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SPRING
Synthesis
2011 LEVIN/AIDS
01
AN UNDERGRADUATE JOURNAL
OF THE
HISTORY OF SCIENCE
ISSUE 3, MAY 2011

SPRING 2011 LEVIN/AIDS
To the readers of Synthesis,
I am happy to announce the third issue of Synthesis, an undergraduate journal in
the history of science. We endeavor to provide a venue to further the collaboration
between undergraduate history of science institutions, and each year expand our
readership a bit more to students and faculty in programs involving the history of
philosophy of science, technology, and medicine. This year we received submissions
from all across the country, including Dartmouth, Berkeley, Yale, and the University
of Pennsylvania, in addition to Harvard. With over sixty submissions, I am pleased
to present an issue dedicated to research on the history of medicine and pharmaceuticals,
as well as new content, featuring an interview with one of the history of
science’s most reknown pioneers, Dr. Everett Mendelsohn, and a review of the new
book featuring an artistic display of photographs and stories of historical science
artifacts, Lost in Learning.
The editing board of Synthesis would like to dedicate this issue to our friend and colleague,
Ilya Chalik, who passed away before seeing the completion of this issue and
the publication of his submission, How Histamine and Antihistamine Transformed the Popular
Conception of Allergy in Postwar America, which is illustrated on the cover. As a dear
friend of mine, and fellow history of science enthusiast, Ilya is well-remembered for
his good nature and delightful demeanor by all who knew him. His contributions to
the study of the history of science and his community will not be soon forgotten.
Design
foster collaboration between undergraduates in the history of science, as a spon-
Whitney Adair ’11
sor, contributor, erditor, or collaborator, please contact us as synthesisjournal@hcs.
harvard.edu.
Melissa Wong ’12
Sincerely,
Whitney Adair
Editor-in-Chief
original cover art by Whitney Adair, photo of Everett Mendelsohn courtesy Jonathon Ruel
Editor-in-Chief
Whitney Adair ‘11
Associate Editors
Julie Barzilay ’13
Emma Benitende ’11
Jana Christian ’12
Catherine Flynn ’13
Jenay Powell ’13
Brandon Seah ’13
Allen Shih ’13
Helen Yang ’11
Staff Editors
Edwin Acosta ’12
Katie Banks ’11
Alyssa Blaize ’11
Stephanie Bucklin ’11
Michael Dunn ’11
Cory Johnson ’11
Rebecca Martinez ’11
Asa Schachar ’11
Advisors
Prof. Steven Shapin
Allie Belser
i

ii SYNTHESIS ISSUE 3
Contents
Letter from the Editor i
The Visual Culture of Venereal Disease and HIV/AIDS 1
Brandon Levin, Yale University ‘13
‘Lost in Learning’ Under the Magnifying Lens 9
Catherine Flynn, Staff Writer
How Histamine and Antihistamine Transformed the Popular Conception 11
of Allergy in Postwar America
Ilya Chalik, Harvard University ‘11
The Scientist: From Biologist to Bioweapon 19
Kimberly Goh, Harvard University ‘13
A Study on the Politicization and Moralization of Medicine: 25
Anti-Vaccination Movements in 19th Century Britain and Colonial India
Stephanie Woo, Harvard University ‘12
A Journey Through the Past, Present, and Future of the Department 29
of the History of Science with Professor Everett Mendelsohn
Julie Barzilay, Staff Writer
Pathologizing Suburbia: How Tranquilizers Made Their Own Market 31
Chelsea Link, Harvard University ‘12

SPRING 2011 LEVIN/AIDS
The Visual Culture of Venereal Disease and HIV/AIDS: An Analysis of the Portrayal of
Sexually Transmitted Infections in Public Health Posters in World War II and the 1990s
1
Brandon Levin, Yale University ‘13
Sexually transmitted infections (STI’s) have been
an enduring source of stigma, confusion and pain
for infected individuals throughout United States
history. Moreover, such infections have been the
the impact of the war in the perception of venereal disease.
During World War II, solemn appeals to patriotism
subject of numerous efforts, public and private, to increase
awareness for the use of contraceptives – many of these
efforts revolving around the public health poster. This essay in both moral and practical concerns. Conversely during
the 1990s, this same appeal to families, stability, and
the Venereal Disease Education Institute, a joint creation morality would have failed as a convincing deterrent due
of the United States government and military during the to the changing target populations of the respective public
Second World War (Figure A), while the second was created health posters. Although this latter poster of the 1990s in
in 1997 by a private organization, Project Action (Figure B). comparison to the WWII poster does not initially appear
On initial glance, these posters, despite a common focus on to be forceful and effective, it was in fact at the center of
STD prevention, have little in common. Some would even its own war – waged by populations – namely homosexuals
claim the relative foolish absurdity of the 1997 “Anti Horny
Patch” poster in comparison to the solemn “VD can wreck sexuality and for whom sexuality was at the core of their
a lot of plans” wartime pronouncement. However, upon cultural identities. As a result, the more creative campaign in
further investigation, these posters, shaped by the unique the late 1990s was in response to an evolving conception of
social and moral arena in which they originated, both make sexually transmitted infections. While the military was the
strong, effective warnings regarding the infection of STDs. driving force in efforts against venereal disease, a grassroots
When taken seriously, these posters function as their own war spearheaded by private organizations and individuals in
acts of “war” against the dangerous health behaviors that the late 20th century combated AIDS with more nuanced
led to the transmission of deadly diseases during both WWII advertising techniques and a less conventional campaign of
and the 1980s – 90s. Under this lens, the “Anti-Horny public health education.
In order to effectively determine the
1 “VD can wreck a lot of plans,” Venereal Disease Education Institute, importance of each poster in evoking themes central
Helfand Collection poster0049.dc, Yale University Medical Library.
1

2 SYNTHESIS ISSUE 3
Figure 1

SPRING 2011 LEVIN/AIDS
themselves. The title of the earlier poster is indicative of
its overarching message and intended impact: entitled VD
can wreck a lot of plans, it is at once a striking and grave
pronouncement. 1 Portraying a dejected soldier looking
down upon the family from which he is separated, the image
is evocative of a sense of duty, responsibility and guilt that
the diseased soldier undoubtedly feels. The color palate
itself—consisting simply of dark green, black, white and
red—suggests the solemn mood. 2 The soldier is depicted
in a state of utter despondency: with his head resting on
one arm, he looks despairingly at his presumed wife and
two children. Particularly noteworthy is the fact that the
poster is aimed at the married, or soon to be married, man;
during wartime, soldiers were put in positions where they
were inevitably tempted to ‘fool around,’ thus making them
more susceptible to sexually transmitted infections. Here the
soldier reaches out with his right arm, yearning to tenderly
touch his family. The soldier is unsuccessful, though, as the
blood-red text “can wreck a lot of plans” serves as a barrier
that the soldier is unable to cross; quite literally, the text
prevents the soldier from touching his family. Furthermore,
a question mark ensnares the man’s family. The prevailing
theme is one of uncertainty; the fact that the mark appears
to originate from the same spot on the poster as the soldier’s
the soldier in the eyes of his family—his return is unknown.
The implication of this uncertainty, and the intent behind
the advertisement, suggests that soldiers were meant to
react to this pointed message with guilt and fear. By evoking
images of the family while simultaneously stressing the
undercurrent of patriotism and military duty, the poster
undoubtedly imbued soldiers who saw it with a sense of
responsibility—both to their nation and their family. The
weighty and substantial topics lends both credence and
emotional power to the poster.
An even more telling analysis of this poster is derived
from a consideration of its origin. The Historical Library
database lists that the piece was published by the Venereal
Disease Education Institute between the years of 1935 and
1941. Created by the Venereal Disease Control Division of
the United States Public Health Service, the Venereal Disease
Education Institute was a joint effort of the government
and the U.S. Armed Services. 3 laymen to man the assembly lines of its ‘factory,’ including
artists, writers, and specialists in venereal disease and sex
education.”
This collaboration is clear in
the way the Institute operated: it “followed the recent trend
in health education and procured a staff of experienced
4 By likening the Education Institute to a factory,
the author—himself an editorial assistant at the Institute—
highlights the way in which the production of posters was as
integral a part of the war effort as any other item produced
in a factory during wartime. Moreover, the assertion that
“since the start of production every piece of material [was]
submitted to authoritative medical criticism, as well as to the
suggests just how vital these posters were to the public
health campaign against venereal disease. 5 It should come
as no surprise, then, that the subject matter of these posters
was presented in a serious light; as will be discussed later,
at stake were not only the lives of individuals, but also, and
more importantly, the success of the war effort.
A cursory evaluation of the more contemporary
poster presented in this analysis yields markedly different
results; not surprisingly, this second poster was selected
for juxtaposition primarily because of its blatant and
entitled “Introducing the Anti-Horny Patch,” the poster
uses humor to encourage the use of contraceptives. There
is irony inherent in the comic presentation of a poster
whose subject matter targets AIDS, a destructive and deadly
pandemic. While some may contend that the poster is purely
a humorous farce, further examination results in a more
compelling interpretation: while the poster may not be as
serious as the venereal disease poster in its presentation
style, it is equally staid in motivation and intention. AIDS
emerged as a virus in the early 1980s, and by the late 1980s
it could be suppressed at best. 6 In this sense, and similar to
the case of venereal disease, a campaign of prevention was
plainly the most effective option. 7
aimed at married or family men. Instead, the posters of
the 1990s were designed to target singles for whom sexual
freedom was accepted and embraced as a way of life. A far
cry from the dark, melancholy-inducing colors employed
in the World War II era advertisement, the bright, sparkly
and eye-catching poster exudes vibrancy and vitality. 8 The
manifest absurdity of an “Anti-Horny Patch” pulls the
viewer in immediately. Instead of appealing to a sense of
4 Doak, 13.
5 Doak, 13-14.
2 The poster itself is 20 x 15 inches.
3 Douglas E. Doak, “The Venereal Disease Education Institute,” Journal Of
Social Hygiene 30 (1944): 12.
6 World Health Organization, The World Health Report 2003: Shaping the
Future (France: World Health Organization, 2003), 44.
7 World Health Organization, 47.
8 The poster is an impressive and imposing 30 x 25 inches.
1
3

4 SYNTHESIS ISSUE 3
Figure 2

SPRING 2011 LEVIN/AIDS
5
morality, patriotism or familial responsibility, the poster
unashamedly pokes fun at the newfound public acceptability
of topics related to sex. It very effectively calls attention to
the potential health-related dangers of acting on horniness
by claiming “Horn-Away Anti-HORNY Patches are a snap
to use and instantly relieve all of the classic symptoms of
oncoming horniness.” 9 This psychological maneuver is
does indeed underscore the importance of contraception.
Moreover, when considering the poster as a medium,
and particularly the product of private rather than military
efforts, it becomes clear why posters which were generally
inappropriate for general presentation—such as this one—
still played a central role in AIDS efforts. As opposed to
a medium such as television, activist groups could use the
poster to target a focused audience. By controlling where the
posters were placed, producers of the artwork could limit
nightclub, for example, would allow for the promotion of
messages and campaigns that were more provocative than
those waged over the airwaves or on television.
Furthermore, an inscription on the poster indicates
that it is a 1997 product of Hugh Johnson Laboratories.
Although not immediately apparent to many observers,
the sexual connotation implicit in the name—read: Huge
Johnson (where Johnson is slang for the male reproductive
organ)—provides an even more nuanced, witty and
intellectually humorous element to the piece. A white
notice on the bottom of the poster, however, reveals the
true origin of the piece. The poster is in fact a product of
“Project Action,” which was launched in Portland, Oregon
U.S.” 10 The project, which was later replicated in Seattle
and San Jose because of its resounding success, “consisted
of four integrated components: community mobilization,
a motivational media campaign, a condom accessibility
program, and active involvement of youth at risk in peer
education and outreach activities.” 11 Allan Brandt’s A Social History of Venereal Disease in the United
States Since 1880 provides an extraordinarily comprehensive
narrative that illustrates the contextual underpinning of the
venereal disease poster examined here. Brandt frames the
battle against sexually transmitted infections as one waged
simultaneously by the government and the military: “long
‘make the world safe for democracy,’ the U.S. War Department
undertook a major campaign to make military camps in
the United States safe for the soldiers—safe from the twin
threats of immorality and venereal disease.”
As opposed to the
government-initiated campaign against venereal disease
during World War II, Project Action is emblematic of the
more creative, innovative, and grassroots efforts employed
the late 20th century.
12 Although this
government efforts during World War I, the deep-seated and
lasting impact that such a program of reform had on efforts
during World War II should not be discounted. As a result,
the fact that the health campaign during World War I, which
was aimed at ridding much of the country of immorality,
“constituted one of the most fully articulated ventures in
social engineering in American history” serves to underscore
the moral element to a number of posters created during
World War II. 13 Although the central theme of the latter
effort did not consist of “a comprehensive program to rid
the nation of vice, immorality, and disease,” 14 the majority
of public health posters produced during the Second World
Such an appeal to ethical norms—more a remnant
of the World War I campaign against venereal disease than
a focal point of the World War II effort— was only part
of the story; equally, if not more, important, were the
practical considerations that motivated such a hard-fought
campaign against sexually transmitted infections. Wary of
the inevitable temptations that soldiers would encounter
while on duty, efforts on behalf of the military were also
governed by the pragmatic realization that “in the charged
atmosphere of world war, venereal disease threatened military
15 In
this sense, the poster reveals
why advertising methods during World War II focused so
intently on prevention as opposed to treatment. Such efforts
of disease altogether was a more pragmatic alternative to
medical intervention after the fact. 16 Most importantly, such
9 “Introducing the Anti-Horny Patch,” Hugh Johnson Laboratories (Project
Action), Helfand Collection poster0150.dc, Yale University Medical Library.
10 Behavior Works: Changing Behavior for Public Health, “HIV Prevention,
Project Action,” http://www.bwpdx.org/programs/hiv-prevention/ (accessed
November 22, 2010).
11 Behavior Works: Changing Behavior for Public Health.
12 Allan M. Brandt, No Magic Bullet: a Social History of Venereal Disease
in the United States since 1880 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985),
52.
13 Brandt, 52.
14 Brandt, 52.
15 Brandt, 52.
16 Brandt, 52.

