‘Giusta la benefica intenzione del Re’: the Bourbon Cowpox Vaccination Campaign in Sicily

Abstract

his study starts by contextualising the arm-to-arm, sea-borne, transfer and diffusion of the cowpox vaccine in Sicily in the war conditions of the early 19 th century which led to a new geopolitical configuration of the central Mediterranean – this being reflected in the island’s troubled transition from French occupation to a British protectorate and its subsequent integration in the Kingdom of Two Sicilies. Against this backdrop, the Bourbon monarchy enthusiastically sanctioned Edward Jenner’s cowpox vaccination method and launched it as one of its principal public projects. What follows is an analysis of the intricate links which this mass vaccination campaign came to have with the prevailing state ideology and the power structures of the Regno – with specific reference to Sicily. T