Charles Michael Higgins (October 4, 1854 – October 21, 1929)Anonymous. (1930). Charles M. Higgins. Proceedings of the National Wholesale Druggists Association 56: 83. was an Irish-American ink manufacturer and anti-vaccinationist.
Biography
Higgins was born in County Leitrim, Ireland. He moved to Brooklyn at the age of six. Higgins was the inventor of Higgins American India Ink. He operated the Charles M. Higgins Company to manufacture the drawing ink he invented.
Higgins married Alexandra Fransioli in 1899 and they had three children. He was a founding member of the Kings County Historical Society. He opposed vaccination and was also an anti-vivisectionist.Anonymous. (1923). Some Quasi-Medical Institutions. Prepared and Issued by the Propaganda Department of the Journal of the American Medical Association. p. 23
Anti-Vaccination League of America
Higgins was the co-founder and treasurer of the Anti-Vaccination League of America. The League was created in 1908 by Higgins and industrialist John Pitcairn.Walloch, Karen L. (2015). The Antivaccine Heresy: Jacobson v. Massachusetts and the Troubled History of Compulsory Vaccination in the United States. University of Rochester Press. pp. 4–5. Its anti-vaccination campaigns focused on New York and Pennsylvania. Members were opposed to compulsory vaccination laws.Colgrove, James. (2006). State of Immunity: The Politics of Vaccination in Twentieth-Century America. University of California Press. pp. 52–54. Higgins was the League's chief spokesman and pamphleteer.Altenbaugh, Richard J. (2018). Vaccination in America: Medical Science and Children’s Welfare. Palgrave. p. 51. Historian James Colgrove noted that Higgins "attempted to overturn the New York State's law mandating vaccination of students in public schools." The League should not be confused with the Anti-Vaccination Society of America, that was formed in 1879.
Higgins was criticized by medical experts for spreading misinformation and ignoring facts as to the efficacy of vaccination. The League dissolved after the death of Higgins in 1929.Colgrove, James. (2006). State of Immunity: The Politics of Vaccination in Twentieth-Century America. University of California Press. p. 74.
Selected publications A Plea for Justice to China (1900) The Crime Against the School Child (1915) Brooklyn and Gowanus in History (1916) Vaccination and Lockjaw (1916) Unalienable Rights and Prohibition Wrongs (1919) Horrors of Vaccination Exposed and Illustrated (1920)
See also American Medical Liberty League
References