Tuells and González Guitián bring to light the enthusiastic reception of the publication that announced the philanthropic expedition of the vaccine, recently published in facsimile by the Academy of Medicine
06 Jan 2024. Updated at 05:00 a.m.
“And because they were toddlers, they were in the charge of the Rector of the Foundling House of La Coruña, who on this one, as on previous voyages, took care of their cleanliness with the greatest care.” With this brief quote on the second page of the Supplement to the Madrid Gazeta The participation of Isabel Zendal on the Royal Philanthropic Vaccine Expedition, which had set sail from A Coruña three years earlier, sponsored by the Crown, aboard the corvette María Pita.
He Supplementa compendium of geography, narrative pulse and propaganda in the service of Charles IV, reports on the return to Madrid of the chamber surgeon Xavier Balmis After the journey through the Overseas Territories that she completed with her team, Nurse Zendal—the only woman on board—and the 21 children from the inclusive that transmitted arm to arm the smallpox vaccine“consolation of humanity”, in the most enormous prophylactic work of world medicine known.
“Balmis tried (…) to extend the beneficence of the King and the glory of his august name to the last confines of Asia,” and reached “the vast archipelago of the Visayas islands, whose kings, who lived in perpetual war with us , have laid down their weapons, admired by the generosity of an enemy who brought them health and life when they were most afflicted with a devastating smallpox epidemic,” describes the news, which continues with the health and political advance: “They were not less those that reigned in the Portuguese colonies and in the empire of China when Balmis arrived in Macao and Canton, managing in both places to introduce the fluid fresh and in all its activity (…), an undertaking that they had not been able to The English managed to obtain it on the several occasions they tried, taking portions of pus on ships of their India Company, which arrived inert.
He will return to the English, and to Balmis in Saint Helena, where he convinces them, “as everywhere, by dint of exhortations and perseverance,” to adopt “the prodigious antidote which they had despised for more than eight years, despite be a discovery of your nation.
The story of the scientific feat was received with enthusiasm in America and Europe, as the research of the professor at the University of Alicante has brought to light. Jose Tuells and the historian from Coruña Carlos Gonzalez Guitián. «He was the best literary and scientific ambassador of the expedition. Four pages were enough to publicize a pioneering feat, the first organized international vaccination campaign in the history of public health,” says González Guitián about the Supplementrecently published in facsimile in Spanish and English versions by the medical academies of Galicia and Spain.
Months after coming to light in the royal printing press, the text reached the hands of the discoverer of the vaccine, Edward Jennerwhich promoted a English Version, in a format similar to the original, included in the 2023 edition. The vaccine children burst into circles and scientific literature throughout Europe, in the British Parliament and the royal courts. Almost simultaneously, the prestigious magazine British Library In Geneva, he translated the text into French, the language of cultural intermediation at the time. “Thanks to the publication in English, the expedition was remembered throughout the 19th and 20th centuries,” says Carlos González Guitian, who brings up the recent recognition of the Unesco by declaring the documentation on the epic that is preserved in the General Archive of the Indies as Memory of the World.
2024-01-06 04:00:23
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