day) health and health practices, but its Public Health Image Library (PHIL) presents a searchable database of health-and-medicine-related images and videos. The search engine can be tricky to operate, and some of the images (many are photographs) contain graphic representations of injury and disease, so you may want to take care while surfing or when directing students to the website.
You can find many more posters from the New Deal era, on topics ranging from public health to theater performances, at the Library of Congress' American Memory collection By the People, for the People: Posters from the WPA. Read the Clearinghouse's review of this website here.
For a sprinkling of other public health posters, and information on the lives of major U.S. scientists who worked in biomedical research and public health, try the National Library of Medicine's Profiles in Science. The Clearinghouse reviews the Profiles here.
Colonial Williamsburg's ongoing podcast touches on colonial-era vaccination in a July 13, 2009, podcast on a 1721 smallpox epidemic in Boston.
A Smithsonian Institution National Museum of American history blog entry looks at the museum's collection of flu vaccines. The Museum's online exhibit Whatever Happened to Polio? offers online games, historical photos, and other resources on polio and the development of a vaccine against it.
PBS offers the full-length documentary American Experience: The Polio Crusade, free to watch online.
Search the topic "Health and Medicine" in our Museums and Historic Sites database to find possible health-and-medicine-related field trip sites in your area. Many towns have small apothecary and drugstore museums, and your region may have a larger museum, as well—such as DC's National Museum of Health and Medicine or Maryland's National Museum of Dentistry.
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Public Health Image Library, http://phil.cdc.gov/phil/ (accessed July 29, 2009).
- Chicago (Ill.) WPA Federal Art Project, "Diphtheria strikes unprotected children : Protect your child with toxoid—Toxoid prevents diptheria : Chicago Department of Health," 1941, By the People, For the People: Posters from the WPA, 1936-1943 (accessed July 30, 2009).
- Chicago (Ill.) WPA Federal Art Project, "Is your child vaccinated : Vaccination prevents smallpox - Chicago Department of Health," 1941, By the People, For the People: Posters from the WPA, 1936-1943 (accessed July 30, 2009).
- Department of Health and Human Services, National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Disease, "Parents' Guide to Childhood Immunizations" (U.S. Government Printing Office, 2007) (accessed July 30, 2009).
- National Network for Immunization Information, http://www.immunizationinfo.org/ (accessed July 30, 2009).
The map of the 1920 concentration of manufacturing establishments was generated by the University of Virginia Library's 
In 1790, federal marshals collected data for the first census, knocking by hand on each and every door. As directed by the U.S. Constitution, they counted the population based on specific criteria, including "males under 16 years, free White females, all other free persons (by sex and color), and slaves." There was no pre-printed form, however, so marshals submitted their returns, sometimes with additional information, in a variety of formats.
True. Or at least, he is recorded as doing so in colonist Robert Beverley's 1705 The History and Present State of Virginia, today a major resource in early Virginian and colonial history. Beverley gives a full account of Pocahontas's story (though historians debate its accuracy). According to Beverly, in England,
False. Upon coming to the throne in 1891—following the death of her brother, King Kalakaua—Queen Lili'uokalani appointed Victoria Ka'iulani Cleghorn, her half-Scottish half-Hawaiian niece, as Crown Princess of Hawaii. Born in 1875 and educated in the UK, Ka'iulani spent the latter part of her short life advocating for the restoration of her country's independence. She died of illness in 1899, at the age of 23—shortly after the U.S. officially annexed Hawaii. The Hawaiian royal line continues today, but Ka'iulani was the last princess appointed while the monarchy held political power. 
False. The imperial family objected to the opening of Japan—which had kept its borders largely shut to outsiders for centuries—to the U.S., but the imperial princess' marriage did not take place until several years after the shogun concluded a second treaty, this one with the first U.S. Consul General to Japan, Townsend Harris. The shogunate, essentially a monarchy made up of warrior-rulers, had long held the power of government in Japan, while the traditional monarchy of the imperial family had become largely ceremonial. However, the shogunate's agreeing to open the country to Westerners in the treaties of 1854 and 1858 created a political divide between supporters of the shogun and of the emperor; Kazunomiya's marriage to Iemochi in 1862 was meant to bridge this divide.
