The Economics of Sick Calves: The Use of Calves for Smallpox Vaccine Lymph Production in Britain and its Empire, 1870s–1900s

Abstract

Summary In this essay, I explore how the production and distribution of animal lymph benefited public and private producers by allowing them to use the calf’s body to profit from compulsory vaccination legislation. Through this process, a market was created in which the state competed with and was beholden to commercial entities for public health administration. By establishing its own vaccine-producing sites, the state participated in this public health market, where it competed with private producers. Building on scholarly work on the history of public health and animal histories, the essay understands how late nineteenth-century British vaccine administration hinged on a view of lymph production that encompassed the calf’s importance to vaccine administration and the commodification of the resulting vaccine lymph. These perspectives shaped how the state and medical practitioners approached and administered vaccination, refashioning lymph from a free tool to a market commodity.