![]() ![]() As with Darwin, the geographic variation of supposedly stable species nurtured in Wallace the idea of organic change. ![]() Wallace spent the next 14 years of his life, interrupted only by a stay in England from October 1852 until early April 1854, collecting specimens in the Amazon Basin and the Malay Archipelago. In 1847, inspired by reading the best-selling and scandalous Vestiges of the History of Creation, an anonymously published book that offered a naturalistic, developmental history of the cosmos and life, Wallace and Bates decided to travel to the Amazon River basin to study the origin of species, paying for their journey by working as professional specimen collectors. Wallace returned to Wales, but he stayed in touch with Bates in their letters they discussed natural history and recent books. A few years later, while working as a teacher in Leicester, Wallace met the 19-year-old amateur entomologist Henry Walter Bates, who introduced him to beetle collecting. In 1841, when Wallace was working as a land surveyor in Wales, a slump in business enabled him to devote more time to his developing interests in natural history. Thus, as an adolescent, he became acquainted with radical sciences such as phrenology ( 11). In London, he regularly attended meetings at the Hall of Science in Tottenham Court Road, where followers of the utopian socialist Robert Owen lectured. He joined his brother John in London to work as a builder. In 1836, when his parents could no longer support him, he was taken out of school to earn a living. Wallace was born on January 8, 1823, in the Welsh village of Llanbadoc into an impoverished middle-class family. It is thus probably inevitable that culturally influenced ideas of bodily integrity and health from time to time are at odds with so-called vaccination technocracies ( 10).Īlfred Russel Wallace’s humble origins contrast sharply with Charles Darwin’s privileged background. Vaccination involves national and international politics and the deeply personal sphere of child care. The polarizing controversies surrounding vaccination have never completely gone away, and the nearly unbroken tradition of debate apparently entices participants to reuse old arguments without making certain that their context is still valid. ![]() In contemporary vaccination controversies, history is frequently used as a source of arguments ( 8, 9), but the historical argument often is not based on up-to-date historical understanding. It has recently been argued that comparative historical analysis can play a major role in public health policy ( 6, 7). I also briefly analyze the similarities and differences between the Victorian and contemporary vaccination debates. Wallace’s interventions were influential he was popular and well liked inside and outside scientific circles and, despite his controversial social reformism, commanded deep respect for his achievements and his personal qualities until the end of his long life. I provide a short introduction to Wallace’s life and work and then describe his contributions to the British antivaccination campaigns. Unlike Darwin, Wallace did not leave behind a large number of private letters and other personal documents therefore, his more private thoughts, motives, and deliberations will probably remain unknown. He published copiously because this served for a long time as his major source of income, but these writings only show the public face of Wallace. The motives behind Wallace’s campaigns are sometimes difficult to fathom. Wallace made without any doubt lasting contributions to biologic science, but the second half of his life was by and large devoted to what from today’s perspective are utterly lost causes: He became a passionate advocate of spiritualism, supported land nationalization, and fervently objected to compulsory smallpox vaccination. But unlike Darwin, Wallace always was and probably will remain a serious challenge to the history of science: he stubbornly refuses to fit into the mold of the typical scientific hero. In the past few years, Wallace’s work has in fact enjoyed increasing attention among the historians of science, as several new biographies and studies prove ( 1– 5). These occasions also directed the view of a wider public to the unjustly neglected figure of Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913) ( Figure), explorer and codiscoverer of the principle of natural selection. In 2009, the scientific community commemorated the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. Perhaps best remembered today in history of science as the codiscoverer of the principle of natural selection, Wallace also played a prominent role in the antivaccination movement. ![]()
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