The Greatest Medical Mysteries in History

They did not have refrigerators, so they stored vaccines in the bodies of orphans

In 1803, the first international vaccine expedition in human history began.

The goal: to bring smallpox vaccine from Europe to colonies in America.

Problem: No means of cooling or preserving.

The solution: orphaned children

Strider Schleider Putschnik

25/02/2022

Friday, 25 February 2022, 07:33 Updated: 07:49

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In the 18th century the smallpox epidemic raged around the world and claimed high prices per capita - especially in the crowded cities where poor living and hygienic conditions allowed the disease to spread and spread quickly and easily.

In the absence of a drug, the only way of coping developed at that stage to deal with the disease was called variation.

Beautiful name, no?

Sounds so sophisticated.

In practice, what it was like was to smear on people some pus secreted by blisters of smallpox, in the hope that it would make them get a relatively mild illness, and consequently develop immunity to the virus.

But all that changed when Edward Jenner heard a rumor that women who worked as dairies enjoyed a mysterious immunity that apparently stemmed from their exposure to the chickenpox virus - due to their work in cowsheds.

He enlisted the help of milkmaid Sarah Nelmes who came to him for treatment following active chickenpox disease (which was a milder disease than smallpox), took a sample of the virus from her and moved on to the next stage in his experiment.

The next step in his experiment: to infect his gardener's 8-year-old son with chickenpox, then to infect him with smallpox (a celebration of ethical violations, which we have already written about here before if you are interested in reading).

A few stages in the experiment and further ethical anomalies followed, and humanity was privileged to celebrate the development of the first vaccine in its history.

But despite the vaccine, the end of the smallpox epidemic is still not in sight.

Similar to our situation today with the corona plague - even then the virus raged in many countries around the globe and it was necessary to bring the vaccines to distant places.

More on Walla!

Poisoning Unit: Volunteers ate poison, investigators waited to see what would happen

To the full article

Illustration depicting the first smallpox vaccine given by Edward Jenner to his gardener's 8-year-old son (Photo: ShutterStock)

We'll start from the end, maybe?

The eradication of smallpox was a long and ongoing struggle that ended only in 1980, following a global disease eradication program implemented in collaboration with many countries around the world.

It was a joint international effort that lasted over a hundred years, but in its infancy, when the vaccine was still in its infancy, a historic and daring attempt was made to bring vaccines to other countries.

This experience is actually the first international health program in history - and it was called 'The Balmis Expedition'.

In 1803, King Carlos IV of Spain decided to send vaccines to the remote colonies of Spain in the Americas, as well as the medical knowledge and resources necessary for the people of the colonies to start producing vaccines for themselves and establish a local and independent immunization program.

It was an issue particularly close to the heart of King Carlos, who himself contracted smallpox and even lost several members of his family to the plague - including his youngest daughter Maria Theresa.

Problems of logistics and medical ethics

But very quickly the plan to send an immune delegation to America ran aground - the pus of cattle can only survive a few days, while the journey to America is much longer until the samples reach their destination will be useless.

One of the solutions raised was to transport cattle to the colonies and take infected cows as far as the colonies in America.

However this idea was rejected due to the logistical complexity of transporting cattle on this long road at sea.

Only in 1980 were they able to finally eradicate the disease.

Sick of smallpox, New York 1941 (Photo: AP)

But then a much better (and much less moral) idea came up to transport the disease from Europe to colonies in America without jeopardizing the freshness of the specimens - they decided to use orphaned children within live specimens.

Orphans were then plentiful

If there is anything that was abundant in those years almost anywhere in the world - it is orphans.

So finding suitable candidates for the trip was not difficult at all.

On board the Pitta Maria - the ship that sailed to the colonies in America, 22 orphaned children aged 3-9 boarded.

Two of them were infected with smallpox, and during the voyage members of the expedition used the pus secretions from their blisters to infect two more children.

And so on.

This is how the delegation kept live samples of the virus throughout the journey.

In addition to the orphans, the delegation included Dr. Belmis (after whom the delegation was named), two assistants, two first aid specialists, 3 nurses and Isabel Zandel Gomez - the rector of the orphanage from which the human vaccine test tubes came.

A painting depicting the voyage of the ship Pita Maria aboard the Belmis Expedition (Photo: Official Website, Wikimedia Commons)

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When the ship reached its destination, the members of the delegation paid local families to infect their children with smallpox - so that there would always be a living and regular supply of pus and the relatively mild virus, on which the vaccination against smallpox and fatal smallpox could be based.

In this method the delegation brought the vaccine to colonies in the Canary Islands, Ecuador, Colombia, Peru Mexico and later also to the Philippines and even China.

When we read the story of this expedition today with modern eyes, it is difficult not to raise an eyebrow at the controversial decisions to conduct experiments on the helpless and the weakest links in society at the time - orphaned children.

And really, there is no way to present the decision to intentionally infect children with the virus and then send them to a distant continent on a long and uncertain journey across the seas, when they are sick and not feeling well, just to serve as walking test tubes for vaccine samples.

But it worked.

The Belmis expedition apparently saved more lives than can be counted.

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• Smallpox

• An epidemic

• medical history

• Vaccines