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weeks after vaccination. All of this constituted “indisputable evidence,” in the words of the report, “that the tetanus germs were not introduced at the time of vaccination.” Following Henry Davis’s original suggestion, the report attributed the tetanus outbreak to the peculiar “atmospheric and telluric conditions” (the dry, dusty weather) that had prevailed in Camden that fall. To demonstrate that the germs were present “in the atmosphere,” the board cited the case of a boy who got tetanus from a gunshot wound that fall. Other germs had made their way onto the vaccine wounds of a few luckless children who had left their wounds uncovered, wrapped them in filthy rags, or, worse, “scratched the vaccinated area with their dirty fingers and nails and infected the wound.” At the conclusion of the report, the board expressed its “unanimous opinion” that compulsory vaccination should resume in Camden.58

Medical science and public relations know-how had come to the defense of the vaccine industry at its hour of greatest need. The American Druggist and Pharmaceutical Record, an industry trade journal, expressed relief. The Record urged “every intelligent person” to “do all that is possible to prevent the spread of unnecessary and ill-founded alarm from the accidental occurrence of tetanus following, but in no wise due to vaccination.”59

And yet there were doubts. The board’s “vigorous ex parte denial,” as a New York Times editorial skeptically referred to the report, did not silence the public narrative that tied the suffering of little children to tainted commercial vaccine. The Philadelphia North American agreed: “The prima facie evidence of connection between vaccination and tetanus is too strong to be refuted by mere assertion of opinion by the vaccinators.” Addressing the New York Academy of Medicine, W. R. Inge Dalton, a physician and professor, said he was not persuaded by the report. “In Camden the manufacturer and the medical men have co-operated in exonerating themselves, and have thrown all the blame on the parents of the children,” Dalton said. If tetanus bacilli were simply “in the air,” it was remarkable that they had a “selective predilection for sores produced by particular kinds of vaccine virus.”60

In Philadelphia, a scientific debate on the merits of the board’s argument had begun even before the report’s release. Addressing the Philadelphia Medical Society on November 27, Dr. Robert N. Willson presented a paper about a case he had recently handled. An eleven-month-old child had died of tetanus following vaccination. Willson concluded that the child’s father, a coachman, had carried the tetanus from the stable to the nursery. Insisting there had never been any connection between vaccine and tetanus, Willson told his audience that the only cure for “rampant” opposition to vaccination was a “new scrupulousness” toward the vaccination wound. No doubt many of his listeners applauded. But at least one remained unconvinced. Dr. Joseph McFarland, the man who had built Mulford’s antitoxin laboratory, took the floor. He had been following the tetanus cases closely, he said, and was conducting his own study of the subject. He had learned enough already to suspect that Willson’s “extremely optimistic view . . . concerning the harmlessness of vaccine virus might not be correct.” Five months later, the two physicians would meet again in that same room to debate the issue.61

Nor had the board’s investigation stopped the pain and death in Camden. On the night of November 25, thirteen-year-old Ada Heath died of lockjaw. Her parents had paid a local druggist twenty-five cents to vaccinate her. On November 26 came the death of nine-year-old Georgiana Overby, the first African American child among the afflicted, and the first of the tetanus victims to have received her vaccination in the free dispensary. “[S]he, too, died in agony,” the Tribune reported. From nearby Jordantown came the news that four-year-old Flora Johnson, also African American, had died, “apparently suffering from tetanus, following vaccination.” The final