The resurgence of measles in the United States and the UK, a polio outbreak in the Philippines, HPV-vaccine resistance in Japan — these headlines from the past year have roots in global anti-vaccine campaigns that stretch back over 200 years.

Concerned parents, religious groups, liberals and pseudoscientists alike are adapting the messaging of their anti-vax predecessors for the internet age with alarming success. 

Supercharged by social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, the anti-vaccine movement today has moved into the mainstream: last year, vaccine hesitancy was included in the WHO’s top 10 threats to global health.

But the anti-vax movement has been around since the first-ever vaccine, and to understand how we got to today we need to go right back to early vaccine campaigns and their opponents.