John Freind: physician, chemist, Jacobite, and friend of Voltaire's

John Freind (1675/76-1728) achieved distinction in several walks of life, first as a classical scholar, then as a physician and as a chemist who advocated Newtonian philosophy. His clinical practice was generally conservative and he was against the newly introduced practice of inoculating the smallpox. His principles were Tory and High Church; his loyalty to the house of Stuart involved him in the Jacobite plot of 1722, and a spell in the Tower of London. His money was part of the foundation of Dr Lee's benefaction to Christ Church, which still survives in name in scientific posts in Oxford. He was among the circle of friends that Voltaire formed during his two-year stay in England and, 50 years later, Voltaire took him and his son as the principal characters in a conte philosophique defending a deistic attitude against both atheism and revealed religion.

The introduction of variolation ‘A La Turca’ to the West by Lady Mary Montagu and Turkey's contribution to this

AIMS

This study deals with the history of variolation as the oldest immunization method to be transferred from East to West, with emphasis on Turkey's role in this transmission.

SCOPE

The technique of variolation was used by various ancient civilizations such as those in India, Tibet and many other parts of Asia. It was based on the subcutaneous inoculation of attenuated pustule material in patients. The method was brought to Anatolia by the Seljuks through the Caucasus and was widely used by the Ottomans for a long period of time. The West learned of this method for the first time mainly through the writings of Dr. Timoni and Lady Mary W. Montagu in the 18th century. Lady Montagu not only wrote letters explaining this method, but also worked actively to introduce it in Europe.

CONCLUSION

Since variolation carried the risk of infection, it was replaced by a safer method called vaccination discovered by Jenner (1789), which led to the eradication of smallpox from the world. Despite the fact that vaccination ultimately superseded variolation in Western medical practice, Turkey played a key role as a bridge between civilizations in the transfer of this earlier treatment method to the West.

Imagining inoculation: Smallpox, the body, and social relations of healing in the eighteenth century

People in colonial New York adopted inoculation for smallpox as quickly and as thoroughly as did people anywhere in the British Atlantic world. Such adoption was not dependent upon the authority of formal medicine, but rather upon everyday epistemology. Inoculation became accepted as local knowledge because ordinary New Yorkers integrated it imaginatively into common ideas about the body and disease, reconceptualized its theological meaning, and incorporated it into familiar social relations of healing.

The History Of Vaccines And Immunization: Familiar Patterns, New Challenges

Human beings have benefited from vaccines for more than two centuries. Yet the pathway to effective vaccines has been neither neat nor direct. This paper explores the history of vaccines and immunization, beginning with Edward Jenner's creation of the world's first vaccine for smallpox in the 1790s. We then demonstrate that many of the issues salient in Jenner's era-such as the need for secure funding mechanisms, streamlined manufacturing and safety concerns, and deep-seated public fears of inoculating agents-have frequently reappeared and have often dominated vaccine policies. We suggest that historical awareness can help inform viable long-term solutions to contemporary problems with vaccine research, production, and supply.

[A comparative study on Inoculation in China and Japan]

There are two ways of planting smallpox. One is inoculation and the other is vaccination. Chinese inoculation was invented in China and was in use in the country up to the mid-20 th century. Inoculation in Japan was brought from China in 1744, and it produced fairly good results until the mid-19th century, when vaccination was introduced to the country and spread rapidly. Inoculation then was forgotten almost completed, despite the satisfactory result it had produced. Undoubtedly, however, inoculation affected the rapid spread of vaccination in Japan. Looking back on the historical process of inoculation, both in China and Japan, I looked into the difference in the way inoculation has been evaluated in the two countries. There are two big differences; one technical and the other methodological. First there is a difference in the way the poison was diluted, and in the choice of the sprout, which led to the difference in effectiveness and safety of inoculation. Secondly, the government supported inoculation and spread it actively in China. In Japan, on the contrary, each domain (han) promoted vaccination, influenced by the trend of the time to accept Western culture positively.

[First attempts at smallpox engrafting (variolation) in the18th-century in Bologna]

In Bologna in the mid 18th century some brilliant doctors were among the first in Italy to carry out smallpox engrafting (variolation), obtaining interesting results. Academics and Scientific Establishment censured the activities of these experimenters, such that one of them had to continue his work in Padova, where he went to teach and continued the practice of variolation. However, Bologna's Curia pronounced a positive theological judgement on such experiments. Forty years later, in 1801, Bologna's Senate called upon Luigi Sacco to organize campaigns to vaccinate and thereby smallpox infection. Bologna had been scourged by a new epidemic that year. What happened in Bologna during the 18th century regarding scientific research reflected the demographic, economic and political situation that the city was experiencing. This trend was to come to an end only with the unification of Italy.

