This post was
written by a guest blogger; the opinions in it may not reflect my own. Kate Corbett Pollack is a researcher for the
American Pomeroy Historic Genealogical Association, based in Syracuse, New
York. For the past two years, she has been working with a collection of early
19th century letters that were found in an attic by an APHGA member.
The collection of 144 letters, written by four generations of women from
1800-1850, reveal fascinating details of what life was like in an
epidemic-disease ravaged western Massachusetts village during a time when
medical science was often still based on the medieval four humors. The letters
are a valuable window into the realities of a pre-vaccine era, loss of children to disease, and the constant presence of death. This article was
originally posted on the APHGA blog: http://americanpomeroys.blogspot.com/ and rights are reserved by that
organization. Further reading on the Spaulding family can be found on the site.
The LORD shall smite thee with a consumption,
and with a fever, and with an inflammation, and with an extreme burning, and
with the sword, and with blasting, and with mildew; and they shall pursue thee
until thou perish.
—Deuteronomy 28:22
Buckland, Massachusetts and
the Psychology of Epidemic Disease
Readers
familiar with the Spaulding family might recall my September 2011 blog post,
“Calvinism and Epidemic Disease in the Sussana Cole Letters”. In that post, I
discussed the ways that the Calvinist religion was used by its followers in
Buckland, Massachusetts, to explain the epidemic diseases that ravaged the village
for over a fifty-year period. I used the letters in our archives written by the
Spaulding and Pomeroy families during this time (1800-1850) as the basis for
this research. Since writing this article, I have learned more about the
psychology of epidemic disease and have seen parallels in reactions from
Buckland villagers to disease and illness in the early 1800s to reactions to
contemporary disorders such as Autism. There are also similarities with both of
these responses and those to the Great Plague of London in 1665. Guided by Philip
Strong’s essay Epidemic psychology: a model, this article will address
what appears to be a common human psychological reaction to epidemics,
regardless of the time period. Epidemic disease can also function to explain
the treatment of Josiah Spaulding, Jr. (1785-1867) who was kept in a cage in
the homes of his family for 57 years.
Epidemics have, throughout
history, invoked a common psychological response in humans from the Stone Age
to the AIDS epidemic, even to current issues of diabetes, obesity and Autism.
In the midst of a serious, ongoing health crisis, humans look for an answer,
any answer, to the problem. In early 1800s Buckland, choices for an explanation
of disease were limited. Today, science provides us with many more options.
However, this has not stopped large numbers of people from continuing to seek
the types of explanations commonly sought in Buckland or 1665 London. The
powerful psychological response to illness can be difficult to sway, and
manifests in similar ways throughout history.
Autism is a current
disorder that upon examination provides insight to human psychological response
to epidemics. Looking to external sources and imagining a conspiracy is at work
are examples. The opinion that an outside source triggers or has triggered the
onset of Autism is one held by communities who are seeking an explanation to
the condition and do not trust the average doctor or scientist who maintains
the cause is biological and internal. These communities are largely made up of
those who are either against vaccinations or in favor of a limited vaccine
schedule. They argue that vaccinations are the cause of Autism, despite that
claim being widely discredited by doctors, and the initial research it was
based upon found to be fraudulent. There is a correlation with the rise in
autism diagnoses and the rise in the MMR vaccine, but causation has been
disproved.
This has not stopped people from believing that all vaccines are a potential
cause, however. This reaction is a common one in the face of widespread illness.
In Philip Strong’s Epidemic psychology: a model, he explores the “fear,
panic, stigma, moralizing and calls to action” that seem to characterize the “immediate
reaction” to an epidemic.
Autism is not the
type of “large, fatal epidemic” Strong is referring to, but the social
responses he outlines in this essay are characteristics that considerable
numbers of the American, British and Australian populations have displayed in
response to Autism, a condition that is arguably not an epidemic at all, but is
viewed by many as being so due to the increase in diagnoses over the last few
decades. This increase, doctors and scientists explain, is due to better
identification, and expansion of the definition to include a wider spectrum of
Autism including Asperger’s disorder. Scientists also maintain that these
disorders have existed for a long time, if they are to be characterized as
“disorders” in the first place. Renowned Autism researcher Simon Baron-Cohen
maintains that Einstein and Newton both had symptoms of Autism and Asperger’s,
and that the condition can contribute to a better understanding of scientific
and mathematical systems.
