‘Crops of Vaccine Virus’: Production, Pedigree, and Purity on American Vaccine Farms, 1870-1902

• In Event: Farming for Health: Environmental Histories of Vaccine Production

Abstract

Smallpox vaccination had become a well-established, if controversial, public health technology by the mid-19th century. However, vaccinia, the bovine virus used to produce the vaccine, was difficult to store and transport, leading to regular vaccine shortages. Enterprising American physicians responded to and profited from these challenges. In the 1870s, doctors began to purchase tracts of land and small herds of cattle in order to cultivate vaccinia and maintain a constant supply. By intentionally infecting cows with the virus, vaccine farm owners - mostly physicians - could then “harvest” smallpox vaccine matter and sell it to their fellow medical practitioners and local boards of public health. Vaccine farms thrived economically and soon provided the primary source of vaccine matter across the country. By the 1920s, many emerging pharmaceutical companies had purchased or incorporated these vaccine farms, forming large commercial laboratories for the production of a range of new vaccines and antitoxins.
Historians have largely considered vaccine farms in the context of their role as the antecedents of pharmaceutical companies. Instead, my paper relies on advertisements, newspaper reports, and medical journals to explore how vaccine farm owners developed professional reputations using techniques borrowed from stockbreeding and horticulture. It was through this close connection with agriculture that owners built trusted, recognizable brands and protected their intellectual property from fraudulent producers. Owners traced the pedigree of their virus stock, insisting that different strains bore particular characteristics that generated safe and efficacious “crops” of vaccine matter. I conclude with the passage of the 1902 Biologics Control Act, which regulated vaccine safety standards through laboratory testing. In the decades before vaccine farms were fully transformed into laboratories, physician-owners made a unique and risky technology appear familiar and safe by framing vaccinia as a product that could be bred, cultivated, and controlled through careful farming practices.

Author

• Tess Lanzarotta, Yale University