Controversies and lessons from the history of smallpox: The case of massive vaccination in british corfu (1852)

Abstract

The study presents an anti-vaccination action in the 19th century involving both scientific and political motiva-tion. The research is based on an unpublished archive, namely the registries of the British Executive Police during the massive vaccination campaign in Corfu, the cap-ital of the British possession in the Ionian Islands-Greece (1815-1864), after the smallpox outbreak of 1852. The archival material provides information about the num-ber of vaccinated people, namely their sex, age, nation-ality, the year of the previous vaccination, along with the last year when a citizen “had smallpox”. The records in-dicated 40,858 citizens and of these, a total 21,845 (53.46%) were vaccinated. Despite the impressive or-ganization, the vaccination project caused a great con-troversy at both the scientific and political level between the British authorities and the Greek Ionian Assembly. The archival material gives a diachronic message in the fields of public health, infectious disease control, and health crisis management. The lack of control by a State or local authority, combined with political instability and the public’s ignorance or distrust of scientific mat-ters, are the main factors behind the failure to prevent, restrict or eradicate infectious diseases even nowadays. © 2021, EDIMES Edizioni Medico Scientifiche. All rights reserved.