Corona Daily 133: The Balmis Expedition

P.S. By way of postscript to yesterday’s piece, all vaccine-afflicted people mentioned in it are miraculously back to normal today. The immense readers’ response, apart from good wishes, mentioned their own post-vaccine experiences that ranged from no effect to becoming vegetables for a day or two. No reader has reported two bad shots so far. One kind reader has sent a link that says reactions after the second dose of AstraZeneca/Oxford’s are milder. Thanks to all.

For the record, my vaccine after-effects began 12 hours after the shot, lasted for 36 hours (i.e., 48 hours from the shot). In our domestic experiment, my wife and brother took Dolo (paracetamol tablets), I didn’t take any. That made no difference whatsoever (except to the Dolo sales). For those waiting for their first shot, I suggest budgeting 48 hours of inactivity after it.

*****  

A year ago, I wrote about Smallpox, one of the deadliest viruses that killed eight European kings and queens. In the sixteenth century, Spain actually sent an infected African slave to spread smallpox to defeat the Aztec and Inca empires. In today’s world, we would call it bioterrorism. The Aztec population of 26 million before the Spanish conquest (1520) was reduced to 1.6 million (1620). (If conspiracy theorists were to study that history, they may believe China did the same in 2020 to defeat America and Europe.)

In 1797, Edward Jenner, the English scientist, used pus from blisters due to cowpox, a relatively minor infectious disease, to offer immunity against smallpox. Jenner coined the term vaccine from “vacca”, Latin for cow.

King Carlos IV was the king of Spain then. His brother and sister-in-law had succumbed to smallpox. It was a difficult time for Europe. Napoleon had invaded Spain; Nelson had defeated French and Spanish armies at Trafalgar. Still, the compassionate Spanish King decided to send a warship to vaccinate people from different continents for smallpox.

But how to carry the live virus around the world to vaccinate millions? We must remember this was a time when there was no refrigeration, no sterilization, and no concept of asepsis. A decision was made to bring to the project 22 orphaned children, aged between eight and ten. In November 1803, Maria Pita, a warship sailed on its global expedition. It was led by Francisco Xavier de Balmis, an enthusiastic physician, world traveller and one who had translated a book on vaccines in Spanish.

Before the warship sailed, Balmis infected two orphans with cowpox. By passing of vesicle fluid from the skin of one child to another, it was decided to form a living transmission chain. Over the next four years, the infection was kept alive by carefully transferring it from boy to boy, in the process inoculating hundreds of thousands of people from Peru to Philippines.   

In February 1805, when the ship planned to leave Mexico for Philippines, 25 orphaned Mexican children were recruited as human carriers. The orphaned children from Spain stayed back in Mexico.

The orphan story tells us about a basic truth. Creating vaccines is a job for biology, and biology requires living systems. That is why some flu vaccines are cultivated in eggs.

*****

The territory covered by the Balmis expedition was not only vast, but brutally harsh, with dense jungles, mountains, and uncharted rivers. They encountered political rivalry, tribal attacks, cultural beliefs preventing vaccination attempts. The mission took the vaccine to the Canary islands, Columbia, Ecuador, Peru, Mexico, the Philippines and China.

King Carlos IV’s vaccination campaign was visionary, launched 150 years before the formation of the WHO. Balmis expedition was successful due to the heroic perseverance and dedication of those who took part in it, the creativity to use human carriers, and the orphans who served humanity in this way. In A Coruna, a Spanish city, a monument (picture above) is built in honour of the orphan children who took part in the expedition.

Ravi