To read Robert Beverley's full account of the life of Pocahontas, refer to pages 25-33 of his The History and Present State of Virginia 
1915
1925
1917 (Note the military accents.)
1905.
1935.
1910.
1940.
1895.
1955.
1960.
[Question 1] The first photograph of either a president or a first lady broadcasting from the White House is of Mrs. Hoover. She began national broadcasts in 1929, even setting up a practice room in the White House where she could "improve [her] talkie technique." Many of her broadcasts were made from President Hoover's country retreat, Camp Rapidan, where she often devoted her programs to speaking to young people, urging girls to contemplate independent careers and boys to help with the housework. Mrs. Hoover had a degree in geology from Stanford University, as did her husband. She had accompanied him to China for two years, where he hadsupervised the country's mining projects. She later used the Mandarin Chinese she learned then to communicate with her husband privately when they were in the presence of others.
[Question 4] Julia Grant, although it happened after her husband was no longer president. Mrs. Grant went down the Big Bonanza silver mine in Virginia City, Nevada with her husband after hearing that he had wagered that she would be afraid to go. The Grants, along with their son, Ulysses, Jr., visited the mine on October 28, 1879, more than two years after Grant had left office. The mine's fabulous production of silver during the Civil War had done much to undergird the Government's financial credit internationally. Lucy Hayes later descended into the same mine with her husband, President Rutherford Hayes. On May 21, 1935, Eleanor Roosevelt made the national news by visiting the Willow Grove coal mine in Bellaire, Ohio, to observe the working conditions of the miners.
[Question 7] Lyndon Johnson, with his wife Lady Bird on one side and Jackie on the other, was sworn in aboard Air Force One less than two hours after JFK's assassination. The ceremony was delayed to wait for Jackie to arrive. The most famous photograph of the event has Jackie in the foreground, standing in a pink suit still stained with her husband's blood, with LBJ in the center with his hand upraised taking the oath, and with Lady Bird in the background.
In 1928, Alfred Emmanuel Smith, Jr., four times governor of New York, ran as the Democratic candidate for president of the U.S.. Though "Al" Smith's heritage also included German, Italian, and English ancestry, he identified as Irish American, and faced prejudice for both his ethnicity and his religion (he was Catholic) during his campaign. The press and the public suspected him of drunkenness (stereotypically associated with Irish Americans), manipulation by the Pope, and involvement with Tammany Hall (a New York City Democratic political machine known for supporting Irish Americans in politics).
Irish-born John Barry first crisscrossed the Atlantic as a respected commander of merchant ships—but when war broke out with England, he joined the Continental Army and was commissioned a naval captain in 1776. (He also served in several battles on land, while a ship he was to command, the Effington, was under construction.) Though he gained fame for valor and loyalty during the war, he returned to captaining merchant ships when it concluded.
The daughter of Irish immigrants, Margaret Brown rose into high-society circles when her husband, James Joseph Brown, became a board member of the Ibex Mining Company. She used her new social status to advocate for the rights of women and children—activities which she continued throughout her life. Her status also allowed her to board the Titanic as a first-class passenger; she earned fame and the nickname "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" for her efforts to get passengers into lifeboats and to bring her own lifeboat around to look for survivors.
Mary Harris Jones, also known as "Mother Jones," participated in the founding of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in 1905. Jones, who was born in Ireland and grew up in the U.S., took a leading role in the early-20th-century labor movement following the death of her husband and four children in a yellow fever epidemic and the later loss of her dressmaking shop in the Great Chicago Fire. Arrested multiple times, she gained notoriety across the country as a labor organizer, motivating women and children to participate in strikes in support of their husbands and fathers. She also organized children to strike for their own rights—in 1903, child mill and mine workers marched in Jones's "Children's Crusade," helping to bring child labor to public attention.
