Balmis Expedition

Balmis Expedition was a three year mission to the Americas led by Dr Francisco Javier de Balmis with the aim of giving thousands the smallpox vaccine. He set off from A Coruña on 30 November 1803. It may be considered the first international sanitary expedition in history¹.

King Charles IV of Spain supported his royal doctor Balmis, since his daughter María Luísa had suffered the illness. The expedition occurred on the Maria Pita ship and carried 22 orphan boys (8 to 10 years old) as successive carriers in vivo of the vaccine, Balmis, a deputy surgeon, two assistants, two first-aid practitioners, three nurses, and Isabel López de Gandalia, the rectoress of Casa de Expósitos an A Coruña orphanage².

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The course

The mission took the vaccine to the Canary Islands, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Mexico, the Philippines and China.³ The ship carried also scientific instruments and translations of the Historical and Practical Treatise on the Vaccine by Moreau de Sarthe to be distributed to the local vaccine commissions to be founded.

Puerto Rico

The local population was already inoculated with a vaccine carried from the Danish colony Saint Thomas.

Venezuela

The expedition divided at La Guayra.

• José Salvany, the deputy surgeon, went toward today's Colombia and the Viceroyalty of Peru (Venezuela, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, and Bolivia). They took seven years and the toils of the voyage brought death to Salvany (Cochabamba, 1810).
• Balmis went to Caracas and later to Havana. The local poet Andrés Bello wrote an ode to Balmis.

Mexico (1805)

In Mexico, Balmis took 25 orphans to maintain the vaccine during the crossing of the Pacific.

Philippines

They received help from the church. Balmis dismissed back to Mexico the gross of the expedition and went further to China.

China

Balmis landed on Macau and went also to Canton.

Return

On his way back to Spain, Balmis convinced the authorities of Saint Helena (1806) to take the vaccine.

The discoverer of the vaccine Edward Jenner himself wrote "I don’t imagine the annals of history furnish an example of philanthropy so noble, so extensive as this.”

Fictional account

Julia Alvarez wrote a fictional account of the expedition from the perspective of its only female member in Saving the World.

Notes

1. La Coruña: A progressive city, historical information as part the official web site for the city of La Coruña. Verified availability 2005-03-03.
2. McIntyre, John W.R. MB BS; and Houston, C. Stuart MD (1999). Medicine in Canada: Smallpox and its control in Canada. Canadian Medical Association Journal 161(12), 1543-1547. PMID 10624414.
3. de Romo, Ana Cecilia Rodríguez (1997). Inoculation in the 1799 smallpox epidemic in Mexico: Myth or real solution?. Antilia:Spanish Journal of History of Natural Sciences and Technology.