Early reception of smallpox inoculation in Italy: insights from the correspondence of the Fellows of the Royal Society
From Firenze University Press Journal: Diciottesimo Secolo
Lucia Berti, University of Milan
In 18th-century Europe about 400,000 people died annually of smallpox, and many of those who survived either became blind or permanently disfigured. The fatality rate for those who contracted the disease ranged from 20% to 60% and infants died at the highest rates.
Smallpox was considered ‘universal’ and it was believed that everyone was bound to catch it at one point in their lives. However, thanks to the introduction of immunisation through vaccination, what was once considered «the most terrible of all the ministers of death» is now a distant memory, which the new generations only learn about from books. Immunisation and vaccination are today inextricably associated with Edward Jenner who, towards the end of the 18th century, empirically demonstrated that the inoculation of cowpox («vaccine inoculation») pre-vented the contraction of smallpox.
However, before the introduction of the first vaccination, another effective practice of prevention against smallpox known as ‘inoculation’, ‘engrafting’, ‘insertion’, ‘transplantation’ and later as ‘variolation’, had become known and practiced throughout Europe. Inoculation consisted in the introduction into the skin of a sound individual, by means of a small incision, of infected matter taken from a pustule of a person who suffered from smallpox at an early stage. The inoculated would go through a mild case of the dis-ease and become immune as a result. It took a long time for inoculation to be accept-ed and practiced in Europe but, had it not been for its existence, history may have taken a completely different course and the affirmation of vaccination as a practice in Europe may have been much slower and possibly tested and proven effective by someone other than Jenner.
Indeed, extensive research has been carried out on the vaccine’s predecessor, especially in British and American contexts, but the researches on inoculation in Italy are fewer, scarce and often dated — with Bianca Fadd a’s L’Innesto del Vaiolo (1983) representing the sole general survey on inoculation in Italy. Moreover, Fadda’s work, as well as most other studies on the subject, focus more on the debates that developed towards the mid of the century and less on the early reception of inoculation in the first two decades of the century. This paper thus wants to illustrate and comment on early sources that showed the Italians’ opinions and attitudes towards inoculation when it was first heard about in the peninsula. Following this introduction is a brief but necessary report on the reception and practice of inoculation in England and a report of the first published news on inoculation in Italy (§2); the paper will then briefly pre-sent an early example of a ‘research project’ launched by James Jurin, secretary to the Royal Society of London, and a series of letters exchanged between Jurin and Sir Thomas Dereham, a Fellow of the Society living in Ita-ly (§3); finally, the paper will focus on a series of letters exchanged between the physician and naturalist Antonio Vallisneri and Thomas Dereham (§4); and will conclude by commenting on the possible influence that these exchanges had on the practice of inoculation in Italy and on the Italians’ relations with the Society with respect to the practice (§5).
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