Pictures from the Past of the Healing Arts / Orvostörténeti Közlemények – Supplementum 18-19. (Budapest, 2000)

Pictures from the Past of the Healing Arts - Guide to the Exhibition

from 1776 indicated to be a special recognition mark that the wanted man had not been pock-marked. 'Apart from bitter tears no efficacious remedy had been known in Europe

' — remarked Sámuel Várađi in 1802. It is often suggested, however, that certain forms of variolation was known in China already in the 11th century, e.g. pulverized smallpox crust blown into the healthy child's nose. This practice was then used by merchants of the African slave trade, who tried to preserve the beauty of the captured women. The method of direct infection by the same virus that attacks human beings was introduced into Europe at the beginning of the 18th century. Though it remained rather dangerous it offered the possibility that by a mild form of the disease a consequent immunity could be probably maintained. In 1713-16 two papers describing a practice widely known at Constantinople were read before the Royal Society in London by two Greek physicians from Venice, by Emanuele Timoni and Giacomo Pylarino (Giacomo Pilarino di Ccfalonia) (1659-1718), but it attracted little attention. Both of these doctors had studied at Padua, travelled and worked thoroughly in the Eastern Mediterranean. The method they communicated, had been developed in particular around the Caspian, probably by Armenians. Timoni published his experiences, acquired in Constantinople, in his História variolarum quae per institutionem excitantur (Constantinople 1713) and a few years later in Europe: Tractatus de nova ... variolas per transmutationem excitandi methodo (Leyđeñ 1721). Pylarino's Nova et tuta variolae excitandi per transplantationem metĥódus appeared in Venice 1715, and was reissued in Niirembcr 1717. The first data on this type of variolation in Hungary are dated from 1717 when János Adám Raymann (1690-1771), physician of Eperjes (today PrcSov, Slovakia) '... inoculated (his patients) in a method learned from Greek-Armenian merchants...'

. This very method was perceived in England in 1772 when the Princes were inoculated due to the advice of Lady Marry Wort eÿ Montagu (1689-1762), the wife of the British Ambassador to Constantinople. Variolation did not prove to be a practice without any risk. It could not give complete protection, and moreover the patient was exposed to other infections, such as syphilis, which was easily transmitted in the process of variolation. Eventually it was an Englishman, Edward Jenner (1749-1823), pupil of the distinguished Scottish doctor John Hunter (1728-1793), who successfully developed a satisfactory and harmless method in the 1770s and 80s. His discovery of vaccination matured slowly in his mind. First, he established that cow-pox vaccine (variola vaccinae), taken from infected cows can give protection against smallpox. Then he verified that cow-pox actually included two different forms of disease only one of which protected against small-pox. He further ascertained that the true cow-pox only protected when communicated at a particular stage of the disease. He announced the results of his observations and experiments only in 1798 by publishing his Inquiry into the Cause and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae. He had already written a paper on his discovery to the Royal Society a few years ago, but it met harsh opposition. He wrote two more books on the results of his experiments 60