6 SYNTHESIS ISSUE 3
treatment would necessitate the soldier’s temporary removal
from duty. Each soldier that contracted venereal disease was
one less active member of the American armed forces.
An examination of the available treatments for
1900s, Salvarsan was the primary treatment for syphilis.
However, although it “gave physicians a treatment that
still debate whether it offered a complete cure.” 17 In much
the same vein, penicillin, “discovered to be effective in
treating syphilis and gonorrhea in 1943,” entered the game
public health campaign surrounding venereal disease, at
least in the context of the posters produced by the Venereal
Disease Education Institute between 1939 and 1945. This is
lead to “substantial reductions in appropriations for venereal
disease control [until] the 1950s.” 18 As such, public health
efforts were governed principally by the fact that a program
of prevention was the only viable strategy from a military
perspective.
Consequently, the government and military
during World War II. The central focus was undoubtedly
the result of a purely practical consideration—health and
the progressive health campaigns of World War I. Although
Thomas Parran, who as Surgeon General of the United
States at the time, spearheaded efforts against venereal
disease in the late 1930s, “downplayed the moral argument”
and the “traditional moral call to arms,” it was not altogether
absent from the World War II public health campaign. 19 Years later, in the 1990s, a similar appeal to health concerns
grounded in military functionality was no longer a viable
strategy to combat AIDS. The most compelling reason
for this distinction is undoubtedly that the nation was no
longer embroiled in a world war. As subsequent analysis will
reveal, though, private organizations and individuals would
themselves waging a different type of war against AIDS.
Fundamentally, an underlying link between both posters
and their corresponding public health campaigns does
indeed exist— both efforts were aimed at prevention. Many
similarities between the two efforts become apparent: just
as penicillin was not readily available for mass production
as a human retrovirus, [and] the usual paradigms in human
virology were not entirely applicable.”
As
published by the Venereal Disease Education Institute that is
and his family. As such, Parran’s emphasis on practicality
and the importance of a healthy militant force is evident.
Nonetheless, there is also an underlying moral element, as
the soldier appears to be ridden with guilt. It thus becomes
clear that the poster “VD Can Wreck a Lot of Plans”
campaigns that took center stage during World War II.
20 this realization played out in subsequent medical trials and
research efforts, but, ultimately, the fact that “in the absence
the only means of curtailing the spread of HIV infection
efforts. 21 Quite simply, prevention was the only logical
alternative to a panacea.
Although public health campaigns against venereal
disease and AIDS both targeted prevention, the radically
different cultural norms and values surrounding their
related connotations imbued in each poster. To begin, the
absence of explicit sexual content, images or innuendos in
the venereal disease poster is indicative of a time in which
Parran was censored by CBS and unable to “mention
syphilis or gonorrhea by name” on a radio address in 1934. 22
Conversely, artists in the 1990s felt “the need to counter
stigma and hysteria, which, particularly in the epidemic’s
early years, threatened people with AIDS.” 23 There was
no overarching program of censorship. Instead, America’s
of AIDS,” and this was manifest in the visual culture and
artistic renderings of the disease: “what poetry and song
lyrics attempted during the sixties became in the age of
20 Future,” in Aids and the Public Debate: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives,
ed. Carolina Hannaway, Victoria Harden and John Parascandola
(Amsterdam: IOS, 1995), 67.
21 Fauci, 70.
17 Brandt, 130.
18 Brandt, 176.
19 Brandt, 140.
22 Brandt, 122.
23 Richard Goldstein, “The Impact of AIDS on American Culture,” in
Aids and the Public Debate: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, ed.
Carolina Hannaway, Victoria Harden and John Parascandola (Amsterdam:
IOS, 1995), 133.

SPRING 2011 LEVIN/AIDS
AIDS the task of theater, video, performance, and the visual
arts.” 24
Intriguingly, though, because in the 1980s coverage
of the HIV epidemic became so widespread and mainstream,
“routine coverage” of the virus in the early 1990s and
“saturation of the airwaves” made it clear that other
preventive methods were “necessary to keep individuals
vigilant about proper prevention, such as safer sex.” 25 It is
in this “saturated” environment that Project Action emerged.
In light of this contextual information, it becomes clear how
the creation of posters like “Introducing the Anti-Horny
of new forms of more exciting and eye-catching advertising.
As a result, the ostensible absurdity of a poster making in
light of such an acute and debilitating disease was not an
insensitive blunder, but rather a calculated and strategic
advertising gambit. The humorous themes presented in
for advertising that marked a departure from public health
announcements that were altogether routine and traditional.
In conclusion, a rather intriguing analysis results
from the juxtaposition of two ostensibly unrelated posters
in the Helfand Collection of the Medical Historical Library
becomes a more meaningful relationship in light of research
between the two pieces. Advertisements during World
inculcation of morality whose latent seeds remained from
World War I, Parran’s efforts to “bring [the] infection to the
center of public consciousness,” and military preoccupation
26 On
the contrary, the saturation of media markets with traditional
and repeated warnings about AIDS and unprotected sex
during the 1980s incited the formation of groups like Project
Action, which operated under the idea that effectively
“serving young adults require[d] creativity.” 27 As a result,
“Introducing the Anti-Horny Patch”—which is dazzling,
attention-grabbing, and laden with humor—was the product
24 Goldstein, 132-3.
25 Timothy E. Cook and David C. Colby, “The Mass-Mediated Epidemic:
The Politics of AIDS on the Nightly Network News,” in AIDS the Making
of a Chronic Disease, ed. Elizabeth Fee and Daniel M. Fox (Berkeley:
University of California, 1992), 114.
26 Brandt, 123.
27 “Serving Young Adults Requires Creativity,” FHI: The Science of Improving
Lives, http://www.fhi.org/en/RH/Pubs/Network/v17_2/nt1725.
htm (accessed November 22, 2010).
of a changing advertising landscape. Less obviously, it was
also the product of a very real war —one waged by private
groups for whom sexual identity was paramount; in this
way, a second, and subtler, parallel emerges between the two
public health campaigns. These two posters, after careful
examination and historical contextulization, display the way
by social norms and public temperament.
7

8 SYNTHESIS ISSUE 3

SPRING 2011 FLYNN LEVIN/AIDS / LOST
2
‘Lost in Learning’ Under the Magnifying Lens: Seeing Creativity in Science
Catherine Flynn, Staff Writer
The juxtaposition of elegant black and white photographs
of historical artifacts with thought-provoking musings
on the creative nature of discovery and exploration,
Eva Koleva Timothy unites science and art in her book,
With her striking camera skill, Timothy reminds readers to
interpret art, science, and discovery through multiple lenses.
Timothy consciously carries the theme of looking
through lenses throughout Lost in Learning. One particularly
Lost in Learning: The Art of Discovery. This illuminating photo provocative image is titled “Light” in which she imposes a prism
on the front page of Newton’s landmark publication, Opticks.
With this choice, Timothy adds new dimensions to a physically
breathtaking pictures of noteworthy historical artifacts—including simple object: a text. The addition of the prism disrupts the
the Mona Lisa, the front page of Newton’s Opticks, and Galileo’s
compass—make the past come alive in a new, inventive way.
Her focus on details of individual artifacts exposes the
history bustling behind these inanimate objects, allowing modern Timothy elegantly invites readers how to see the artistry involved
readers to realize the past and current importance of these old
relics. Depicting the achievements of Isabella D’Este, the famous These two examples are just the tip of the iceberg in
First Lady of the Italian Renaissance, Timothy chooses to Timothy’s vibrant exploration of creation, discovery, and dreams.
combine photographs of two separate paintings – Leonardo da Patching the layers of images in Timothy’s photographs together,
Vinci’s Isabella D’Este and Raphael’s Pope Leo X – to illustrate the the reader successfully completes the path to understanding the
relationship between these power patrons of the arts and sciences. creativity behind discovery laid out by the author. The minimal
but illuminating text accompaniment helps transform the images
lens, gaze at her patron, Pope Leo X. He stares right back at her, as into worlds themselves worth considering. Eva Koleva Timothy’s
an equal, in a time when females faced male domination. Timothy radiant photography and Adam Timothy’s enlightening writing,
uses these layers of historical gazes to mirror the interpretation of
historical discoveries: how we understand learning and discovery intellectually stimulating. For more information on the Lost in
depends upon the varying perspectives of the historical actors. Learning project, visit www.lostinlearning.com
9

10 SYNTHESIS ISSUE 3

SPRING 2011 CHALIK LEVIN/AIDS / ALLERGY
3
How Histamine and Antihistamine Transformed the Popular Conception of Allergy in
Postwar America
Ilya Chalik, Harvard University ‘11
“Reports on allergy appear almost weekly in the media and the vast majority of the population either suffer, or know somebody
who suffers, from an allergic condition.”
The unprecedented boom in medical research
experienced throughout the twentieth century
has produced considerable progress in unraveling
some of the biggest medical challenges of
of medical literature on the subject of allergy, but in the
meantime the number of allergy sufferers in the developed
world has only dramatically increased. According to Mark
Jackson, the leading modern authority on the history of
mankind, from the battle with infectious diseases to the allergy, although “pharmaceutical companies have developed
treatment of the most tenacious cardiac disorders. Yet as a substantial arsenal of therapeutic substances and treatment
medicine claimed victory over a number of serious human
ailments that were previously incurable, physicians conceived have been limited to treatments of symptoms rather than
of novel medical paradigms that opened up entirely new etiology.
no matter how many resources scientists would commit to
addressing these concerns, new discoveries would lead to
more tantalizing questions than actual answers.
Especially tantalizing has been the case of allergy,
a phenomenon that scientists have attempted to surmount
throughout that twentieth century. Over these past one
hundred years, researchers have produced no shortage
2 Even though scientists know more now about the
pathophysiology of allergic response than they ever have
before, because of their ever-increasing prevalence, the
vast range of allergens that trigger them, and the lack of
a substantial cure, allergic disorders very much remain an
unresolved enigma for medical science.
In order to try to decipher how the understanding
of allergy has evolved over time and recognize how it is
that allergies still persist as an open question for mankind,
1 House of Lords – Select Committee on Science and Technology. Allergy -
HL 166-I, 6th Report of Session 2006-07 - Volume 1: Report. (London, UK: The
2
Mark Jackson, “Allergy: the making of a modern plague,” Clinical & Experi-
ld200607/ldselect/ldsctech/166/16602.htm.
mental Allergy 31, no. 11 (2001): 1665.
11
– Science and Technology Committee of the House of Lords,
6th Report Session of 2006-07. 1