Despite increased
information and positive perspectives on the condition, the propensity for
“fear, panic, stigma, moralizing and calls to action” remain strong. Ideas that
an outside cause in the environment, a governmental conspiracy or even
religious reasons (anti-vaccination activist Jenny McCarthy frequently
references a spiritual calling from God to inform people) are the cause of
Autism continue to proliferate. There is fear and panic around the idea that
vaccines contain harmful chemicals like anti-freeze, and that conspiratorial
doctors and scientists are working together to harm children for pharmaceutical
profit.
Calls to action include anti-vaccination groups that push for changes in
vaccines or to not vaccinate at all. Other outside sources have been looked to such
as diet and environmental factors, for example. Dr. Baron-Cohen believes that
the disorder is hormonal and develops in the womb. There is not yet a solid
explanation for the cause of Autism, but there is no evidence that it is caused
by vaccines.
During the Great
Plague of London, a similar reaction to the devastation of the Black Death
occurred. In the medical pamphlet The Shutting Up Infected Houses As It Is Practiced
in England Soberly Debated (1665), possible causes of the Black Death are
discussed. (During the plague,
infected people would be shut up in their own houses.) The causes are almost
all from external environmental sources. Food features prominently on the list:
23. By a Dinner of Soales in Fifthstreet
24. By a dish of Eels.
26. By a Codling Tart and Cream
27. By a Dish of French Beanes.
28. By Cabbages.
29. By Turneps and Carrets.
The list continues
and includes humans (typically poor people), animals, clothing and places of
ill repute like “Scurvy Tipling Houses and Bowling Allies.”
The idea that people considered undesirable or different by the rest of the
population are somehow responsible for disease or that God is angry because of
these people and making everyone sick is still a common reaction to epidemics.
The Plague was thought of as a disease that came from the poor, and upper
classes would try to hide the fact that they’d contacted it out of embarrassment.
Gay people being blamed for AIDS is an example of modern day epidemic
scapegoating. Profit-hungry chemists, doctors and pharmaceutical companies
being blamed for producing Autism-causing vaccines is another. If a segment of
the population’s influence could be decreased or eliminated, then these
diseases would go away, according to this logic.
Vaccines do not
cause Autism, but what they do accomplish is to prevent a variety of
life-threatening, debilitating illnesses that caused high mortality rates and
suffering for most of human history. Public health and medical science have
also put an end to these diseases almost entirely in the United States, Europe
and many developing countries. The Black Plague decimated European cities in
regular intervals for almost 300 years. The Great Plague of London in 1665 is
estimated to have killed over 100,000 people. During its height, 8,000 died in
London per week.
Anyone who was able to fled the city, but most remained within city limits to
die. We know today that fleas carried the disease, but during this era, the
cause of the plague was unknown, as was what to do to cure it. People believed
that miasma, or contaminated air was
a cause, but it wasn’t known for certain. Hysteria resulted. Londoners,
thinking a possible cause was cats and dogs, killed over 40,000 of the animals.
The result increased the flea population, as fleas now had fewer animal hosts
and turned to humans instead, exacerbating the Plague.
Today, the Plague is
rarely seen. Nor are the diseases that were a part of everyday life for the
Spaulding family and residents of Buckland, Massachusetts in the nineteenth
century. These included cholera, dysentery, typhoid, tuberculosis, yellow fever
and measles outbreaks. These illnesses were a part of everyday life for the
villagers in epidemic years. Living with constant epidemics impacted the
psychology of Buckland residents in ways much like the Plague impacted the
psychology of Londoners.
Buckland residents
reacted to epidemics in the way that humans tend to. What occurred was fear,
paranoia, hysteria, blame and looking to an external, somewhat conspiratorial
source, in this case God, as the reason. Certainly there was fear involved with
this belief. The Spaulding letters repeatedly express feelings of wariness,
helplessness, depression and anxiety in response to the idea that God is
hurting and killing Buckland villagers for reasons that must be their own
fault. The “call to action” was church revivals, penitence and an obsession
with religion in all areas of life. Clearly the constant epidemics began to
define the mindset of the Buckland residents. Nancy Spaulding wrote to Mary
Pomeroy on March 27, 1810:
Dear Sister…When we behold the sprightly youth
whose chicks glow with beauty and whose limbs are full of activity cut down by
the stroke of death and layed in the silent grave never more to be beheld by
mortal eyes there to remain until the arch angel shall sound the trump of God…we
one or both of us shall be numbered with the dead our bodys must be layed in
the silent tomb…
The women were in
their early twenties at this time. From Deborah Spaulding to Mary Pomeroy,
April 20th, circa 1814:
We who are now in the bloom of youth are as
liable to die at any age we had ought to be in preparation for death judgment
and eternity many of our fellow mortals are dying around us some in by a sudden
and surprising manner…
From Deborah Trowbridge
to David and Mary Ann Pomeroy, April 17, 1839:
God is speaking to us in accents as loud as
thunder, to be also ready how soon and sudden we may be called, for we know
not. Short has been the separation of your Dear Mother from your beloved child,
this new wound has opened the other afresh may you my dear friends be still and
know it is god that has done it…
Stigma was directed
at anyone who fell outside the category of a proper religious person. Mary Ann
Pomeroy wrote in her 1850 diary when she was 14 years old of attending church
almost constantly and being punished when she misbehaved by not being allowed
to go, which for her was very upsetting, since she believed that she was going
to die soon, as so many others around her were. Church was a possible way to
protect herself.
