United States: The Animal Vaccine and Mass Production
"Very rapidly a number of ‘‘vaccine farms” were established in the U.S. and produced large quantities of ‘‘animal vaccine”. These ‘‘vaccine farms” were mostly established by medical doctors who saw an opportunity to respond to an increasing demand of smallpox vaccine from individuals and from health authorities, and to make a profit. The ‘‘vaccine farms” evolved from producing only smallpox ‘‘animal vaccine” to manufacturing several other biologics, including diphtheria- and other antitoxins." (Esparza et al., 2020, p. 4773)
History and pathology of vaccination
Sketch from the 1889 book History and Pathology of Vaccination by Edgar March Crookshank illustrating a case of horsepox
For about the first century after the discovery of vaccination, the primary means for vaccine transmission was the "arm-to-arm" method: samples could be collected from the pustules caused by vaccination and transferred to another patient. Although this method was largely effective, it did carry the risk of transmitting other diseases, such as syphilis, between people. Early vaccination campaigns were also hindered by transportation issues. Doctors could transport the vaccine by preserving and dessicating vaccine samples or creating a "human chain", by which vaccination would be gradually performed on a number of people until the party arrived at their final destination. Both of these transmission methods were unreliable-- the vaccine could deactivate even after being carefully preserved and the human chain could fail if the timing was off or the vaccine failed to take in one person in the sequence. Thus doctors had to sometimes reintroduce vaccination to their communities by importing samples from elsewhere or seeking out cases of horsepox or cowpox among local livestock.
Lancaster County Vaccine Farms
1885 advertisement for Lancaster County Vaccine Farms, operated by Dr. H. M. Alexander & Co. in Marietta, Pennsylvania and Omaha, Nebraska
The need for a more reliable means of proliferating vaccines ultimately led to the creation of the "animal vaccine": smallpox vaccines that were created using lesions collected from populations of livestock that were kept infected with cowpox or horsepox. Giuseppe Negri created the first successful animal vaccination system in Naples, Italy in 1840, but his innovation remained a strictly regional practice until word got out at a medical congress in France in 1860. By the mid-1860s the new technique was spreading around the world and replacing the arm-to-arm technique, sometimes with the aid of legislation that forbid the old practice. The animal vaccine arrived in the United States via New York in 1870 thanks to Dr. Henry Austin Martin. By 1897, there were several "vaccine farms" established across the country. Largely known as "vaccine parks" outside the U.S., vaccine farms were commercial enterprises that advertised the vaccines derived from their livestock to both medical professionals and the general public, boasting of the efficacy of their products with customer testimonials and empirical studies of their impact on local communities.
Building- Research and Biological Departments, Parke, Davis & Co., Detroit, Mich
Sketch of the Science Building of the research and biological department of drug manufacturer Parke, Davis & Co. in Detroit, Michigan, drawn sometime after 1898
Negative press attention would change the fortunes of vaccine farms when in 1901 there were two significant outbreaks of tetanus caused by shoddy vaccines. Thirteen children died in Missouri from a compromised diphtheria vaccine and nine in New Jersey from a compromised smallpox vaccine. In 1902 Congress passed the Biologics Control Act, creating a board under the jurisdiction of the Secretary of the Treasury that would issue licenses for the selling of biological products. None of the first companies to be licensed are recognizable to many modern Americans; some have been absorbed into major pharmaceutical companies. The Detroit-based drug manufacturer Parke, Davis, & Co. and the Pennsylvanian business Dr. H. M. Alexander & Co. eventually wound up in the possession of Pfizer, and the Cutter Laboratory-- infamous for the namesake Cutter Incident in which some of the company's polio vaccines were found to contain live versions of the virus that paralyzed dozens of children and killed five-- was acquired by Bayer.