Scientific Publishing Globalisation Of Variolation: The Overlooked Origins Of Immunity For Smallpox In The 18th Century

Review Variolation, the deliberate inoculation of someone at risk of smallpox, was probably the first medically invasive preventive measure in the annals of public health. It was also the first such measure to be adopted worldwide. Its history is therefore more than a mere prelude to the better known technique of vaccination. It deserves full-scale study in its own right as a major phase in the history of immunization. In this wide-ranging and detailed monograph, Dr Alicia Grant brings new evidence to bear and traces the changing techniques of variolation in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as they were diffused across Eurasia and North America. Her book is the only thorough modern study known to me. It places the subject on a new footing and deserves a wide readership. --Professor Peregrine Horden, Royal Holloway, University of London Product Description Devastating epidemics of untreatable smallpox caused not only deaths but dire disfigurements of face and body as well as one third of all blindness. In the 20th century mortality was estimated at 300 million up to 1978, the year it was proclaimed to be eradicated. Historically, the fact has been overlooked, often forgotten, that the preventative practice of variolation for smallpox was widely adopted internationally during the 18th century and was the precursor to refinement as cowpox vaccination. Never previously traced was the extensive global adoption of the technique or the impetus for this transmission and how, in these countries of its adoption, variolation was the prime mover for a national concept of public health with the establishment of free institutions. The global adoption of the first invasive medical prophylaxis for any disease, the origin of immunity, deserves its place in history.