12 SYNTHESIS ISSUE 3
would simply not be adequate. The understanding and
treatment of allergy did not exist for long as a purely
interactions between patients and physicians. From early on
in the twentieth century, allergy emerged as a public concern,
so much that because allergies affected broad segments of
the population, the public perception of allergies became
an important agent in the struggle against allergies. After
all, people are the primary victims of allergy, and at least
in theory, medical research on allergy above all stands to
not only has high relevance to the way the public has been
However, an examination of allergies within the public realm
ventures into relatively uncharted territory, as few historians
have retrospectively looked back to assess the impact of
how the public perception of allergies changed over time.
While a copious quantity of medical literature
about the nature of allergies and the immunological role
of histamine has long existed, it is only in the last decade
that historians have seriously begun to examine the events
that shaped the history of the allergy phenomenon. Among
the few pertinent historiographies of allergy that have been
recently published, the most prominent are the books of
historians of science Mark Jackson and Gregg Mitman.
Jackson and Mitman’s in-depth historical investigations
vastly improve upon the prior cursory and celebratory
histories of allergy published by scientists to commemorate
Jackson and Mitman delve into the dynamic context in which
allergy research developed by constructing broad analyses
of the 20th century allergy timeline in British and American
social history, respectively. 3 and socio-economic forces, they devote very little attention
to how the popular understanding of allergies changed over
the past century.
It is remarkable that for such a weighty public
concern, hardly any analysis has been performed on how the
to comprehensively gauge public attitudes, especially when
looking back across history. One way to overcome this
media sources and other kinds of literature pertaining to
allergies aimed toward the general public. A close sampling
century reveals a distinct upsurge in the 1940s of print
media dedicated to allergies, with a particular highlight on a
set of newly-discovered compounds called anti-histamines.
action of the immune agent histamine in allergic responses,
antihistamines took off almost instantly after their discovery.
Almost suddenly these antihistamine drugs became
relief of allergies. Amid the initial success of antihistamines
in mitigating allergy symptoms, the media championed
them through advertisements and articles. However, it
soon became clear that antihistamines were not a panacea
action. Nevertheless, the record-level consumption of
antihistamines among the public was here to stay – by
4 In fact the
only author that digs more deeply into any socio-economic
he forays into how the release of antihistamine medications
set off a major power struggle between physicians, the
pharmaceutical industry and government agencies.
Within their coverage of the
major players and events in allergy history, both authors
touch upon Henry Hallett Dale’s seminal research on the
chemical compound histamine and the subsequent hot
market that emerged with the introduction of antihistamine
medications. However, the topics related to histamine are
of secondary concern to Jackson and Mitman in the grand
scheme of allergy history and the broad claims that they
in the past hundred years. Moreover, although the two
authors contextualize science within political developments
5 Even
as Mitman considers the effect of histamine’s emergence
on American society, he does not stop to explore how the
histamine and the therapies that ensued to target its pathways
in the body. Indeed, despite a surge in allergy advertisement
and educational literature in the 1940s, any investigation
of popular views of allergy is missing from the secondary
source literature currently available.
Even though medical research yielded a number of
of the twentieth century, the introduction of antihistamine
medications immediately after World War II established a
3 Steve Sturdy. Review of Allergy: the History of a Modern Malady, by Mark Jackson
and Breathing Space: How Allergies Shape our Live and Landscapes, by Gregg
Mitman. The British Journal for the History of Science 42, no. 02 (2009): 282-284.
4 Gregg Mitman, Breathing space: how allergies shape our lives and landscapes (Yale
University Press, 2007), 5.
5 Mitman, Breathing space:, 216-7.

SPRING 2011 LEVIN/AIDS
13
A historical investigation scrutinizing the trends in how the
media portrayed allergies throughout the middle of the
twentieth century will reveal how the advent of histamine
and antihistamines catalyzed a transformation in the popular
conception of allergies.
that allergy did not exist prior to the twentieth century. Of
course individuals suffered from allergies, but they did not
know them as such. Even so, as early as Hippocrates (460-375
BCE), physicians have noted that some individuals’ bodies
would badly tolerate common foods like cheese. 6 certain individuals exhibited various kinds of abnormal negative
reactions when injected with horse serum, from skin rashes and
fever to symptoms that were more deadly.
Patients
would consult doctors, as well as sources of folk remedies,
about individual symptoms like skin rashes, hives, sneezing
about their causes. As medicine expanded and specialized
in the nineteenth century, physicians documented a variety
of unexplained and unconnected conditions like hay fever
Few of these physicians could offer the public reliable
explanations or treatments for these conditions. The limited
medical observations about the patients generally pointed to
normally harmless stimuli like pollen, dust, various foods,
and a number of other substances; the ensuing medical
advice to relieve symptoms was to stay away from the
offending substance. Yet no one in the medical community
unlucky individuals suffered from these conditions, while
many others in the population would remain unaffected and
otherwise healthy. The idea to group the seemingly disparate
symptoms and conditions would only gain serious traction at
the beginning of the twentieth century.
scored a number of early victories from germ theory to a
growing number of vaccines, many scientists began to believe
disease to other types of human ailments. Ironically it was
the development of vaccines for infectious diseases that
directly lead to the birth of allergy as a concept. Vaccines
for diseases like diphtheria were derived from horse serum,
7 Generalizing from
this experience, Pirquet proposed the term “allergy” in 1906 to
describe a pattern of altered “reactivity” of the human body
toward various substances with which it came into contact. 8
Von Pirquet’s new term was met with initial skepticism, as
well as a debate over allergy in contrast to Charles Richet’s
contemporarily coined concept of anaphylaxis. 9 By the middle
of the century, allergy would be adopted by the medical
establishment as a catch-all term for “a spectrum of related
immunologically-mediated diseases” that included hay fever,
hives, and asthma, while acute allergic reactions were redubbed
as anaphylaxis. 10
the late 1920s and 1930s did information about allergies start
trickling down to the public.
In the early twentieth century United States, public
Through the press Americans were made more and more aware
of the ravages of hay fever, a seasonal ailment that troubled
people with a particular sensitivity to various kinds of pollen. 11
By 1923, specialized clinics had begun to offer “diagnosis to
sufferers from hay fever, asthma, and kindred ailments,” with
the number of sufferers of these diseases being estimated at “5
per cent of the population of the United States.” 12 Although
the term allergy had yet to make a public appearance in the
1920s, the public was already familiar with some of its major
manifestations, which were already being grouped together
as a set of “kindred ailments” that could be diagnosed and
potentially treated. A detailed 1932 article about hay fever in
the Saturday Evening Post mentions that allergy “meaning an
altered reaction, has become the popular word among doctors”
as an overarching concept for classifying hay fever and other
conditions like asthma, eczema and urticaria (hives). 13 CHALIK / ALLERGY
PART 1: THE PREWAR, PRE-HISTAMINE CONCEPTION OF AL-
LERGIES
While
subsequently the word allergy would accompany hay fever
7 Mitman, Breathing space:, 52-3.
8 Jackson, Allergy, 38.
9 Mark Jackson. “Allergy and history.” Studies in History and Philosophy of
Biological and Biomedical Sciences 34, no. 3 (September 2003): 386-387.
10 Ibid.
11 “Hay Fever Sneeze Foils Science Still,” New York Times (1857-Current
6 Mark Jackson. Allergy: the History of a Modern Malady (London: Reaktion,
2006), 28.
12 Hay Fever Clinic Opens in Brooklyn,” New York Times
August 17, 1923.
13 Morris Fishbein, “Hay Fever and Sensitivity,” Saturday Evening Post 204,
no. 47 (May 21, 1932): 76.

14 SYNTHESIS ISSUE 3
in newspaper and magazine articles, by association the
epidemic of hay fever paved the way for allergy to become
the accepted term used among the public. As the people
who were affected by allergies became better able to identify
b
turned to possible explanations and treatments for allergy.
o
However, prior to the development and mass production
s
of anti-histamines in the 1940s and 50s, no widely approved
w
medical drugs were available that could offer legitimate relief to
a
the broad range of allergy sufferers. A number of remedies of
t
in 1922 the New York Times published a suggestion from a
c
meeting of the United States Hay Fever Association – this was
i
for hay fever sufferers to “spend the day in an ice box.” H
e
o
p
a
D
d
t
h
u
H
o
t
a
f
m
b
a
o
s
t
b
t
d
w
t
2
t
2
14 The
suffering public was desperate, as science had yet to come up
with a viable solution to the allergy problem, so the void was
fever was called Ercolin, and it distinguished itself as a successful
“treatment” that brought “instant relief ” to allergy sufferers. 15 The
advertisement, which appeared in the Rochester Times-Union,
tellingly reveals that a number of “salves, capsules, and other
Hay Fever palliatives of no therapeutic value” were available on
the market and scorned by physicians. 16 Ironically, Ercolin must
have been no different as it now appears in the Product Name
Index of the AMA’s Historic Health Fraud Collection. A 1929 ad
that also promised “instant relief” for respiratory conditions from
colds to hay fever proclaims that a new treatment using chlorine is
“pleasant, safe, and tremendously helpful in preventing as well as
healing.” 17 Chlorine is indeed a time-tested antiseptic, especially
for pool water; however for a number of people chlorine in pool
water acts a common allergen and no evidence exists for it being
a “treatment” for any kind of allergy. One may also wonder how
“safe” administering chlorine was, since chlorine can also be lethally
poisonous in increasing quantities. Another intriguing invention to
protect against hay fever appears in advertisements on the pages of
The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune in the late 1930s —a
faced with intolerable environmental doses of pollen. 18 treatment for allergies, leaving the population of distressed allergy
sufferers susceptible to published claims of success, no matter
how false. However, without a known biological mechanism for
allergies that legitimate medicines could target, consumers were
subject to solely ineffective or unpleasant therapies if they sought
to relieve their allergies.
Physicians specializing in allergy did have something
to offer the public– the one moderately successful therapy for
allergies that was actually discovered early on in twentieth century
was therapeutic inoculation. Also called allergen immunotherapy,
or desensitization, it was developed beginning in 1910 by British
physicians Noon and Freeman as a series of injections to protect
against hay fever, based on earlier work of American William
Dunbar.
There is
little evidence that this highly publicized contraption, resembling
the gas masks worn by soldiers in World War I, ever gained popular
use. All of these advertised remedies fueled public demand for a
19
administer this treatment for allergies throughout the twentieth
century, it does not appear to have been a popular option—the
procedure requires repeated doses, has a limited success rate, as
well numerous potentially dangerous side effects, and an unknown
biological mechanism. While popular articles in the 1930s
promoted the success of desensitization therapy, for those patients
which this therapy disappointed the suggested options were to
“evade the source of the symptoms” or if they were suffering
from hay fever to “go for a long and pleasant vacation.” 20 Since the
only viable treatment option for treating has been far from optimal,
symptomatic remedies have enjoyed a far greater appeal among the
public.
Although the word “allergy” only made its way into the
public vocabulary from medical use in the 1930s, it merely became
a collective term for an existing concept that included the familiar
conditions of hay fever, asthma, and other disorders of sensitivity
to common substances. Medicine had yet to offer any sensible
explanation or practical remedy for allergies, which allowed the
befuddled public to turn to many untested claims advertised
in the press about allergies. The early remedies, ranging from
obvious advice and familiar “cures” to outlandish suggestions and
absurd contraptions, played upon the desperation of the public.
Even though early therapies for allergy were not successful since
they were medically unproven, their promise of “instant relief”
for symptoms of allergy set the bar for future treatments that
science could offer to the public. With science responsible
for a growing number of effective new treatments for other
diseases, the public awaited the same success to be replicated
14 Special to The New York Times, “Ice Box As Hay Fever Cure,” New York
Times
with the problem of allergies.
15 “Hay Fever.” Duke Digital Collections Item, 1927. http://library.duke.
edu/digitalcollections/mma.MM0059/pg.1/.
18 “Display Ad 32 — No Title.” New York Times
1, 1937.
16 Ibid.
17 “Colds Nasal Catarrh Whooping Cough Hay Fever etc, etc. New Chlorine
Discovery Brings Instant Relief.” Duke Digital Collections Item, 1929.
http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/mma.MM0061/pg.1/.
19 M. Jackson. “John Freeman, hay fever and the origins of clinical allergy in
Britain, 1900-1950.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Biological
and Biomedical Sciences 34 (September 2003): 477-479.
20 Fishbein, “Hay Fever and Sensitivity,” 78.
o
2
2
D

