Vaccines

The Reverend John Clinch of Newfoundland performed one of the first vaccinations in the New World in 1798, using cowpox matter to provide inoculation against smallpox. The first formal promotion of vaccination in Lower Canada was undertaken four years later, but a public vaccination program was not attempted until 1815. During the smallpox epidemic of 1885–86, some doctors recommended vaccination, but others declared it useless – indeed dangerous – and maintained that the vaccine’s effectiveness had not yet been proven. Legislation made vaccination compulsory, which aroused strong opposition in a population sceptical of the vaccine’s efficacy, and in 1885 riots broke out in Montreal. In 1917 the Connaught Antitoxin Laboratories and University Farm was officially opened in Toronto, and there a range of high-quality preventive medicines could be manufactured at costs low enough to make them universally available. The campaign for vaccination was successful, and it was established as a universal practice.