A brief history of the prevention of infectious diseases by immunisations

Infectious diseases have always been a terrible scourge for humans. The appearance of these plagues, as they were called without distinction, was generally connected to various conditions: asters, climatic changes or religious reasons. The concept of contagious, and then infectious, diseases came slowly. Variolation, i.e. transmission of 'virulent' matter to induce a natural disease and the immunity against it, was brought from Constantinople to England by Lady Montague, in 1721. This 'variolation' technique was also often performed in veterinary medicine against diseases like sheep-pox or pleuropneumonia. As 'vaccination' is the term generally accepted for 'immunisation', variolation can be the word designating such a technique. The second period of the history of immunisation began, in 1880, with the studies of Pasteur and his collaborators. A great number of bacterial vaccines were developed: dead, live but attenuated or only parts of pathogens. The viruses were produced in animals, then in eggs and at last, in tissue cultures. Second generation vaccines appeared with genetic engineering: recombinant vaccines, vector vaccines, nucleic acids vaccines, and markers vaccines, among others. These novel technologies can permit the development of new ones and improve the quality of the vaccines already existing.

[The Tuberculosis outbreak due to whooping cough inoculation at Iwagasaki-machi in 1949]

Due to pertussis inoculation, 65 infants were accidentally infected by tuberculosis in Iwagasaki-machi, Miyagi Prefecture in 1949. The GHQ/SCAP record on Tuberculosis in Iwagasaki documented the details of this affair and the clinical reports about the victims, and they were the first to be treated by Streptomycine in Japan. The following three causes of mycobacterium tuberculosis contamination due to pertussis vaccine were considered, but no conclusive solution was decided. 1) Adulteration by manufacturer. 2) Carelessness of doctor. 3) Adulteration by a third person for unknown reason. The Japanese official records do not provide extensive information about it, except for the medical articles of Kosankinkenkyuzasshi (Sendai). The parents of the 65 victims, including 2 dead infants, had accused the governmental official administrator of the responsibility for reparation of the accidental inoculation, but they dropped the case against the government 5 years later. There is no detailed record about the judicial aspects of this incident.

[The history of polio in Brazil and its control through immunization]

The article analyzes the scientific and political discussions and activities surrounding the problem of polio in Brazil during the twentieth century. It examines the issues that shaped disease control policy and led to the 1980 introduction of National Vaccination Days.

[Brazil's national immunization program: origins and development]

The article discusses the central aspects of the trajectory of the National Immunization Program as regards the dynamics of sectoral policy. Heir to successful experiences of the past yet conceived at an entirely different moment, the Program followed the triumphant Campaign to Eradicate Smallpox and inaugurated a new phase in the history of public policy in the field of prevention. Under one sole command, the Program came to articulate a set of practices that had previously been spread across a number of government agencies and jurisdictions. The article examines the process by which the Program was conceived, structured, and developed within government health policy, and also underscores the main determinants of this policy, its institutional actors, and the political and ideological conflicts born of its implementation, whose success was an important component in the structuring of a vaccine market in Brazil.

[Producing an immunizing agent: images from the production of a yellow fever vaccine]

Through analysis of a set of photographs on the production of a yellow fever vaccine in Brazil, the article discusses the use of images as a research source in the history of medicine and public health. part of a historical archive belonging to the Fundação Rockefeller, stored at the Casa de Oswaldo Cruz/Fiocruz the photographs were produced between the 1930s and 1940s by the Fundação Rockefeller and Brazil's National Yellow Fever Service, institutions then responsible for research and control of the disease in Brazil. The article raises some questions generally posed by those who employ images as sources or objects of interpretation in the production of historical knowledge, and also points to the theoretical, conceptual, and methodological aspects involved in this process of analyzing images. It goes on to interpret these photographs from the beginning of the yellow fever vaccine.

[Centenary of the Health Council of the Netherlands. IV. Infectious diseases]

Many advisory reports of the Health Council of the Netherlands in the past century have dealt, directly or indirectly, with infectious diseases. One example is vaccination against smallpox. At the start of the last century, advice on this subject was important: initially, vaccination was compulsory by law, but people became increasingly aware of the associated side effects. A second example is immunisation against acute anterior poliomyelitis, which became a reality during the fifties. The advice also contained a discussion of which vaccine should be chosen: the inactivated 'dead' (Salk) form or the attenuated 'live' form (Sabin). Due to sound national organisation and associated logistics, a high level of vaccination was (and still is) achieved and the clinical disease known as polio disappeared from the Netherlands. Food-borne infections form the third example. The effect of the advice published by the Council on this subject (from 1960 onwards) has been limited, for a large part due to the significant economic consequences of the proposals for beef farming. The developments in the field of infectious diseases, immunology and vaccinology, together with social developments make it likely that in the coming years the Council will also frequently be asked for advice in the field of infectious diseases and the fight against them.

Emil von Behring and serum therapy

Emil von Behring is the father of serum therapy. We present an overview of the development of this important tool in the treatment of diphtheria. In a historical context Behring's work reflects the scientific spirit of fin de siècle Berlin.