SPRING 2011 LEVIN/AIDS
15
Success in demystifying the workings of allergy in the
body took a long time to achieve, but the efforts made by a number
of scientists along the way would ultimately yield not only a new
source of legitimate relief for patients affected by allergies, but a new
way for the public to think about allergies. Since similar patterns of
allergic reactions would be observed in different patients reacting
to various sorts of antigens (allergens), from the beginning of the
century, there was a hypothesis that a single common substance
in the body was liable for producing allergic reactions. 21 In 1910,
Henry Dale, who several years earlier helped isolate histamine from
ergot mold, working with Patrick Laidlaw showed that the injection
of histamine into small mammals like guinea pigs produced a
potentially deadly anaphylactic response. 22 This would be one of
a potential biological intermediary in allergic reactions. By 1927,
Dale with Dr. Charles Best, one of the discoverers of insulin,
demonstrated that histamine was constitutively present in various
tissues of the human body, adding credence to the theory that
histamine is released upon bodily contact with an antigen, thereby
unleashing the symptoms associated with anaphylaxis or allergy. 23
However, many doctors were confused about the biological role
of histamine—one physician writing a book about allergies for
the general public in 1941 unequivocally stated that “histamine is
a poison.” 24 Since the essential physiological and immunological
functions of histamine had yet to be discovered, many people
mistook histamine as a “poison” activated in allergic individuals
by usually harmless substances that would cause the symptoms of
allergy. Although throughout the 1930s debate about the relationship
of histamine, anaphylaxis and allergies would continue, especially
since a mechanism for histamine release had yet to be established,
the search for a compound to block the action of histamine in the
body was on. 25 Anne-Marie Staub at the Pasteur Institute in France, gradually
narrowed down the search, early antihistamine candidate drugs
26
On the eve of World
War II, a number of groups both in Europe and in the United
States were working to produce antihistamines that would yield
human use was Antergan, released in France in 1942.
Now, whoever would discover an effective antidote
to histamine would then be responsible for delivering relief much
desired by the millions of people then suffering with allergies.
Yet the search for substances to counteract histamine
would not be as conclusive as scientists had hoped. Although
throughout the 1930s pioneering scientists, like Daniel Bovet and
27 This race
for laboratories to patent an effective drug to inhibit histamine
drew attention from pharmaceutical companies. These companies
drugs to counter the whole gamut of allergic conditions from
hay fever and eczema to asthma and hives. In the Unites States, a
drug developed during the war that showed promising results in
relieving the symptoms of hay fever, went on sale in 1946—this
was Benadryl, originally patented by Parke, Davis & Company. 28 In
the following three years over 20 other antihistamine compounds
would become available for public consumption. 29 Although
pharmaceutical companies and researchers were enthusiastic about
the new antihistamines, some doctors were cautious. In a 1946
review of histamine and antihistamine research for the Journal
of the American Medical Association, Dr. Samuel Feinberg
drugs with respect to different manifestations of allergy: his
conclusions reveal common concerns about antihistamines that
continue to this day, such as the temporary symptomatic relief
and limited potency (especially with asthma) they provided, which
would also come with notable side effects like sedation. 30 One of
Feinberg’s remarks about antihistamines is especially farsighted,
as he cryptically suggests that “it must be admitted that since it is
effect of the allergic reactions, even the most potent antagonists of
histamine may fail to be completely effective in the relief of allergic
manifestations.” 31 In other words, histamine became the prime
enemy in a war against allergies, and while scientists were busy
developing antihistamines to bombard it, the possible accomplices
of histamine were getting off empty-handed.
Sensing a sensation in the making, the press seized on
the emergent antihistamine boom. Already in 1946 articles started
appearing in popular periodicals hailing antihistamines as “a new
hope for the allergic.” 32 CHALIK / ALLERGY
PART 2: THE SNEMY AND THE SAVIOR – A NEW FOCUS ON
HISTAMINE AND ANTIHISTAMINES
One article by Steven Spencer published by
the Saturday Evening Post, a magazine that was riding on its wartime
21 S.M. Feinberg. “Histamine and Antihistaminic Agents: Their Experimental
and Therapeutic Status.” JAMA 132 (1946): 703.
22
M.B. Emanuel. “Histamine and the antiallergic antihistamines: a history
of their discoveries.” Clinical & Experimental Allergy 29, sup. 3 (1999): 5.
23 Ibid.
24 Warren Taylor Vaughn. Strange malady: the story of allergy (New York:
Doubleday, Doran & company, Inc., 1941), 248.
26 Feinberg, “Histamine and Antihistaminic Agents,” 707.
27 Emanuel, “Histamine and the antiallergic antihistamines: a history,” 8.
28 Mitman, Breathing Space, 216.
29 Ibid.
30 Feinberg, “Histamine and Antihistaminic Agents,” 713.
31 Ibid.

16 SYNTHESIS ISSUE 3
popularity, affords an insight into the common conception of
into the new age of allergy treatment in early postwar America.
Spencer writes that histamine “appears to act as a chemical fuse
in the allergy explosion,” while antihistamines like Benadryl
are “a defense mechanism prefabricated outside the body and
33 Borrowing
terminology from coverage of the war, Spencer portrays science
as becoming mobilized to defend the suffering public from the
“invasion” of allergies, with antihistamines exploited as the novel
weapons to defeat the menace of histamine in the body. No
longer was allergy the “strange disease” for which was “oftimes
34
Now allergy could be
histamine, which went rogue in allergy sufferers, producing the
symptoms of hay fever, hives and the like. The public could thus
look to science to produce new compounds, antihistamines, to
However, although medical researchers continued
and producing more effective treatments, pharmaceutical
companies had no patience to wait for them. Relying on the
well-established methods of advertising relief for allergy
sufferers, these companies hoped that antihistamines could
compounds that could act as antagonists to histamine to block
its action, competing pharmaceutical companies launched an
advertising war to convince the public that their own brand of
antihistamine was superior. A 1954 ad for Anahist proclaims
that “doctors’ new 2-way treatment counteracts allergy, without
injections” — this consisted of Super Anahist nasal spray with
Anahist tablets so that “long-lasting hay-fever victims can achieve
wonderful results.” 35 This ad deceptively uses the authority of
doctors, without citing any data, to promise a treatment for
allergies as effective as the troublesome desensitization therapy
that required multiple planned injections. Another popular
way to advertise antihistamines was to promise allergy suffers
freedom to work and play without being hampered by their
symptoms; this message resonated with the American public,
generating enough demand for “to make antihistamines the
third most commonly prescribed class of drugs in America
during the 1950s.” 36 with only temporary relief, pharmaceutical companies were
content for the public to believe that regular consumption of
antihistamines for allergies would become the equivalent to a
cure.
The cause of improving the lifestyle of allergy
suffers also allowed sectors of business outside the realm of
the claims of the allergy masks of the 1930s, the air conditioner
out of indoor air in a convenient fashion. A 1959 Ad for
$79.95, guarantees “99.2% positive protection against hay
37
The use of air conditioners took off
in the United States after WWII, and beyond cooling the air,
One article advises parents of allergic children that “avoiding
pollens and molds is almost impossible except by living in
an air-conditioned environment or moving to a different
climate.”
Although the effects of antihistamines
worked only on the symptoms rather than the causes of allergy,
38 Although it may have been more possible to make
the home an allergy-free zone, such innovations could only
provide temporary comfort for certain allergies rather than
any actual permanent cure. In the end, since isolating oneself
in an air-conditioned home was just as impractical as wearing
public.
Thus in some ways the cultural status of allergies did
not really change after World War II. Just as they were before
the war, allergies remained a major problem for society, and
providing novel solutions to the allergy problem through
mass marketing continued as a way of making money. The
difference was that pharmaceutical companies could now
exploit the public awareness of histamine as a principal actor
in the physiology of allergy, and advertise new antihistamine
drugs as the most practical means for the public to relieve
their allergies. By legitimately reducing their allergy symptoms,
Americans were now able to live a more comfortable lifestyle
thanks to the efforts of scientists. Allergies went from being
a mysterious disease to a controlled condition, with evermore
effective and promising medicines promised on the horizon.
32 Steven M. Spencer. “New Hope for the Allergic.” Saturday Evening Post
218.42 (April 1946): 21.
33 Spencer. “New Hope,” 21, 121.
34 Vaughn, Strange malady, 249, 254.
35 Display Ad 207 – No Title.” Chicago Tribune (1849-1986), August 12,
1956, F40.
36 Mitman, Breathing Space, 214, 223
37 “Display Ad 42 -- No Title.” New York Times
30, 1959, 42.
38 T.R. Van Dellen. “How to keep your child well,” Chicago Tribune

SPRING 2011 LEVIN/AIDS
17
marketed to American civilians as the ideal travel accessory for
40
At the same time, spurred by the observations of naval medical
captain John Brewster, antihistamines became approved for the use
against the common cold, which possessed the same initial symptoms
as certain forms of allergy. For the pharmaceutical companies,
capturing the cold market was a very lucrative prospect, especially if
antihistamines became approved for over-the-counter (OTC) use by
the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which indeed occurred in
1949. 41 In the span of a few short years, antihistamines transformed
from a series of miracle drugs for allergy relief to practically a full
blown panacea for the most common sinus problem. Moreover,
the public now possessed access to antihistamines without having
to consult physicians, and encouraged by promotional advertising,
started consuming antihistamines at extraordinary levels.
Almost immediately after these developments, a number
of medical professionals started to question this widespread
and unchecked use of antihistamines. Several months after
antihistamines were approved for use against colds, the American
Medical Association began to protest their use due to lack of
of “indiscriminate” antihistamine use. 42 Sobering messages started
emerging in the popular press about the marketing of antihistamines
as cures for the common cold, despite their approval by the FDA.
Time magazine published a series of articles in 1950 voicing
the warnings of medical and government agencies about the
misleading advertising used by antihistamine drug manufacturers;
the magazine reported that the Federal Trade Commission ruled
that antihistamines “are neither a cure nor ‘an adequate or competent
treatment’ for the common cold or its manifestations, nor will any of
them prevent colds.” 43 However these warnings proved ineffectual.
Throughout the 1950s and 60s advertisements for antihistamines like
Super Anahist promised to “defeat fever, sneezing, aching effects of
virus colds.” 44 CHALIK / ALLERGY
Drug manufacturers continued to give the public the
impression that antihistamines had the ability to cure disease, rather
than modestly alleviate symptoms. Up to the present day the very
same antihistamines that remained the market as OTC drugs for the
relief of allergies would be advertised for use against colds as well.
The economic success of early antihistamines further
Figure 1
encouraged scientists to continue their quest for a more
PART 3: ALLERGIES CONQUERED; WHAT NEXT? 39 Mitman, Breathing Space, 219.
While the public initially accepted antihistamine medications
as an allergy remedy with gusto, pharmaceutical companies actively
pushed to expand the applications of antihistamines. In 1949, the
manufacturer G.D. Searle introduced Dramamine, a compound
containing an antihistamine and a bronchodilator, to relieve motion
sickness. 39
Initially developed for military use, this drug was soon
40 Ibid.
41 Ibid, 227.
42 Waldemar Kaempffert. “Attack on the Common Cold by Antihistamine
Medication Leads to Further Questions,” New York Times (1857-Current
43 “Medicine: No More Sneezing . . ..” Time, April 3, 1950. http://www.
time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,934924,00.html.

18 SYNTHESIS ISSUE 3
comprehensive understanding of allergies, with the potential
for developing even more effective anti-allergy medications. A
Immunoglobulin E that recognized allergens within the body was
discovered on the surface of mast cells. 45 Through the second half
of the twentieth century “the synthesis of, and pharmacological
studies on, selective agonists and antagonists has established the
existence of four types of histamine receptor and histamine receptor
antagonists have found very important therapeutic applications.” 46
However, although the pathophysiology of allergies was described in
detail in the second half of the twentieth century, very little progress
has been made in the prevention or treatment of allergies.
However, even though the antihistamine boom failed
to produce a cure for allergies like many people had hoped, the
public perception of allergies had been changed. Histamine was
selection of antihistamines was available to block its action. Even
with symptomatic relief, a large proportion of allergy sufferers could
go back to their daily routines unhampered by hay fever and the like,
and their desire for a complete cure made less urgent. Instead with
the push by pharmaceutical companies in marketing antihistamines
to relieve the common cold, new, seemingly larger public health
concerns were made to occupy American minds. Allergy had
become a familiar annoyance that could be forgotten with the pop
of an antihistamine tablet.
The establishment of histamine as a key factor within
the physiological mechanism of allergies provided the public a
vein, the advent of antihistamine drugs brought forth a palpable
remedy that people could use to relieve the symptoms of their
availability to the public, their magical qualities were broadcasted far
and wide” and “thousands of allergics were misled into believing
that these drugs were cures.” 47 postwar America.
The history of allergies through the twentieth century
makes it clear that the science of allergies has not developed in a
vacuum. Scientists were responding to a public need by conducting
research on how allergies functioned in the human body and how they
allergies and the public conception of allergies developed as distinct
phenomena. The public conception of allergies, mediated by the
media, pharmaceutical companies, and the medical establishment,
mechanism of histamine popularized in the 1940s. The availability
of antihistamine medications has given the public an easy solution
to relieve their symptoms without facing the reality that allergy is still
The allergy epidemic currently stands at a kind of stalemate.
Although allergies continue to appear regularly in newspapers,
magazines and on television, they have taken a backseat to seemingly
more pressing public health problems of the modern world like
coverage. Correspondingly, these efforts earn the largest outlays of
government funding, as well as attention from numerous private
foundations. With antihistamines holding their ground of allergy
symptom relief, perhaps it will take a new impetus for allergy research
to regain its imperative. Such an impetus may lie in the realm of drug
allergies, which limit people’s access to effective therapies for other
medical conditions. Another area that could potentially revolutionize
CONCLUSION
the public conception of allergies is the relatively untapped domain
of preventive medicine. Yet although it is too early to tell how our
understanding of allergies will change in the future, looking back at
research that helped address the problem. However it is evident that
the interaction between science and the public in the case of allergies
has been largely mediated by the popular press, as well as private
industry, namely pharmaceutical companies.
At the same time, historians should continue analyzing the
interactions of science and popular trends, especially when it comes
Ultimately, by offering a mechanism to medicine. The temporal constraints on this particular study
and a treatment for an enigmatic but increasingly prevalent group precluded any in-depth investigation into the political-economic
of ailments, histamine and antihistamines together may have served factors that may have also shaped the popular conception of allergies.
as one of the catalysts for the mass marketing of medications in Future studies have the potential to analyze both public and internal
documents of pharmaceutical companies, such as annual reports, as
well as government papers dealing with the allergy epidemic. Even
44 “Display Ad 18 – No Title.” Chicago Daily Tribune (1872-1963), February
3, 1956, A5.
medical concerns, it may yet emerge that political and economic
45 Robert J. Davies and Susan Ollier. Allergy: the facts. (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1989), 14.
entities play a more decisive role in the management of public health
phenomena like allergy. However, even without sweeping historical
46 Mike E. Parsons and C Robin Ganellin. “Histamine and its receptors.”
British Journal of Pharmacology 147, no. S1 (1, 2006): S127.
inquiries, it is hoped that more focused historical investigations like
this one will enrich awareness into how less familiar events like the
47 Harry Felix Swartz. The Allergic Child, (New York: Coward-McCann,
1954), 59.
discovery of histamine have shaped public perception of seemingly
familiar phenomena like allergy.