Epidemics and the Incarceration of Josiah
Spaulding
Josiah Spaulding, as
we have seen in previous posts, was not like everyone else in Buckland. He
challenged his father’s religious beliefs, for some reason did not fit in at
Williams College, and wanted to spend his time in Southampton having fun
instead of following in his father’s footsteps. There was also something
clearly different about his mental state. It is difficult to say what exactly
he was suffering from, since it was over 200 years ago and there is scanty
evidence. However, Spaulding family letters indicate that in 1812 or around
that year, at age 23 or 24, Josiah was put in a cage by his father, where he
would live out the duration of his life. While it is possible that he became
violent or aggressive, his letters to his family are very gentle-there is no
evidence of violence, but there is evidence of kindness. Whatever the case,
Josiah was clearly different. Death was a constant in Buckland and the
surrounding area during the early to mid-1800s, as we have seen. Josiah’s
sister, Mary Spaulding, almost died in 1811 after giving birth, lost a baby in 1814,
and her husband in 1815, when he was only 33, and by 1816 was facing the
possibility that her surviving daughter might also die. The feelings of terror
that must have resulted in the family only strengthened the need for Josiah to
be kept under control.
Around 1814 the family almost lost youngest
daughter Lydia Spaulding from tuberculosis, a disease she would suffer from for
the next twenty years. This type of pattern of near death and loss was not
unusual for Buckland families. Nearly everyone in the Spaulding family eventually
died of a now-preventable disease, everyone that is, except for Josiah.
Although he came into contact with Lydia (tuberculosis) and his sister Deborah
(typhoid and dysentery) on a regular basis, and in 1840 nearly all of the next
door neighbors died of “Spring Fever”, Josiah lived to be 81. His niece, Mary
Williams Howes, wrote to her Aunt in Southampton in 1840 of the “Spring Fever”
epidemic that swept Buckland that year:
Death that formidable adversary of mankind
has snatched from our midst the man of years and the interesting youth and the
bell has hardly ceased its tolling for another whose cold remains are waiting
for the grave…You have probably heard of the deaths of Mr. Alexander Ward, Mrs.
Hall, Mrs. Upton, Mrs. Daniel Bement, and Mrs. Thacher, all of whom died some
time ago. But a week last Monday night this “grim messenger” entered the abode
of our nearest neighbors and nipped the brightest flower of the family. The
days of this mourning had scarcely passed for their little babe when a greater
affliction came upon them. One remarkable for her apt evil, her uncommon
rudeness, and her engaging manner has left us. But she died not as a true
Christian dies, but pleading for mercy even in the agonies of death and the
mortal remains of Eliza Townsly are deposited in the churchyard.
Epidemics continued
to outbreak into the 1850s, with cases of tuberculosis, then known as
consumption, and typhoid fever striking Spaulding family members and Buckland
area residents.
The hysteria that
resulted can be identified in almost every Spaulding and Pomeroy family letter,
as indicated in the excerpts above. Josiah’s letters to his father (as written
about in my 2011 post)
indicate that he did not share his father’s Calvinist beliefs. While this type
of behavior is normal today, and young people are often expected to show a
certain amount of rebellion, it was not normal in 1812, and would have been
completely unacceptable in the Puritan tradition. Josiah’s incarceration, which
is unusual, should be viewed in the context of epidemic disease, since that is
what was occurring at the time.
