The smallpox epidemics of 1782 and 1801-03 in New Granada are described in detail here, focusing primarily on Santa Fe de Bogotá and other major cities and towns and on the introduction of smallpox vaccine in 1804 by José Salvany of the Balmis-Salvany expedition. Marcelo Frías Núñez discusses the outbreaks of the disease in the context of local conditions, hygiene, medical practice, and the lack of qualified individuals to take care of the sick. Doctors were few in New Granada, where there was no medical school; and those who did practice did so primarily at the service of the upper sectors of society.
Although medical knowledge and curative methods were very limited, some practices that physicians supervised, such as preventive hygiene, isolation, and appropriate diet, may have helped the well-to-do populations they served. José Celestino Mutis was a distinguished scientist as well as a doctor who played an important role during both epidemics, devising methods of prevention through isolation, carrying out the inoculation of the public in the 1800s, and devising some effective means of care for the stricken.
The 1782 epidemic killed an estimated 3,000 to 7,000 people in the city of Santa Fe. The next one, between 1801 and 1803, took a toll of 329 to 331. The lower numbers, says Frías, were indicative of advances in public health measures, such as setting up hospitals, more effective means of isolation, and inoculation, all of which he describes in great detail and compares to earlier approaches. We suspect, on the basis of our research in Sabana de Bogotá communities, that as a result of the widespread and virulent smallpox epidemic that had occurred only 20 years earlier, local populations acquired some degree of natural immunity that contributed, along with the more systematic preventive and isolation measures in 1801-3, to the lower death rates. Frías analyzes the vaccination campaign that began in 1804, pointing out the crown’s efforts to deal with a disease it considered a major plague. He also includes in the appendixes five important documents regarding measures taken to preserve vaccine in 1805.
To complement Frías’ monograph, future work on smallpox, as well as on disease in general in New Granada, needs to focus on the rural areas, where health care was even less available than in the cities and death rates often proportionately higher than in urban centers. Frías’ work is solid, provides new information on the period, and is based on primary sources in Spain and Colombia as well as a good number of mostly reliable secondary sources. The book is clearly written, and makes a very valuable contribution to the study of smallpox in New Granada and the Americas.
