New Deal Accomplishment: Millions of immunizations


Above: The Civil Works Administration (CWA) had many immunization projects, but the total number of immunizations administered is unclear. This newspaper clipping is from a longer article in The Cushing Daily Citizen (Cushing, Oklahoma), January 21, 1934, p. 1. Image from newspapers.com, used here for educational and non-commercial purposes.


Above: Across the country, the Work Division of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) administered 1,355,304 immunizations against typhoid, diphtheria, smallpox, scarlet fever, and measles. The above newspaper clipping is part of a longer article in The Fargo Forum (Fargo, North Dakota), February 9, 1935, p. 3. Image from newspapers.com, used here for educational and non-commercial purposes.


Above: WPA nurses preparing to give typhoid fever immunizations in Charleston, South Carolina, May 1938. Photo from the National Archives.


Above: The description for this photograph, taken between 1935 and 1943, reads: "Jefferson County, Louisville, Kentucky. A doctor employed on this [WPA] project #2546 is shown aiding the State Board of Health in giving inoculations for typhoid fever and diphtheria." Photo from the National Archives.


Above: A WPA poster, promoting vaccination against smallpox. Smallpox has killed hundreds of millions of people over the centuries. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.


Above: A WPA poster, urging immunization against diphtheria, a disease that killed hundreds of thousands of American children before widespread vaccination (and still causes death around the world today). Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Above: The National Youth Administration (NYA) immunized Americans too; but like the CWA (see image at top) it's not clear how many. This newspaper excerpt is from Hinton Daily News (Summers County, Hinton, West Virginia), June 1, 1939, p. 1. Image from newspapers.com, used here for educational and non-commercial purposes.

Preventing Illness, Saving Lives

Between 1934 and 1935, the Work Division of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) administered over 1.3 million immunizations. During the first three years of the WPA (fiscal years 1936-1938), at least 893,000 immunizations were given. During a surveyed two-week period in January 1940, WPA health workers administered 17,213 immunizations in clinics, homes, schools, and other settings, perhaps indicating that about 447,000 were administered during the entire year, and close to 1.5 million during fiscal years 1939-1941 (cumulatively), before the WPA program began to downsize.

From this data, plus endless newspaper accounts from all across the country, and the fact that CWA, NYA, and other New Deal programs administered many immunizations too, we can confidently say that the New Deal immunized millions of Americans and probably helped save tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of lives from diphtheria, smallpox, and other diseases.

Interestingly, the WPA also participated in a failed immunization effort. WPA health workers helped administer an experimental, non-mandatory nasal spray for polio. Unfortunately, it was soon realized that the polio virus was far more likely to enter the body through the mouth than the nose. Also, the nasal spray caused some people to lose their sense of smell - usually temporary, but in some cases it might have been permanent. Of course, it must be remembered that polio was (and still is) a crippling and deadly disease--with some children ending up in iron lungs (see photo below)--and so there was mass desperation for treatments and cures. Interestingly, there has been a renewed interest in nasal sprays for polio--see, e.g., here--so the medical science of the early-20th century was perhaps not completely wrong in its general approach to the disease.


Above: The WPA helped many children with polio, for example, by building comprehensive facilities with hydrotherapy, physical therapy, iron lungs, etc. The scene above is at the "Carrie Tingley Hospital for Crippled Children," built by the WPA in Hot Springs (now called "Truth of Consequences"), New Mexico, 1936-1937. One can only imagine how terrifying such scenes were to parents, and how desperate they were for any type of vaccine or preventive treatment. Photo from a December 1937 WPA progress report.

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