Lecture 1 (i)- History of Virology.pdf

Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings, 2005

International Journal on Biomedicine and Healthcare, 2023

Journal of Infection, 2006

Smallpox was a highly virulent, contagious disease. Initial attempts to control the disease by variolation were controversial and dangerous. Variolation was the subject of some of the earliest published clinical trials. Vaccination was discovered by Edward Jenner in 1796. From initial skepticism by the medical community the uptake became so widespread that smallpox vaccination was made compulsory in England and Wales in 1853. Eventually, this led to the eradication of smallpox in 1980. Parallels can be drawn with modern vaccination and the smallpox vaccine especially with the current intense media scrutiny of modern vaccinations.

I give here an historical view (from the XVIIIth to the XXth century) of hygiene policies adopted or rejected in different parts of the world (Europe and America). It starts from the beginning of the XVIIIth century, when the medications prescribed by Rhazes, the first physician who clearly diagnose the smallpox from 910, were still applied but the disease may be often fatal. However a new method of inoculation, which is hard to trace beyond the seventeenth century, began to be applied in Europe and America. According to the country its acceptation followed very different paths, going from the entire acceptation in New England till 1750, to the unconditional reject in France during the reign of Louis XV. However its acceptation by the population, the press, the doctors, the Churches and political power were clearly different. For example in New England Douglas (1722), the only Boston physician who had studied in Europe, claimed that inoculation aggravated the smallpox epidemics. In France de la Condamine in a paper to the Academy of science (1754) called the Faculties of Theology and medicine and senior magistrates to dispel the misgivings fomented against inoculation by ignorance. Despite its success he was forced to admit that his crusade had largely failed. Ironically, Louis XV fell victim of smallpox and died of it in 1774, after having blocked all attempts to eradicate it during his thirty years of reign. At the end of the XVIIIth century a new approach, this time by vaccination, was proposed by Jenner in 1798. Even if the population, the doctors, and the Churches were reticent at its beginning, they quickly accepted this practice and permitted its dissemination worldwide during the XIXth century. However a number of doctors, bacteriologists, biologists and national leagues would have preferred a more hygienic approach during this century. For example the Leicester Anti-Vaccination League founded in 1869 opposed the compulsory nature of vaccination, which they saw as an attack on personal freedom and developed a public-heath theory of the fight against epidemics. During the XXth century, the World Heath Organisation undertook the complete eradication of this disease from 1967. They declared in 1980 that the disease had been wiped off the face of the Earth. To accomplish this task, it used not only mass vaccination but in numerous cases, when it was insufficient, a strategy founded on hygiene procedures and isolation of patients to break the contagion chain. This fight against smallpox was a complex mix of acceptance or rejection by the population, the medical power, the political power, and mainly by the public hygiene policies followed during this long period of time and according to the country.

Medicina Historica, 2023

The first effective form of prevention against smallpox, variolation, was introduced to Europe in the early 18th century. This paper examines how the knowledge about variolation was mediated on its way to European medicine. We suggest that there were three primary sources of information on this anti-epidemic measure. Firstly, individuals with immediate experience such as diplomats, their staff, and other travelers, including well known cases such as that of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Knowledge about the procedure was also shared through the academic networks of the time: medical publications and early scientific journals such as Philosophical Transactions, Ephemerides Academiae Leopoldinae, and Wrocławian Sammlung von Natur-Geschichten. Finally, there were also migrants coming to Europe as healers, traders, or converts, who either offered inoculations or were themselves inoculated. In connection to this group, we provide a newly uncovered record of variolation in Vienna, which moves the date of the earliest inoculation in Europe to several years prior to the year 1721 which is traditionally presented in historical literature on the subject. The primary objective of this paper is providing this discovery with as much socio-professional context as possible given the limited scope of information available on the source.