SPRING 2011 GOH LEVIN/AIDS / BIOWEAPONS
The Scientist: From Biologist to Bioweapon
Kimberly Goh, Harvard University ‘13
The microbial world of bacteria, germs, and
viruses—although periodically asserting itself
in the form of plagues and epidemics—coexists
peacefully alongside the macroscopic human
experience of day-to-day life, unseen and unnoticed.
the types of programs and institutions required to mount
and respond to a bioweapons attack raise new challenges
that the nuclear analogy cannot accommodate. In light of
this weapons revolution, bioweapons scientists have become
a new kind of weapon and a military commodity, for it is
Biowarfare threatens to dissolve this peaceful paradigm, their knowledge that is crucial to establishing and defending
erecting in its place a new understanding of the microscopic against such a program. This new role of the scientist has
as the most dangerous form of weapon—lethal, volatile, created an unsettling irony in the interplay between war and
and invisible. Yet, the advent of the biowarfare threat has peace: the scientist is both the greatest threat to and greatest
not weaponized life in a strictly microscopic sense; it has hope for the prevention of biological warfare. He or she
also created a weapon out of the living, breathing scientists assumes a dual role as part of both the effort to enhance
whose knowledge has fueled the project.
their destructive power and defuse that very same threat.
Because they differ from other technologies in During the height of its implementation from 1970
their regulation, deployment, and their ability to evade to 1980, the Soviet weapons program, the Biopreparat,
surveillance and regulatory mechanisms, bioweapons pose
dawn of biowarfare. Drawing from the most talented minds
and reproducible, making them ideal for mass destruction and biological scientists in bioweapons facilities across Russia
scenarios. Politically, they can easily be incorporated as part in projects that were, to those outside the Soviet Union,
of a covert weapons program under the disguise of non-
threatening forms of biotechnology research. Because of
this, the bioweapons threat represents an unprecedented type through sporadic pathogenic outbreaks in areas surrounding
of security risk that cannot be forced within the frameworks Biopreparat labs, most notably an anthrax outbreak in 1973
used to approach other military technologies. Although in Sverdlovsk. Despite the results of examination of the
they are often approximated to nuclear weapons because outbreak by US scientists, the USSR vehemently denied that
of their similarities in the scope and severity of damage, the accident was the result of bioweapons development. In
4
19

20 SYNTHESIS ISSUE 3
the Current Digest of the Soviet Press
that
This impassioned rhetoric casts the US government
in a paranoid and hostile light, capitalizing on the already
high tensions of the Cold War to convince the public that
US investigations were the result of distrust rather than in
response to any warranted threat. The Biopreparat, then,
remained a secret within the Soviet government, its details
concealed from both the outside world and many within
Russia. It was not until the defection of Vladimir Pasechnik
in 1989 that Soviet scientists began to reveal to the rest
of the world the true extent of the USSR’s Biopreparat
bioweapons work. Pasechnik informed British intelligence
that his research labs in Leningrad were developing a
strain of plague “developed to be resistant to most drugs
available in the West while being vulnerable to antibiotics
known only to the Soviet Union,” and that it “would have
been able to kill half the population of a town of 100,000
people in a short time.” 2 procedures and political dealings, Alibek’s memoir captures
the evolution of the scientist in response to the Soviet
bioweapons initiative. Through the Biopreparat, scientists
were integrated into a clandestine culture of research and
intelligence in which they developed new and unprecedented
technology. In response to these creations, they evolved into
became bioweapons.
This evolution of the scientist begins with the
weaponry revolution embodied in bioweapons, which
counteract than their nuclear counterparts, although both
are mass-destruction technologies. Bioweapons demonstrate
an extended period of destruction that is prolonged beyond
the event of initial attack, much like nuclear fallout, but
the bioweapon threat is compounded by the fact that they
harness the natural processes of disease transmission and
infection to facilitate the pathogen’s spread from person to
person. Not only does this allow for the rapid diffusion of
the agent, but it also exacerbates the problem of combating
a biological attack because symptoms often will not manifest
themselves until after some latent period, during which the
victim has no knowledge that he or she carries a dangerous
and contagious pathogen.
The successful synthesis of such a
virulent pathogen and the USSR’s intention of its selective
deployment against the West ran contrary to the USSR’s
participation in international non-proliferatin agreements,
and also discredited previous cover-ups like the one in
Sverdlovsk. The scope and success of the Biopreparat was
a shock to the international community, particularly the US.
the First Deputy Director of the Biopreparat, Colonel
Kanatzhan Alibekov, defected to the United States in 1992.
Under the new name “Ken Alibek,” he provided accounts
to US intelligence that became the most concrete and
thorough source of evidence of the full scale of the USSR
3
The 1979 Sverdlovsk accident demonstrated how
this latency effect confounds and complicates a response
to a bioweapon outbreak. In the US investigation of the
deadly anthrax outbreak from a Biopreparat facility in
Sverdlovsk, empirical evidence showed a latency period
of up to forty three days during which ninety-six people
contracted cases of anthrax poisoning, sixty-four of which
proved fatal. 4 During this period, “trees were washed by
previously unpaved streets were asphalted” in an attempt to
contain the spread of the toxin, and it was not until several
was mounted. 5
extremists and anti-Sovieteers in the top echelon
of the US government. Clearly, at their orders, the
CIA and the Pentagon are concocting a series of
reports with ‘bloodcurdling details’ and ‘frightening
reports’ by intelligence services, which are presented
to President Carter and others for their perusal.
These roundabout methods for controlling
the outbreak and their inability to prevent substantial loss
of life illustrate the alarming potency of bioweapons and
1
1 Ye. Nikolayev, “Who Is Inspiring Slander Against the Soviet Union?,”
Current Digest of the Post-Soviet Press 32, no. 32 (1980): 5.
Note: formerly titled the Current Digest of the Soviet Press, this newspaper was
originally established under Stalin to disseminate information regarding
Cold War politics and policies. It is currently issued under the new name
“Current Digest of the Russian Press.”
2 “Former Soviet Says He Developed Super-Plague,” Reuters, January 21,
1993.
3 National Research Council (US) Committee on Confronting Terrorism,
High-Impact Terrorism:
Proceedings of a Russian-American Workshop (Washington, D.C.: National
Academy Press, 2002), 251.
4 Matthew Meselson et al., “The Sverdlovsk Anthrax Outbreak of 1979,”
Science 266 (1994): 1202, 1206.
5 Meselson et al, “The Sverdlovsk Anthrax Outbreak of 1979,” 1206.

SPRING 2011 LEVIN/AIDS
21
and arcane methods of containment through washing trees
and paving streets revealed a lack of protocol to target and
destroy the pathogen effectively. Additionally, the delayed
public health response (via immunizations) showed not only
this instance the vaccine—ready for public consumption at
the time of the unforeseen outbreak.
Preparing for and anticipating a bioweapon
technologies. The pre-existing biodiversity among bacteria,
to differentiate a dangerous form of microorganism from
and limited forms whose presence can be detected as part
of a formal security protocol. 6 programs and were assigned key roles in the military objective.
Yet, they were also then considered a new security liability
because their knowledge was the vital material required for
the creation of a bioweapon. Much like the pathogens that
he designs, the scientist is a bioweapon—a living, changing,
and travelling threat. This is not only because his exposure
to pathogens in the laboratory makes the scientist the most
likely candidate for the accidental spread of a dangerous
agent, but also because he—like the pathogen—has the
ability to spread destruction through the dissemination of
his knowledge. The exceptionalism of the bioweaponeer
should also be noted: his knowledge was a rare commodity.
Even competent scientists with a general knowledge of
biology, like the Biopreparat director Sandakchiev, did not
program. Thus, the bioweapons program privileged those
Additionally, the natural scientists who had a particularly specialized skill set and
process of mutation is already known to occur at alarming
rates among microorganisms, further complicating the Biopreparat explicitly recognized this danger in its handling
process of identifying and segregating dangerous pathogens of its scientists. As Alibek recounts,
as they arise by mutation. This added complexity is not a
factor in the case of non-living technologies like nuclear
weapons. Therefore, the fact that these weapons derive from
already dynamic natural processes of infection and mutation
complicates the means by which effective security systems
can be designed to combat them.
Through this lens of damage potential, the scientist
within the military infrastructure is uniquely dangerous. The
scientist-soldier’s weaponized knowledge becomes both a
crucial component of the bioweapons initiative as well as a
security threat that requires careful management and control.
This dual condition of dependence on and distrust of the
scientist is captured in Alibek’s memoir. First, he makes clear It is evident that, even within their own country,
that it was the scientists who provided the fuel and expertise bioweapons scientists were treated with as much wariness
required to mount the Biopreparat’s programs:
as the pathogens that they were to create. Managed closely
by the KGB, the USSR’s internal security agency, scientists
Despite his laboratory expertise, Sandakchiev
had to be closely monitored and kept “in line,” lest their
[the director] knew little about the technological
dangerous knowledge be diverted away from the strict Soviet
process required to mass-produce smallpox. We
weapons directive. The scientists, as the enabling factor in
needed someone who was not only a smallpox
deciding the success of a bioweapons program, could not be
expert but who could make our new equipment and
allowed to freely employ and share their knowledge. Rather,
they had to be guarded with as much, if not more, scrutiny
production manager, the project was sure to falter.
than would be given to any powerful and volatile weapon.
Scientists were thus the cornerstone of bioweapons In addition to raising the scale of destruction, the
second military revolution embodied in the bioweapons
threat lies in the weapons’ ability to avoid detection by even
7
The KGB operated a counterintelligence
Every director had to accept this alternative chain
of command without complaint. The KGB devoted
as much energy to watching Biopreparat’s senior
managers as it did to lower-ranking employees.
Avoiding intelligence scrutiny was impossible:
were assigned to each facility, the units relied on
informers to keep us in line.
6 National Research Council (US) Committee on Confronting Terrorism,
High-Impact Terrorism:
Proceedings of a Russian-American Workshop, 251.
7 Clay Farris Naff, Biological Weapons, Contemporary Issues Companion
(Detroit, MI: Greenhaven Press/Thomson Gale, 2006), 86.
8
GOH / BIOWEAPONS
8 Ken Alibek and Stephen Handelman. Biohazard : The Chilling True Story of
the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World, Told from the Inside by
the Man Who Ran it, 1st ed. (New York: Random House, 1999), 92.

