Article ID: CBB945893396

The Cowpox Controversy: Memory and the Politics of Public Health in Cuba (2018)

unapi

Vaccination played an important role in the formation of a national consciousness in Cuba, and vaccination’s earliest promoters dominate nationalist narratives of medical achievement on the island. This article investigates the intense hostility exhibited by the creole medical elite toward a pivotal figure in the history of smallpox vaccination in Cuba, Spanish physician Dr. Vicente Ferrer (1823–83), the first in the Americas to mass produce smallpox vaccine using calf vaccinifiers. I argue that anger and mistrust of both Ferrer and his innovatory vaccine production technology originated in the relationship between medical politics and cultural identity in late nineteenth-century Cuba. By the late nineteenth century, smallpox vaccination was linked to glorified memories of a Cuban creole-led vaccination program and a disinterested medical profession. Both Ferrer and his private institution for the mass production of “cowpox” became associated with destructive changes in public health, challenging cultural narratives and regional power structures.

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Authors & Contributors
Antonio Reguera Teba
Paolo Gerbaldo
Raffaele Domenici
Sordoni, Valentina
Munno, Cristina
Wehrman, Andrew
Concepts
Vaccines; vaccination
Smallpox
Public health
Medicine
Medicine and politics
Medicine and society
Time Periods
19th century
18th century
20th century, early
20th century
Meiji period (Japan, 1868-1910)
17th century
Places
Cuba
Italy
England
United States
Piedmont
Myanmar (Burma)
Institutions
Catholic University of Ireland (Dublin)
Royal Belfast Academical Institution
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