Anti-vaxx fearmongering extended beyond the shores of Britain. This French etching, ca. 1800, shows a diseased mermaid-creature being pulled by a cow-riding physician and syringe-wielding apothecary, to the children's horror.

Featured on PDR in the essay “The Mark of the Beast”: Georgian Britain’s Anti-Vaxxer Movement

Ox-faced children, elderly women sprouting horns, and cloven minds — all features attributed to Edward Jenner’s vaccine against smallpox. Introducing us to the original anti-vaxxers, Erica X Eisen explores the “vacca” in the first-ever vaccine: its bovine origins and the widespread worry that immunity came with beastly side effects.