22 SYNTHESIS ISSUE 3
highly advanced surveillance systems. This fact is politically nuclear weapons. However it is easier to evaluate whether or
relevant because bioweapons thereby lend themselves well not a nuclear program is threatening because the production
to the formation of powerful covert weapons programs. of nuclear weapons—due to their size and the fact that
Facilities such as laboratories and test sites have a “dual they do not derive from a naturally occurring structure (e.g.
organisms like bacteria)—is easier to detect. Conversely,
evidence to prove the existence of a bioweapons threat as
opposed to merely a civilian biological research program. the development of disease management and containment
In other words, there is an innate uncertainty attached to infrastructures, which could easily be interpreted as the
the presence of biological research facilities. Ironically, this buildup of public health service facilities to combat natural
characteristic was best articulated in response to the USSR’s epidemic risks rather than efforts to protect local populations
attempt to cover up the Sverdlovsk incident by turning from the pathogens being developed.
scrutiny upon US labs:
Averting Russian attention from the possibility of
clandestine activities in Sverdlovsk, the “dual use” problem
has two important implications. First, the opacity of labs to
international surveillance makes discerning the true intent of
USSR’s reliance on inference and assumption to insinuate the
existence of a US bioweapons program based on E. Magee’s
contraction of supposed “Valley Fever.” Second, because of
this ambiguity, the accusation of bioweapons activity could
be used as a political tool to manipulate domestic attitudes
and divert public attention away from questioning the Soviet
government’s activities. Regardless of the veracity of these
claims by the Soviets, the uncertainty imposed by the “dual
use” quandary complicated international relations and made
the detection of a true bioweapons threat exponentially
Under the uncertainty of “dual use,” merely the
accusation and public perception of the threat can be enough
of domestic and foreign relations. A similar problem exists
in the case of nuclear technology: Nuclear research facilities
could be directed toward benign endeavors like nuclear
energy projects or toward more sinister directives like
10 Furthermore, these
indicators are civilian in nature, meaning that efforts to
evaluate a country’s bioweapon capabilities require defense
programs to constantly and vigilantly monitor not only a
nation’s military capacity but also the quality of its entire
public health and research development apparatus. 11 Thus,
bioweapons programs can easily be concealed from other
nations’ surveillance systems or placed under the guise of
legitimate, even morally compelling, research.
By harnessing the natural process of disease
epidemics, the bioweapon threat poses a unique danger
because a country may not even realize it has been
the victim of a biological attack. As Robert Kadlec12
BW [bioweapons] agents may be afforded possible denial
by naturally occurring diseases.” 13 The US military department hastened to hush
up the case of the disease contracted by E. Magee,
yet another example of the American authorities’
institution. In that laboratory extensive work is being
done on bacteriological weapons, particularly ‘Valley
Fever’—the virus that infected E. Magee.
Depending on the type
of agent employed, a nation may attribute an outbreak to
a natural event, thereby remaining ignorant of the political
and biological threat that recognition of a bioweapons attack
would reveal. Bioweapons, then, can evade detection but
safe from blame, accusation, and—most importantly—
retaliation. From creation to use, these weapons can remain
completely concealed, making them the ideal basis for a
secret weapons initiative.
Because bioweapons are so hard to detect, the
scientist becomes essential to the process of intelligence
and counter-intelligence gathering. Not only is the scientist’s
technological knowledge of biology being militarized, but
9
10 Christopher F. Chyba and Alex L. Greninger, “Biotechnology and Bioterrorism:
An Unprecedented World,” Survival 46, no. 2 (2004): 146.
11 National Research Council (US) Committee on Confronting Terrorism,
High-Impact Terrorism:
Proceedings of a Russian-American Workshop, 252.
12 Lieutenant colonel in US Air Force, part of United Nations inspection
team for biological weapons in Iraq, member of US delegation to Biological
Weapons Convention from 1993 to 1996
9 Nikolayev, “Who Is Inspiring Slander Against the Soviet Union?,” 5.
13 Naff, Biological Weapons,124.

SPRING 2011 LEVIN/AIDS
23
his political knowledge of a country’s bioweapons program
is weaponized as well. This re-imagined role of the scientist
as an intelligence weapon is best demonstrated in the
administrative buildup and breakdown of the Biopreparat.
Despite signing the non-proliferation tenets of the Biological
Weapons Convention (BWC) in 1972, the USSR continued
to expand its bioweapons programs. The Convention was
designed to commit its signatories to the non-proliferation
of bioweapons and limit their research endeavors to solely
defensive biotechnology. 14 However, as Alibek recounts,
the USSR nevertheless embarked on the development of a
secret bioweapons program:
In this instance, Alibek became one of the few
as a whole—who had knowledge of the USSR’s clandestine
bioweapons program. As a scientist, he was required not
only to make a technological contribution to the nation’s
biological program but also to become a determining player
in the Soviet intelligence infrastructure. By being privy to
Biopreparat became part of the intelligence elite, and their
cooperation was necessary for maintaining the clandestine
nature of the program.
As a result of their knowledge, these biologists also
presented the most effective means by which an outside
country could detect an enemy’s covert bioweapons program.
and deployment, “reliable human intelligence with direct
and dependable means of bioweapons detection. 16 monopolizing this new intelligence weapon as demonstrated
in this interaction between Alibek and US bioweaponeer Bill
Patrick:
It was through this kind of exchange with defecting
Soviet Union scientists that the US was alerted to its ignorance
of the scope and structure of the USSR bioweapons program.
Adhering to standards of transparency and civilian oversight
outlined in the BWC in 1972, the United States had begun
the disassembly of its bioweapons programs. Meanwhile,
the Soviet Union had continued, if not strengthened, the
Biopreparat.
The
scientist, then, became an intelligence operative, and his
knowledge became an asset in the military game of national
security. The Biopreparat was masterful at controlling and
18 ‘You are aware that this isn’t normal work,’
‘I have to inform you that there exists an
international treaty on biological warfare, which the
Soviet Union has signed,’ he went on. ‘According
to that treaty no one is allowed to make biological
weapons. But the United States signed it too, and we
believe that the Americans are lying.’
I told him, earnestly, that I believed it too. What is perhaps most alarming about this was
the USSR’s ability to violate the BWC without notice from
the international community. Patrick’s shock at learning the
extent of the Biopreparat activities is only a single instance
of this terrifying realization of the USSR’s bioweapon
capabilities; his disbelief demonstrates the unsettling
success of the USSR in integrating bioweapons scientists
of information regarding the program. Without knowledge
of the Biopreparat’s violations of the BWC, the United
States could not reasonably invest the substantial funds
required to fuel counter-defense technologies or public
health programs needed to cope with a bioweapons attack.
Yet, this interaction simultaneously reveals the power of the
As shown by defectors like Alibek and Pasechnik, scientists
could the deciding factor in whether a bioweapons program
could successfully maintain the ambiguity of purpose that
gives it an advantageous “dual use” quality. So long as
15
Alibek: What was amazing to me, when I
came to the United States, I realized I knew practically
everything about the United States program.
Patrick: Right. And we knew absolutely
nothing about yours. I never will forget when you
for your various weaponized agents. If you recall, I
just put my head down on the table where we were
talking and said, ‘Oh, my God. Oh, my, God.’ It was
a revelation that was just unbelievable to me. 17
17 “Bioterror: Interviews with Biowarriors,” NOVA online, accessed
October 20, 2010, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/bioterror/biowarriors.html/.
). 15 GOH / BIOWEAPONS
“Hay Fever.” Duke Digital Collections Item, 1927. http://
library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/mma.MM0059/pg.1/.
15 Naff, Biological Weapons, 83.
16 Naff, Biological Weapons, 118.
18 Jeanne Guillemin, Biological Weapons: From the Invention of State-Sponsored
Programs to Contemporary Bioterrorism, (New York: Columbia University Press,
2005), 130.

24 SYNTHESIS ISSUE 3
scientists do not reveal the nature of their activities within effort. Gerald Epstein, the director of the Center for Science,
the lab, bioweapons facilities cannot be determined as Technology, and Security Policy at the American Association
necessarily harmful or benign. Yet, the testimony of these for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
same scientists provides the most concrete evidence of a Epstein asserted that the prevention of research
bioweapons program, removing any doubt or uncertainty as a way to stop bioweapons proliferation would not have
regarding the potentially malicious intentions of research the desired effect of deterring nor protecting against the
directives. The scientist then, takes on a political value as bioweapons threat. Counter-intuitively, it is the promotion
both the target and tool of intelligence gathering programs of such research within a framework of global partnership
looking to identify bioweapon threats.
that will not only catalyze the process of discovery of useful
health technology but also prevent the type of secrecy and
scientist’s role in the techno-political system allots him an competition that fueled the Cold War arms race and weapons
proliferation. Recognizing that the threat of bioweapons
cannot be completely eliminated
or “reduced to zero”—in
has focused on the scientist as a new kind of weapon— part because the natural process of disease and epidemics will
portraying his knowledge of how to create bioweapons and inevitably continue—the best course of action is instead to
his participation in a covert weapons program as the means temper that threat by dissuading governments and scientists
by which the scientist himself becomes the most dangerous from aggravating it through the sinister deployment of
bioweapon. However, the scientist also possesses, in this new
role, the power to encourage international transparency and community that the threat of bioweapons is most aptly
cooperation. Bioweapons scientists are crucial to efforts to mitigated and directed toward non-hostile endeavors.
design adequate surveillance systems and counter-measures. The dawn of the era of biological warfare has
Their technical expertise and their ability to anticipate brought about a unique set of circumstances that require a
potential new threats allow bioweaponeers to know what new imaginative framework to encompass both the idea of
kinds of threats security systems should be looking for and weapons’ destructive capacity and the role of the scientist in
how such threats will manifest for detection. Furthermore, realizing and controlling that potential. In a strictly practical
by monopolizing the existing collaborative culture of the sense, bioweapons differ even from other forms of high-tech
weaponry in their expanded potential for mass, uncontrolled,
transparency across national boundaries and disperse and proliferative destruction as well as in the pathogens’ ability
invaluable knowledge of how to combat bioweapons and, to evade detection by containment and treatment technologies.
more generally, natural epidemics. In a 2009 conference As a consequence, bioweapons lend themselves to important
panel at the Center for Biosecurity of UPMC, discussion political ends—in particular, the formation of clandestine
between several biosecurity policy centers and agency weapons programs. In doing so, bioweapons dramatically alter
directors emphasized the importance of this collaborative the way that intelligence and surveillance systems interact and
promoted the idea of monitoring and
transparency, suggesting that security should be the scale. This unprecedented form of weapon creates a new kind
product of international engagement, collaboration, of scientist intricately involved in both the science of creating
and enhanced epidemiologic capabilities. [Carol] such weapons and in the political structure designed to manage,
Linden [of the US government’s Department of
Health and Human Services] political knowledge then, the idea of what can be considered a
same way that a virus spreads a deadly disease, scientists have
the ability to spread their deadly knowledge. However, it is also
in the hands of the scientist to do just the opposite—to use
that knowledge to prevent the use of bioweapons and counter
their effects. The ability of scientists to foster communities
of transparency and collaboration toward the goals of nonproliferation
and public health initiatives represents the most
potent avenue toward protection from biowarfare. Thus, the
age of bioweapons has expelled the scientist from the world
of the laboratory and armed him and his knowledge with a
19 concurred, noting
that, since the insider threat cannot be reduced to
zero, efforts to enhance security should focus on
creating an open and transparent global bioscience
community. 23
19 Carol Linden, Principal Deputy Director, Biomedical Advanced Research
-
tary for Preparedness and Response, Department of Health and Human
Services
20 Gronvall et al., “Prevention of Biothreats: A Look Ahead,” Biosecurity and
Bioterrorism: Biodefense Strategy, Practice, and Science 7, no. 4 (2009): 435.

SPRING 2011 WOO LEVIN/AIDS / VACCINES
A Study on the Politicization and Moralization of Medicine: Anti-Vaccination Movements
in 19th Century Britain and Colonial India
Stephanie Woo, Harvard University ’12
Throughout the late 19th century and during the
early years of the 20th century, smallpox was a
major source of contention in both Britain and
colonial India, not only because of its debilitating
effects as a disease, but also for the controversy that was
stirred in response to the anti-vaccination movements in
both countries. In both cases, the state played a major role in
the push for vaccination, thus raising questions concerning
the authority of the state and autonomy of the individual.
Ultimately, the anti-vaccination movement represents a
moment in history in which dialogue surrounding a major
health issue has a largely political, not medical, basis.
Despite similar strands running through the story of the
anti-vaccination movements in Britain and India, each
country’s unique political and socio-cultural nuances have
revealed the complexity of the two movements and led to a
better understanding of the causes of the politicization and
moralization of medicine.
The development of the anti-vaccination movement
in Britain was particularly timely, considering the political
activity of what was seen as an “increasingly interventionist
state” that threatened the autonomy of the individual. 1
Much of the impetus behind the anti-vaccination movement
1 Nadja Durbach, “ ‘They Might As Well Brand Us’: Working-Class Resistance
to Compulsory Vaccination in Victorian England,” Social History of
Medicine 13, no. 1 (2000): 45.
5
was drawn from the British working class; the Compulsory
Vaccination Act of 1853 seemed like an extension of the
state’s authority over its marginalized citizens. In the eyes
of the working-class, the Compulsory Vaccination Act
appeared closely linked to the “dreaded” New Poor Law,
which was enacted in 1834 and was considered to have
stripped the working-class of their independence by “forcing
all recipients of government relief into the workhouse.” 2
Since compulsory vaccination only mandated that babies
be vaccinated, children played a crucial role in the anti-
status as an extension of their parents; therefore the state’s
attempt to vaccinate babies was also seen as a “usurp[ation
of] the parental role.” 3 Historian George Behlmer posited
that the state’s increasing efforts to control the lives of
citizens had been brewing long before the anti-vaccination
movement, with an augmented focus on child welfare, seen
in the establishment of agencies like the National Society
for the Protection of Cruelty to Children. 4 Thus, it is
clear that for decades, British politics had been building an
environment in which the state assumed extensive authority,
and the anti-vaccination movement must be seen as a
2 Ibid., 51.
3 Ibid., 50.
4 Ibid.
25

