Abstract
Vaccines are the most successful strategy developed in Medicine to prevent and even eradicate the most dreadful epidemic infectious diseases. The history of smallpox vaccination in Naples is quite unique. Although Galbiati established the retro-vaccination (1803) and developed the “calf” lymph vaccine, recognized and implemented since 1864 as the optimal smallpox vaccine in the following hundred years, Naples general population was mainly vaccinated with “human” lymph from abandoned children until 1893. Mini-epidemics of syphilis and serum hepatitis were periodically reported as results of arm-to-arm procedure. The risk of transmission of blood-related pathogens was higher in Naples where >80% of abandoned children, used as repository of cowpox virus, were dying in their first year of life. Recent vaccinology standards finally eliminated the risk of adventitious contaminating pathogens. Implementation of hepatitis B vaccination since 1991 eventually contributed to current HBV prevalence in Campania region <1%, within the range of the European Countries.
Highlights
Vaccines are the most successful strategy developed in Medicine to prevent and even eradicate the most dreadful epidemic infectious diseases
The further critical scientific achievements were the observation by John Fewster (1765) that bovine cowpox was able to prevent human smallpox [3] and the standardization (1798) of the cowpox vaccination by Edward Jenner [4]
Buonaguro et al Journal of Translational Medicine (2015) 13:33 to expand the production of vaccine, the recovery of pathogenicity lost in the human transfer, and mainly the removal of human contaminating pathogens not transferred to cows [8,9]
Summary
Vaccines are the most successful strategy developed in Medicine to prevent and even eradicate the most dreadful epidemic infectious diseases. The history of smallpox prevention in Southern Italy is very peculiar, being characterized by the development and implementation of the first calf lymph vaccine and by a late banning of the arm to arm vaccination.
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