The Balmis Expedition was a three year mission to the Americas

Americas

The Americas, or America , are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World. In English, the plural form the Americas is often used to refer to the landmasses of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions, while the singular form America is primarily...

 led by Dr Francisco Javier de Balmis

Francisco Javier de Balmis

Francisco Javier de Balmis was a Spanish physician who headed an 1804 expedition to Spanish America to vaccinate the populations against smallpox....

 with the aim of giving thousands the smallpox vaccine

Smallpox vaccine

The smallpox vaccine was the first successful vaccine to be developed. The process of vaccination was discovered by Edward Jenner in 1796, who acted upon his observation that milkmaids who caught the cowpox virus did not catch smallpox...

. He set off from La Coruña on 30 November 1803. It may be considered the first international health-care expedition in history.

King Charles IV of Spain

Charles IV of Spain

Charles IV was King of Spain from 14 December 1788 until his abdication on 19 March 1808.-Early life:...

 supported his royal doctor Balmis, since his daughter María Luísa had suffered the illness.
The expedition occurred on the Maria Pita

Maria Pita

María Mayor Fernández de Cámara y Pita , known as María Pita, was a Spanish heroine of the defense of Corunna in 1589 against the English Armada.-Biography:María Pita was married four times and had two children...

ship and carried 22 orphan boys (8 to 10 years old) as successive carriers in vivo

In vivo

In vivo is experimentation using a whole, living organism as opposed to a partial or dead organism, or an in vitro controlled environment. Animal testing and clinical trials are two forms of in vivo research...

of the vaccine, Balmis, a deputy surgeon, two assistants, two first-aid practitioners, three nurses, and Isabel López de Gandalia, the rectoress of Casa de Expósitos a La Coruña orphanage.

The course

The mission took the vaccine

Vaccine

A vaccine is a biological preparation that improves immunity to a particular disease. A vaccine typically contains an agent that resembles a disease-causing microorganism, and is often made from weakened or killed forms of the microbe or its toxins...

 to the Canary Islands

Canary Islands

The Canary Islands , also known as the Canaries , is a Spanish archipelago located just off the northwest coast of mainland Africa, 100 km west of the border between Morocco and the Western Sahara. The Canaries are a Spanish autonomous community and an outermost region of the European Union...

, Colombia

Colombia

Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...

, Ecuador

Ecuador

Ecuador , officially the Republic of Ecuador is a representative democratic republic in South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and by the Pacific Ocean to the west. It is one of only two countries in South America, along with Chile, that do not have a border...

, Peru

Peru

Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....

, Mexico

Mexico

The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

, the Philippines

Philippines

The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...

 and China

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

. 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.

Puerto Rico

The local population was already inoculated with a vaccine carried from the Danish colony Saint Thomas

Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands

Saint Thomas is an island in the Caribbean Sea and with the islands of Saint John, Saint Croix, and Water Island a county and constituent district of the United States Virgin Islands , an unincorporated territory of the United States. Located on the island is the territorial capital and port of...

.

Venezuela

The expedition divided at La Guayra.

• José Salvany, the deputy surgeon, went toward today's Colombia and the Viceroyalty of Peru
  Viceroyalty of Peru
  Created in 1542, the Viceroyalty of Peru was a Spanish colonial administrative district that originally contained most of Spanish-ruled South America, governed from the capital of Lima...
  
   (Venezuela, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, and Bolivia). They took seven years and the toils of the voyage brought death to Salvany (Cochabamba
  Cochabamba
  Cochabamba is a city in central Bolivia, located in a valley bearing the same name in the Andes mountain range. It is the capital of the Cochabamba Department and is the fourth largest city in Bolivia with an urban population of 608,276 and a metropolitan population of more than 1,000,000 people...
  
  , 1810).
• Balmis went to Caracas and later to Havana
  Havana
  Havana is the capital city, province, major port, and leading commercial centre of Cuba. The city proper has a population of 2.1 million inhabitants, and it spans a total of — making it the largest city in the Caribbean region, and the most populous...
  
  . The local poet Andrés Bello
  Andrés Bello
  Andrés de Jesús María y José Bello López was a Venezuelan humanist, poet, lawmaker, philosopher, educator and philologist, whose political and literary works constitute an important part of Spanish American culture...
  
   wrote an ode to Balmis.

Mexico (1805)

In Mexico, Balmis took 25 orphans to maintain the vaccine during the crossing of the Pacific.

Philippines

They received help from the church. Balmis sent most of the expedition back to Mexico while he went on to China.

Return

On his way back to Spain, Balmis convinced the authorities of Saint Helena

Saint Helena

Saint Helena , named after St Helena of Constantinople, is an island of volcanic origin in the South Atlantic Ocean. It is part of the British overseas territory of Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha which also includes Ascension Island and the islands of Tristan da Cunha...

 (1806) to take the vaccine.

The discoverer of the vaccine Edward Jenner

Edward Jenner

Edward Anthony Jenner was an English scientist who studied his natural surroundings in Berkeley, Gloucestershire...

 himself wrote "I don’t imagine the annals of history furnish an example of philanthropy so noble, so extensive as this.”

Fictional account

Julia Alvarez

Julia Álvarez

Julia Alvarez is a Dominican-American poet, novelist, and essayist. Born in New York of Dominican descent, she spent the first ten years of her childhood in the Dominican Republic, until her father's involvement in a political rebellion forced her family to flee the country.Alvarez rose to...

 wrote a fictional account of the expedition from the perspective of its only female member in Saving the World.

External links

• The Balmis-Salvany Smallpox Expedition: The First Public Health Vaccination Campaign in South America
• En el nombre de los Niños. Real expedición Filantrópica de la Vacuna 1803-1806. Spanish language PDF
  Portable Document Format
  Portable Document Format is an open standard for document exchange. This file format, created by Adobe Systems in 1993, is used for representing documents in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems....
  
  book by the Spanish Pediatry Association.
• An account of the expedition