26 SYNTHESIS ISSUE 3
response to these many years of unwanted social reform
orchestrated from the top-down.
Similarly, Indian oppositionists viewed vaccines as a
community.” 5 In both Britain and India, the state attempted
to affect people who were marginalized in each respective
country’s societies—the poor in one, and the Indians in the
other. The political situation in India was complicated by the
presence of an ethnically and culturally foreign authority—
the British colonists. The power dynamic that existed due
to the colonial relationship between the two countries
resulted in adoption of a ‘crusader mentality’ by the British,
and vaccination was seen as “emblematic of [Britain’s] selfdeclared
humanity and benevolence toward the people
of India.” 6 This attitude of condescension inherent in
colonialism tainted vaccination with similar negative
connotations, thus Indians shied away from the practice.
However, the political savvy of the British colonists was
regional chiefs and royalty to vouch for vaccination in
order to mobilize social change. The British state however
did not engage in such grassroots efforts, and this is likely
because the racial implications of colonialism did not apply
in Britain itself. In the case of India, it is evident that policy
and medicine mutually impacted each other – vaccination
was brought to India due to the fact it was a British colony,
and the implementation of vaccination was affected by the
country’s colonial status.
While the political history of the colonial India
proved to differ greatly from that of Britain, both governing
powers demonstrated a desire to preside over disaffected
subsets of society through vaccination. Furthermore,
the British colonists neglected the medical advantages of
variolation, a method of smallpox inoculation popular
in India prior to vaccination. Prior to the push for
vaccination, some British medical authorities noted the
merits of variolation. J.Z. Holwell, a British authority in
Bengal noted that variolation “adds no malignity to the
believed in Europe.” 7 due to the focus the state placed on whites in India and
subsequent neglect of the local population. Therefore, in
purely medical terms, variolation proved to be a superior
means of smallpox prevention, and the implementation
of vaccination represents the British desire to extend the
status quo of Britain and the Compulsory Vaccination Act
into India. Despite differences in governance, the antivaccination
movements in Britain and India were both
generated by principles of individual autonomy. Thus, it is
clear that not only did the political activity within Britain
and India establish a system of mandated vaccination from
which an anti-vaccination movement arose, but also that the
movement itself was highly political. Vaccination was no
longer valued for its medical virtues; rather, it was viewed
as a political tool to be used by the state against certain
marginalized members of society.
The anti-vaccination movement in Britain, which
grew out of political tensions, was propelled by the
nation’s socio-cultural situation. The working-class antivaccinationists
not only argued for political autonomy, but
also for the physical wellbeing of their children, and here
emerged the issue of the immorality of vaccination. For
one, the vaccination procedure was highly painful, and it was
also dangerous, as vaccinators did not screen for diseases.
Secondly, parents did not want their children to be infected
class, from which the working class worked to separate.
illustrates the lack of a common viewpoint—though all
members of the working-class were made vulnerable to the
Compulsory Vaccination Act, they diminished the egalitarian
stance they had once fought for by trying to assert the same
rights as members of the upper classes. Furthermore, public
vaccination, as mandated by the Compulsory Vaccination
Act, was stigmatized since only those who could not afford
private doctors were forced to comply. This “pauperization”
of vaccination thus shows that the anti-vaccination
movement was more concerned with the political and moral
consequences of the procedure than its medical value.
Variolation was highly ritualistic and
systematic, requiring careful transmission of low-strength
doses of the disease, followed by a close monitoring of
disease recovery. Conversely, the British implementation of
8
Conversely, the socio-cultural motivation held by
anti-vaccinationists in India was largely religious. Through
implementing vaccination by mandate, the British were not
only attempting to gain political authority but cultural power
over the Indians. Smallpox and its transmission were seen
as the manifestation of the goddess Sitala, and the recovery
5 David Arnold, “Smallpox: The Body of the Goddess,” in Colonizing the
Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth-Century India
(Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1993), 116-158, 120.
process was highly ritualistic. Variolation, the traditional
Indian method of inoculation against smallpox “celebrated,
6 Ibid., 120.
7 Ibid., 129.
8 Durbach, “They Might As Well Brand Us,” 53.

SPRING 2011 LEVIN/AIDS
27
rather than violated, Sitala’s rights over the body.” 9 By
contrast, vaccination was considered “secular in character
and alien in origin”. 10 Because variolation and recovery
from smallpox carried religious value, the imposition of
vaccination was seen as immoral and disrespectful to Sitala.
Therefore, smallpox vaccination, fundamentally a medical
issue, became moralized. The attempt to replace the sacred
variolation ritual was highly offensive, but furthermore,
vaccination was inherently insulting to a wide majority of the
Indian population, as it utilized lymph from cows, which are
sacred in Hindu culture. The consequences of these cultural
differences between Indian locals and British colonists
provide a stark contrast to the homogeneity of religion in
Britain. Moreover, in the same way that the British workingclass
anti-vaccinationists attempted to elevate themselves
above the “undeserving” poor, Indian anti-vaccinationists
were loath to be vaccinated using lymph that had also been
used on lower class children. 11 Many Hindus found the
children “offensively polluting,” revealing social reasons,
beyond the religious, that also drove the anti-vaccination
movement in India. 12
To the British, vaccination was a symbol of Western
superiority in the face of age-old Indian traditions, thus the
implementation of a medical technique became an attempt
to eradicate an entire portion of Indian culture. However,
it was ultimately the introduction of mandated compulsory
vaccination law in 1879 by Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan, a
vaccination over variolation, exposing disunity between the
Indian citizens, as some were actually in favor of vaccination.
Similarly, not all members of the British working-class
harbored anti-vaccination sentiment. Even though the
leading force behind legislated compulsory vaccination
was not a colonist one, the successful eradication of
variolation and “cultural pluralism,” and the implementation
of vaccination represented a leap in the British “medical
monopoly.” 13 WOO / VACCINES
the individual. British colonialism in India, however, created
an environment in which an anti-vaccination movement
was almost inevitable. Similarly, in Britain, the government’s
trend of legislating welfare throughout the middle of the
19th century created an atmosphere of social discontent
amongst the working-class, and the Compulsory Vaccination
Act seemed merely the catalyst that sparked the impending
revolt against the state. The religious environment in
India provided a different social context from which the
anti-vaccination movement emerged, as variolation was
inherently linked with the goddess Sitala, and erasure of the
medical procedure meant the loss of a cultural ritual. These
various layers that together represent the causes of the
anti-vaccination movements reveal the complexity behind
the movements, and illustrate a diverse range of mindsets
held by participants. Just as science often does not have a
single united voice to represent a homogenous monolith,
principles. The anti-vaccination movements in Britain and
India demonstrate the way in which a medical procedure
and valued instead for its political and socio-cultural
implications, as a result of politicization and moralization
Through asserting medical and cultural
dominance, the British colonists further tightened their
power on their colony.
In both countries, the anti-vaccination movement
was less a revolt against the medical virtue of vaccination,
and more a reaction to the state’s encroaching authority over
9 Arnold, Colonizing the Body, 133.
10 Ibid., 120.
11 Durbach, “They Might As Well Brand Us,” 45.
12 Arnold, Colonizing the Body, 141-142.
13 Arnold, Colonizing the Body, 133.

28 SYNTHESIS ISSUE 3

SPRING 2011 BARZILAY LEVIN/AIDS / MENDELSOHN
A Journey Through the Past, Present, and Future of the Department of the History of
Science with Professor Everett Mendelsohn
Julie Barzilay, Staff Writer
6
When Everett Mendelsohn made his professorial discipline was in no way formalized.
debut in Harvard’s Committee on Higher When Sarton started teaching graduate students, the
Degrees in the History of Science and Learning
population of undergraduates into the living room of his small Classes focusing on history of science material bubbled up
Cambridge apartment.
increasingly over time – particularly after the switch to the
old General Education program, which promoted the use of
of science courses began percolating in Harvard’s hallowed
halls—to 2011, when around 120 undergraduate concentrators Cohen, Gerald Holten, Leonard Nash, and Thomas Kuhn
per year advance new theses, explore subtle niches, and study were all hired to teach General Education courses that related
in the study of the History of Science. Though little-known to question remained into what department would they be placed?
many Harvard undergraduate students, the academic discipline Furthermore, why had this sudden fascination with the myriad
of the history of science itself partially germinated on
Harvard’s campus, due to the convergence of social factors—a arisen?
“Depending on who you talk to, the answer would be
bomb—and the collaboration of a few key thinkers.
different,” Mendelsohn says. “I think at the time science was
looming
large—even pre-atom bomb, this was where a lot of
at Harvard, retired in 1951. Sarton was a Belgian chemist philosophers had turned to work.”
who created the history of science journal Isis in 1912 and, Though historian Crane Brinton helped chair the
along with biochemist Lawrence Joseph Henderson, founded newly formulated Committee on Higher Degrees in the
the History of Science Society in 1924. Before Sarton, a few History of Science and Learning in 1938, it was not until
professors, such as Henderson and chemist Theodore Richards, Harvard President James Conant really got behind the study
had taught courses related to the history of science, but the of the history of science that the idea of a concentration
29

30 SYNTHESIS ISSUE 3
was entertained. Students still needed to petition to get an well as law schools,” Mendelsohn said, noting that pre-medical
undergraduate degree for a time, but Conant and Henderson and pre-law students have consistently comprised the bulk of
were able to launch a concentration in History and Science
on July 1, 1966, modeled after the university’s History and as well.
Literature concentration.
With just four full-time professors—Cohen, came back said they, among their peers, were unafraid to look
Mendelsohn, John Murdoch, and Erwin Hebert—the History at the things coming up in the sciences,” Mendelsohn said.
the blossoming of a full department after all those years? aptitude, and familiarity with the social sciences all contributed
“The whole notion that everyone ought to study
science had become more and more prominent around the Drawing a diverse body of students to the department,
country and around the world,” Mendelsohn says. “With that, the ranks of graduate students swelled from 5 to near 30.
Mendelsohn says after the rise in students in the program The
come from? What should people know about it? Shouldn’t National Science Foundation began granting fellowships to
you know how science works as a thought system, and as a historians of science, and the department became truly selfpractice?”
However, recognition of the importance of analyzing schools like the University of Wisconsin, Johns Hopkins,
Princeton, Yale and Cornell. Despite the
presence of the
weapons was not the reason the department garnered an
undergraduate following.
“History of Science classes were also a way of with its subject matter. “It used to be that most of the people
recalling that hundreds of students used science and society history,” Mendelsohn says. But when trained historians started
to comprise a greater portion of the department team, “this
fairly rapidly something that students enjoyed.” Mendelsohn changed in part what people could and couldn’t do, the nature
carved out his niche in the department focusing on the history of the courses they would teach, the way they were thinking
either physics or chemistry at the time. For his dissertation, Mendelsohn is hopeful that the concentration remains
at its current size because of the value
of having accessible
things”—otherwise known as the development of the theory
of animal heat.
change in size could take the concentration in interesting new
directions, as well.
topics like medieval science in addition to the history of On the growing popularity of the history of science as
science from the Greeks to the atom bomb. Mendelsohn
says he taught courses on the Darwinian Revolution, the to have enough people in any given society who are not afraid
social context of science, the history of modern biology, as to be critical of science—to raise important questions, not out
well as a General Education course entitled “From Aristotle of an ideological preference or religious commitment, but out
to Einsten.” In the 1960s the concentration began to truly of an understanding of what science is.” He adds, “What
outgrow the living-room intimacy of its earlier days. In 1949,
the number of History of Science students broke the double- authoritarianism.”
digit barrier, but it was not until the 1970s that the number Mendelshohn believes “A thoughtful person in today’s
grew from under 20 to about 40, temporarily surpassing the world ought to be able to turn to a scientist or authority and
number of undergraduate History Department concentrators. say, ‘how do you know?’ ‘Where did that come from?’ ” He
Some of these students were drawn in from a popular course adds, “Our society as a whole needs more people who are
on science and society, others from Mendelsohn’s “The
Darwinian Revolution” class.
living in.” The growing number of departments specializing
In addition to the interesting class material, the
not alone in his assessment; the question of how science is
students beyond the classroom—“It turned out that history
and science is a very good way to get into medical schools as remains a salient one.

