Article ID: CBB001201293

Vaccination-Induced Syphilis and the Hübner Malpractice Litigation (2012)

unapi

This article examines smallpox vaccination in the 19th century as background for a notorious medical malpractice case that occupied Bavarian courts from April 1853 until May 1854. Dr. Georg Hübner, the defendant, was accused of having initiated a small epidemic of syphilis by using the lymph of a syphilitic infant to vaccinate 13 infants. The litigation and its published contemporaneous discussion demonstrate conflicts in the understanding of syphilis, the hazards of having to make a purely clinical diagnosis, the effect of obsolete legal wording in medical litigation, and the attitude of leading physicians to a guilty colleague. This case ultimately led to efforts to make arm-to-arm smallpox vaccination safer, and by 1898 to abandon the technique in favor of bovine sources that were sterilized and stabilized by various methods. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

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Authors & Contributors
Tognotti, Eugenia
Calder, Alistair
McHugh, Kieran
Arthurs, Owen
Gianluca Giachery
Hutchinson, Ciaran
Concepts
Vaccines; vaccination
Medicine
Smallpox
Medicine and culture
Disease and diseases
Public health
Time Periods
19th century
18th century
20th century, early
20th century
17th century
21st century
Places
Italy
England
United States
Ireland
Piedmont
New England (U.S.)
Institutions
Catholic University of Ireland (Dublin)
Royal Belfast Academical Institution
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