The 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 La Coruña on 30 November 1803. It may be considered the first international health-care expedition in history.[1][2]
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 a La Coruña orphanage.[3]
Contents |
The mission took the vaccine to the Canary Islands, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Mexico, the Philippines and China.[4] 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.
The local population was already inoculated with a vaccine carried from the Danish colony Saint Thomas.
The expedition divided at La Guayra.
In Mexico, Balmis took 25 orphans to maintain the vaccine during the crossing of the Pacific.
They received help from the church. Balmis sent most of the expedition back to Mexico while he went on to China.
Balmis landed on Macau and went also to Canton.
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.”
Julia Alvarez wrote a fictional account of the expedition from the perspective of its only female member in Saving the World.