thumb|Expedition by Balmis and his collaborators to America

thumb|Detail of expedition's routes in the Philippines

The Royal Philanthropic Vaccine Expedition (), commonly referred to as the Balmis Expedition, was a Spanish healthcare mission that lasted from 1803 to 1806, led by Dr Francisco Javier de Balmis, which vaccinated hundreds of thousands against smallpox in Spanish America, the Philippines, and China. The vaccine was transported through children: orphaned boys who sailed with the expedition and, for part of the journey, three enslaved girls from Cuba.

Background

Smallpox, a devastating disease that was endemic throughout much of the Old World, decimated the populations of the Americas after it was introduced by the Spanish conquistadors in the 1500s. The medical staff and caretakers for the boys consisted of Balmis, a deputy surgeon, two assistants, two first-aid practitioners, three nurses, and Isabel Zendal Gómez, the rectoress of Casa de Expósitos, an A Coruña orphanage.

The mission took the vaccine to the Canary Islands, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Mexico, the Philippines and China. 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 Venezuelan poet Andrés Bello wrote an ode to Balmis. José Salvany, the deputy surgeon, went toward today's Colombia and the Viceroyalty of Peru (Ecuador, Peru, Chile, and Bolivia). The voyage took seven years and cost Salvany his life, as he died in 1810 in Cochabamba. In New Spain, Balmis took on 25 more orphans to maintain the infection during the crossing of the Pacific. In the Philippines, they received help from the Catholic church, which was initially reluctant until Governor-General Rafael Aguilar made an example by vaccinating his five children. Balmis sent most of the expedition back to New Spain while he went on to China, where he visited Macau and Canton. On his way back to Spain in 1806, Balmis vaccined the population of the British colony of Saint Helena, despite the ongoing Anglo-Spanish War. Jenner himself wrote, "I don't imagine the annals of history furnish an example of philanthropy so noble, so extensive as this."

In 2006, Julia Alvarez wrote Saving the World, a fictional account of the expedition from the perspective of its sole female member.

References

Further reading

  • En el nombre de los Niños. Real expedición Filantrópica de la Vacuna 1803-1806. Spanish language PDF book by the Spanish Pediatry Association.