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Pathologizing Suburbia: How Minor Tranquilizers Created Their Own Market
7
Chelsea Link, Harvard University ’12
“Janie’s a pretty typical teenager. Angry, insecure,
confused. I wish I could tell her that’s all going to
Burnham as he explains the status of his family life in
the year leading up to his own death in the Academy Award-
American Beauty
shot of a very standard-looking upper-middle-class suburban
street, voiced over by Lester blandly detailing the stereotypical
of dog care, his wife whose shoes match the handles of her
pruning shears, his angsty teenage daughter who thinks a new
pair of breasts will make her into a new person. Somehow
Lester’s privileged life doesn’t make him feel privileged at
all; instead, everything about it conspires to make him feel
like he’s “dead already.” 1 the evils of communism during the Cold War. Yet by the
1960s, the counterculture movement had turned Cold War
values upside down and the family, the hero of American life
was reduce to nothing more than a profane idol. Undoubtedly,
many factors contributed to the transformation of societal
perceptions of the suburban family—political factors, social
factors, and others—but this shift could be attributed in part
to psychiatric medicine. Minor tranquilizers, popularized
as coping mechanisms for the pressures of everyday life,
may have been partially responsible for leading people to
role in gender politics is often emphasized, this approach is
perhaps too narrow to capture the essence of the role of
minor tranquilizers in American society. They did not merely
teach women to be contented with their domestic cages; they
startlingly spot-on portrayal of American suburban life. helped shatter the American Cold War cult of domesticity
Apparently many of us also feel that there is something and replace it with suburban ennui and disillusionment.
“dead” about our lives, or at least something very sick. But The minor tranquilizers—a class of drugs that began
where did this sickness come from? How did suburbia turn with Miltown and Equanil (two different trade names for
from somewhere to live into something to survive? meprobamate) and later grew to include Librium, Valium, and
The return to peaceful American suburban life after others—are commonly known by the derogatory moniker
World War II was celebrated in 1940s and 1950s, and the all- “Mother’s Little Helpers” (after a popular rock song decrying
American consumerist family was held up as the antidote to the trend of prescription drug abuse among housewives). 2
Many modern historians see the minor tranquilizers as
1 American Beauty. DVD. Directed by Sam Mendes. 1999; Universal City, VA:
DreamWorks SKG, 2000.
2 The Rolling Stones, Aftermath, London Records (vinyl), 1966.
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32 SYNTHESIS ISSUE 3
feminized drugs, used to oppress women by keeping them
chemically contented and unlikely to notice or object to
their domestic imprisonment. 3 After World War II, many
women were loath to give up their factory jobs and return
to the kitchen. However, the men returning home from war
needed those jobs, and women had plenty of traditional
responsibilities to occupy their time, such as keeping the
house, making themselves sexually available in order to
strong patriots and soldiers. If this was a bitter pill for
women to swallow, the story goes, there was soon another
pill they could swallow to ease their psychological digestion.
The typical targets of tranquilizers were supposedly “frigid
women, wanton women, unmarried women and other
women who threatened to keep their wartime jobs, neglect
their duties in nuclear households or reject their husbands’
amorous advances.” 4
The evidence for this view of the role of tranquilizers
in the 1950s comes in part from the advertising campaigns
that appeared in medical journals to sell these new drugs to
doctors and psychiatrists. “Early in the promotional history
of the minor tranquilizers,” historian Mickey Smith argues,
“the married housewife began to make her appearance.” 5
Smith offers, as an example, an advertisement for a tranquilizer
called Pacatal depicting a woman named Doris who “never
had time for the kids” until she took Pacatal, which “released
this housewife from the grip of her neurosis.” Thus, one
of the most troubling symptoms of Doris’s ailment is
her neglect of motherly duties. Accordingly, her return to
proper maternal behavior is an important goal of the drug
advertising was not the only instance of the “marriage of
mothers and medications.” 6 brand’s advertising claim that their milk comes from contented
cows.
The feminization of tranquilizers
also appeared in more subtle forms. For example, a 1957 Time
magazine article entitled “Miltown in Cowtown” explains how
a pharmaceutical company developed a method of mixing
minor tranquilizers into livestock’s food to make them both
happier and fatter. Although the technique itself seems to
be aimed at meat production rather than dairy production—
article uses rhetoric relating to dairy, playing on Carnation
7 Milk production is not only a solely female activity,
but is also explicitly associated with reproduction, one of
the good postwar woman’s foremost civic duties. Therefore,
both explicitly and implicitly, bluntly and subtly, advertising
and media coverage linked tranquilizers with femininity.
This interpretation of tranquilizers’ role in acclimating
women to Cold War America, while compelling, is not
entirely satisfactory. It is valid, but incomplete. It ignores the
story of men and their relationships with minor tranquilizers.
One of the earliest sources of support for Pacatal—the
drug promoted in the advertisement starring Doris and her
in treating patients in a hospital for war veterans (who were
predominantly male). 8 One article which mentions the use of
tranquilizers to shepherd a nervous bride through the terrors
of her honeymoon also mentions the use of the same drugs
to assist a busy and successful male psychiatrist in coping
with his stressful commute. 9 Other successful male users and
production that he “couldn’t have done it if the doctor hadn’t
put [him] on Miltown’s [sic].” 10 As with the feminization
the American man also took more subtle forms. For example,
one psychiatrist, explaining how minor neurosis could affect
up to a third of the country’s residents, describes the majority
of those affected as people who are “not operating on all eight
cylinders because of psychological sludge.” 11 This mechanical
metaphor conveys masculine connotations comparable to
the feminine ones conveyed by the dairy rhetoric used in
“Miltown in Cowtown.” The masculine side of tranquilizers’
public image cannot be ignored.
Another factor complicating the standard view
of feminized tranquilizers is the existence of ads featuring
roles. For example, one advertisement promoting Miltown
7 “Miltown in Cowtown,” Time, June 10, 1957, accessed May 6, 2010,
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,937484,00.html.
3 See, e.g., Jonathan Metzl, “‘Mother’s Little Helper’: The Crisis of
Psychoanalysis and the Miltown Resolution,” Gender & History 15, no. 2
(2003): 228; and Mickey Smith, Small Comfort: A History of the Minor Tranquilizers
(Santa Barbara: Praeger, 1985).
4 Metzl, 231.
5 Smith, 101.
6 Metzl, 229.
8 “Pills for the Mind,” Time, June 11, 1956, accessed May 6, 2010, http://
www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,862165-1,00.html.
9 “Happiness by Prescription,” Time, March 11, 1957, accessed May 6, 2010,
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,824739,00.html.
10 Thomas Pryor, “Hollywood Canvas: Dramatization of Argentine Revolt
Is Set at Metro – Producer at Ease,” New York Times, May 13, 1956, 123,
accessed May 6, 2010.
11 Andrea Tone, Age of Anxiety: A History of America’s Turbulent Affair with
Tranquilizers (New York: Basic Books, 2008), 81.

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Figure 1
Image courtesy of Deco Dog’s Ephemera, accessed April 7, 2011, http://www.decodog.com/inven/MD/md31047.jpg.
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34 SYNTHESIS ISSUE 3
to doctors announces that the drug “improves the capacity
photograph of a woman working at a typewriter and smiling
(Figure 1). 12 This positive depiction of a working woman
as chains binding the woman to her stove. Far from
forcing this woman into her proper homemaking role, this
advertisement promotes the drug as a tool allowing her to
further her own career and enhance her productivity in nonbiological
arenas. Similarly, an advertisement for another
tranquilizer, Trepidone, shows a woman happily employed as
a schoolteacher (admittedly a stereotypically feminine career,
but a paying, non-domestic job nonetheless) declaring, “this
could be your ‘anxiety patient’” (Figure 2). 13 Advertisements
like these complicate the idea that drug marketing boxed
women into roles as homemakers.
In fact, the overarching theme expressed in
advertisements for Miltown and other minor tranquilizers
wasn’t a systematic targeting of any particular population; on
the contrary, marketing campaigns emphasized the universality
of the drug’s applicability. Tranquilizers had something
to offer to everyone. One advertisement that appeared in
a medical journal in 1964 states in large, bold letters that
Miltown “belongs in every practice of psychiatry” (Figure 3).
Six photographs with captions provide examples of the types
of patients who can be helped by Miltown; they are diverse
not only psychiatrically (labeled with 6 different diagnoses),
but also demographically, including three males and three
females, or alternatively two elderly people, three adults, and
one child. Miltown is depicted as a miracle drug that enhances
all other types of psychiatric treatment – it should be used
“as an adjunct to psychotherapy or any other therapy” the
doctor might think of, and is “helpful in almost every aspect
of psychiatric practice.” 14 makes people feel better, those people tend to legitimize and
codify their use of the substance by assuming that they had
a pre-existing condition. This is how people justify drugs
but instead render users “better than well.” In the book
popularized this term for enhancing biotechnologies, Carl
Elliott describes the process by which treatments implant
disease constructs in the public consciousness. He uses the
example of Paxil, a medication developed by SmithKline to
treat social phobia. He explains that:
SmithKline does not need to sell Paxil. What they
need to sell is social phobia. If an article, a journal
supplement, a conference session—or even better,
a best-selling book—gets the word out about social
phobia, then social phobia is going to be much more
widely diagnosed, and the drug that treats it is going
to be more widely prescribed.
This same process could explain how Miltown created a
market for itself: Americans did not know they were living
in the Age of Anxiety until an appropriate response to this
situation presented itself in the form of a convenient white
pill.
But the disease implied by Miltown was a bit more
portrayals which seem to feminize the drug do not refer to all
women, or even all American women; they refer particularly
to middle-class suburban housewives like Doris. The more
masculine associations, too, revolve around the bourgeoisie
(mentioning doctors, business executives, and other white
story of biotechnological enhancement,
It was supposedly a true panacea,
this glowing portrayal was that, because anything could be
cured by Miltown, anything could be pathologized by its existence. A
drug that treats anything turns anything into a disease.
This transformative ability explains how Miltown
(along with the other minor tranquilizers) soared in sales
of diseases does not create treatments; on the contrary, the
development of treatments implies the existence of diseases
to be alleviated by them. When a substance is discovered that consisted of glamorous Hollywood stars—such as Robert
15
bound up with the history of American suburbia.
Both had their heyday in the 1950s, and both have
come to represent the peculiar brand of alienation
better or worse, suburbia has come to stand for
something that can be survived only with minor
tranquilizers. 16
13 Lederle Laboratories, “This Could Be Your ‘Anxiety Patient’ on Trepidone,”
advertisement, quoted in Smith, 111.
14 Wallace Laboratories, “The One Tranquilizer That Belongs in Every Practice
of Psychiatry,” advertisement, Psychosomatic Medicine 26, no. 2 (1964).
15 Carl Elliott, Better Than Well: American Medicine Meets the American Dream
(New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2003), 125.
16 Ibid., 131-132.

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Figure 2
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36 SYNTHESIS ISSUE 3
Figure 3

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37
Goldstein (the producer mentioned above) and Milton Berle
(a popular comedian who joked about changing his name to
“Miltown Berle”)—who talked openly about their recreational
use of the drug. However, it soon had a trickle-down effect,
and the demographic make-up of the drug’s users shifted as
Average Joe decided he needed some glamour in his life, too.
By 1957, just two years after the drug’s release, “the manager
of Hollywood’s famed Schwab’s Drug Store conceded that
his tranquilizer business was still booming but his clientele
had changed,” as he gradually “sold less to celebrities and
more to ‘just plain people.’ ” 18
The minor tranquilizers, after a brief heyday as the
celebrity recreational drug of choice, thus became everyman’s
remedy for suburban ennui – a disease construct formed in part
by the existence of the remedy itself. Miltown and suburbia
eventually became almost inextricably intertwined in the
media. Housewives and businessmen, the stars of suburbia,
also starred in discussions of minor tranquilizers, but the
association went in the other direction as well. Miltown itself
was drawn into commonplace conversations about suburbia.
One New York Times
referred to as a “suburban neurosis”) mentions Miltown as
19
while an
advice column offering packing tips for travel warns that “the
road to Miltown is paved with excess baggage.” 20 Thus the
minor tranquilizer became the panacea for all suburban woes,
from lawn care to travel stress. Similarly, just as suburban
motifs frequent advertisements for the tranquilizers, Miltown
suburbia. A Baskin-Robbins advertisement offers one of
company offers its vehicles as substitutes for “happy pills”
and “tickets to Miltown”; a Valentine’s Day card even features
a man asking the reader to “be [his] little Miltown.” 21
LINK / SUBURBIA
more than tools for female oppression. Rather than simply
strengthening the family values so cherished in the 1950s,
the minor tranquilizers precipitated their downfall: these
drugs encouraged the construction of suburban ennui as an
American epidemic, which the counterculture of the 1960s
sought to cure. Inasmuch as they hastened this rebellion
against tradition, the pills apparently meant to lock women
more securely in domestic cages may have inadvertently
helped set them free.
The minor tranquilizers thus did much more then
solidify postwar gender roles. Certainly, the literature on that
side of the story is compelling, and the role of masculinity
in the pills’ usage and marketing complicates the picture and
merits further study. But Miltown and its relations were much
18 Tone, 24.
19 Marybeth Weston, “Suburban Neurosis: Crabgrass,” New York Times, July
24, 1960, SM21, accessed May 6, 2010, http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F00A17FB3B5A1A7A93C6AB178CD85F448685F9.
20 “Eliminating ‘Extras’ a Key to Packing,” New York Times, May 6, 1961,
34, accessed May 6, 2010, http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res
=F40D10FF3B5912738DDDAF0894DD405B818AF1D3.
21 Tone, 60.