Variolation, Vaccination and Popular Resistance in Early Colonial South India
نویسنده
چکیده
The campaigns to prevent smallpox in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are commonly understood as the first attempts of large-scale state-sponsored medical intervention in society as such. 1 Before the discovery of the cowpox vaccine inoculation with variolous matterÐknown as variolationÐwas the most widespread preventive against the disease. This practice was well established in parts of Asia and introduced to Europe by Mary Wortley Montagu from Constantinople in 1721. 2 While variolation achieved some popu-larityÐparticularly in BritainÐEdward Jenner's discovery of the cowpox vaccine in 1796 intensified the efforts to combat smallpox, and vaccination was introduced to large parts of the world within a few years. Although the spread of immunization against smallpox is commonly described as highly successful, the campaigns also represented an early encounter between an elitist state-sponsored medicine and various forms of popular resistance. 3 In India the notion of popular resistance to smallpox prevention took a particular turn because variolation was well established in some regionsÐmost notably BengalÐand here came to represent a rival and not obviously inferior practice to vaccination. 4 Based on the study of such regions, the history of smallpox prevention in colonial India is often seen as consisting of two phases. Initially, the British looked with sympathy and even admiration on thè`popular'' Indian practice of variolation, but after the advent of vaccination they grew increasingly hostile and by the mid-nineteenth century variolation was described as``a murderous trade''. 5 In this article I offer a study of smallpox prevention in early colonial south India, the Madras Presidency; one of the regions where variolation was virtually unknown. This again altered the context in which popular reactions to smallpox prevention were articulated. Most notably, the campaign against smallpox in south India began as a deliberate attempt to introduce and promote variolation. Research for this article was conducted with financial support from The Danish Research Council for the Humanities. I am particularly grateful to Clare Hall College, Cambridge, for granting me a three-month visiting fellowship in 2001, and to the staff at the Tamil Nadu State Archives in Chennai for friendly advice. `The history of smallpox vaccination in Germany: a first step in the medicalization of the general public', J. contemp. Hist., 1985, 20: 617±35, p. 617. 2 While variolation might have been practised on the fringes of European society, it was perceived as an``Eastern'' practice in the eighteenth century. For references to long-standing variolation in Wales …
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ورودعنوان ژورنال:
- Medical History
دوره 48 شماره
صفحات -
تاریخ انتشار 2004