"We broke down the doors and vaccinated them..."

This is a small excerpt from the very powerful and informative book, Bodily Matters: The Anti-Vaccination Movement in England 1853 to 1907, by Nadja Durbach. If you want to thoroughly understand why we have mandatory vaccination laws in the US today, this is the book for you.

The eradication of smallpox was marked by an almost military style attack on villages. Is it that much different today?

"In the hit and run excitement of such a campaign, women and children were often pulled out form under beds, from behind doors, from within latrines, etc. People were chased and, when caught, vaccinated...We considered the villagers to have an understandable though irrational fear of vaccination....we just couldn't let people get smallpox and die needlessly. We went from door to door and vaccinated. When they ran, we chased. When they locked their doors, we broke down their doors and vaccinated them..."

REF: as quoted in Greenough, "Intimidation, Coercion and Resistance in the Final States of the South Asian Smallpox Eradication Campaign, 1973-1975" p 635-36.