Kant and the smallpox inoculation

Abstract

Smallpox was an endemic, very contagious disease which caused a high mortality rate during the age of enlightenment. In order to counter act this epidemic, smallpox inoculation was developed. This technique consisted in the inoculation of infected pus taken from a sick person into a healthy one in order to prevent the risks of natural smallpox infection. It was in this context that a German doctor in charge of inoculation wrote to Kant twice in 1799, and again in 1800, to ask him if inoculation was morally permissible. Kant wrote a draft of an answer, but it was never completed or published during his lifetime. These drafts provide elements of an answer that he nevertheless refused to give explicitly in the Doctrine of Virtue (1797) where the question of the morality of inoculation remained unanswered.