To love and suffer is ultimately the only way to live fully and with dignity.
— Francisco José Balmis
Today, we talk about the true hero of the Royal Philanthropic Expedition of the Vaccine, who, like so many others, is inexplicably ignored by us. It seems that we Spaniards feel immense embarrassment in admitting that the history of humanity would be different if Spain had not existed.
At the end of the 18th century, the deadliest virus known to humanity, smallpox, ravaged Europe and the New World. In England, a rural doctor, Edward Jenner, observed that milkmaids who contracted a mild disease called cowpox, transmitted by cows, did not get smallpox.
In 1796, Jenner inoculated a boy with pus from a milkmaid and, weeks later, injected the boy with the smallpox virus, but he did not get sick; he was immune.
In Europe, where 400,000 people died each year from the infection, hope was born. In the West Indies, millions of indigenous people were dead or infected, but how could the life-saving vaccine be transported there in good condition? The two-month sea journey and the tropical climate's rigors made its preservation very difficult.
It would be a man of unbreakable will, the Spanish doctor Francisco Javier Balmis, who would find the answer that would save hundreds of lives from the West Indies to the doors of China.
Edward Jenner expressed his astonishment, pride, and satisfaction at the success of the Royal Philanthropic Expedition of the Vaccine, led by Francisco Javier de Balmis, seeing how his discovery was being used to save lives globally.
But who was that doctor Balmis, whose figure remains unjustly overshadowed today?
Francisco Javier was born in Alicante on December 2, 1753, in what was called Plaza de la Fruta, behind the Town Hall. He was the son and grandson of barber-surgeons. He married Josefina Mataseca and had no children, although his life was always associated with children.
Balmis's academic and professional record shows a man dedicated to science. At 17, he became a surgical practitioner at the Military Hospital of Alicante, and at 25, he obtained his degree in Surgery and Algebra from the University of Valencia. At 26, he joined the Army, where he was soon promoted to surgeon. At 33, he was appointed chief surgeon of the Amor de Dios Military Hospital in Mexico. At 42, he became the chamber surgeon of Charles IV and practiced Jenner's vaccination techniques in Madrid.
Now, let's know Balmis as a man of action. At 22, he volunteered for the Algiers campaign, which allowed him to gain experience in military medicine, both in battlefield sanitary conditions and in managing epidemics in wartime situations.
In 1781, at the age of 28, he traveled to America, joining the Zamora regiment in a convoy to aid the American rebels. He temporarily left the army and traveled through the Viceroyalty of New Spain to study the healing properties of two plants: agave and begonia, used by shamans to cure venereal diseases. In Mexico, he began using his agave and begonia therapy in hospitals, without the magical elements included by the shamans. Months later, he returned to Spain loaded with 1,000 kilos of agave and 345 kilos of begonia, along with live American plants for the Madrid Botanical Garden.
In the early 19th century, King Charles IV, who suffered the effects of smallpox in his own family, decided to organize an expedition to stop the epidemics ravaging the indigenous population of the New World and the Philippines. Who better than Dr. Balmis to lead the expedition, given his profound knowledge of those lands and people and his extensive practice in Jenner's vaccination technique?
We now know the two main heroes, though not the only ones, of one of the most grandiose humanitarian feats in human history: the Royal Philanthropic Expedition of the Vaccine.
Gonzalo FC
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