There are many
factors in his case that add up to the complex reason for his being kept in a
cage, and some may weigh more heavily than others. But in the environment of “fear,
panic, stigma, moralizing and calls to action”, someone who challenged the
status quo could be looked at as a serious threat to social order. The
villagers sincerely believed that God was testing them, angry with them;
killing their families and friends for unknown reasons. Everyone went to the
same church to listen to Reverend Spaulding talk about it; Reverend Spaulding
with the very different son. Keeping Josiah confined was a way of maintaining
control and order in Buckland society. Something was very out of order, because
of the amount of sickness and death, and 1816’s “year of no summer”, when crop
failure occurred due to weather changes. Disease and crop failure were out of
the control of Buckland villagers. What they could try to control was each
other. Josiah’s incarceration in the family home by his father had the support
of the Buckland villagers, and Spaulding family neighbors were invested in
helping to care for him. Everyone knew about Josiah. The shared mentality was
that the cage was where Josiah belonged; enforced by Reverend Spaulding’s
religious sermons which functioned to explain the rampant disease and death.
In the years after
Josiah’s incarceration, disease continued to be a constant, and more and more
members joined the First Congregational Church of Buckland, where they were
baptized by Reverend Spaulding. In
1816, the year without a summer, 16 people were inducted. In 1822, the year
before his death, Reverend Spaulding inducted a record number of new
congregants into the church-over 60 people, including the founder of Mount
Holyoke College, Mary Lyon.
Eventually, the
source and causes of these diseases was discovered, and medicine followed suit.
Vaccinations were and continue to be a large part of staving off the types of
epidemics that routinely threatened Buckland. As a result of vaccination rates
falling, there has been a resurgence of the types of diseases common in the
Spaulding’s era. In 2011, according to the Centers of Disease Control,
incidence of measles outbreaks reached a 15 year high, and Pertussis outbreak
was at epidemic levels.
It is interesting to note that the fearful and suspicious reaction towards
vaccines is in fact bringing back epidemic disease to a society that has all
but forgotten what life was like before them. Like the Great Plague of London,
human’s suspicious reactions to cats and dogs as potential carriers exacerbated
the spread of disease. Looking at vaccines as the cause of illness today is
ironically leading to actual illnesses. Because of epidemic psychology, humans
can unwittingly cause further harm to their own societies.
The environment of
constant disease and sickness that the Spaulding family spent their lives in
made it hard to be a happy person. If their letters are any indication, they
were fraught with anxiety and depression, and consumed by thoughts of death.
The main comfort for them was the afterlife, where they would be reunited with
their lost loved ones. This glimpse into a time when medical science and
technology was almost non-existent reveals what the reality was for people who
could do nothing to stop disease. It was not too far from the days of the Black
Plague. Today, if current trends continue, we could be entering a new era of
epidemic disease. Medical science has the power to eradicate disease, but it
takes the participation of the population to work. If distrust and
misunderstanding of vaccinations continues to rise, the era of the Spauldings
will not be such a distant memory.
Further Sources:
"Autism Risk
Unrelated to Total Vaccine Exposure in Early Childhood." NIMH RSS.
National Institutes of Mental Health, 29 Mar. 2013. Web. 04 Apr. 2013.
Brodman, Estelle.
"Medieval Epidemics." Journal of the Medical Library Association
41(3).July (1953): 265-72. US National Library of Medicine. National Institutes
of Health. Web. 4 Apr. 2013.
Fombonne, Eric, M.D.
"What's Behind the Rise in Autism?" Interview. PBS Frontline. PBS, 29
Dec. 2009. Web. 4 Apr. 2013.
<http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/vaccines/rise/fombonne.html>.
Greven, Philip J.,
The Protestant Temperament: Patterns of Child-Rearing, Religious Experience,
and the Self in Early America. University of Chicago Press: 1988.
Holt, D. "The
Measles Lie, and the Ongoing Ad Campaign Disguised as News." NaturalNews.
NaturalNews.com, 6 May 2012. Web. 04 Apr. 2013.
Offit, Paul A., M.D.
"The Problem With Dr Bob's Alternative Vaccine Schedule." The Problem
With Dr Bob's Alternative Vaccine Schedule. Pediatrics, n.d. Web. 04 Apr. 2013.
"The Vaccine
War." PBS. PBS, 27 Apr. 2010. Web. 04 Apr. 2013
Sears, Bob, M.D.
"So Autism Is (now Even More) Common . . . Anybody Care Yet?" Lisa
Ackerman Real Help Now. TACA, 20 Mar. 2013. Web. 04 Apr. 2013.
