This post is by Michael Apfeldorf of the Library of Congress.
Analyzing historic newspaper articles can provide students with unique insights into the relationship between scientific literacy and civic behavior. Consider this 1913 article from The Bridgeport Evening Farmer, in which the U.S. Public Health Service attempts to discourage the popular practice of “measles parties.” In such gatherings, parents would intentionally expose their children to measles so they could “get over it…as a sort of ‘immunization’.”