VACCINATION IN NAPOLEONIC ITALY

Agli abitanti del dipartimento dell’Ombrone proclama del Comitato Centrale di Vaccina sedente in Siena. Abitanti del dipartimento dell’Ombrone. Una insigne utilissima scoperta per l’umanità, sopra tutte quelle fatte nel secolo decimottavo …

Siena, Onorato Porri, 1808.

Printed broadside (475 x 350 mm), 60 lines of text; three small pinholes, creases from folding; manuscript subscription at foot of Sestilio Romanelli Donzello dated 1809; ‘Buonconvento’ written in ink and ‘114 Sienne’ stamped in red to blank verso; a good copy.

£650

Approximately:
US $841€774

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Agli abitanti del dipartimento dell’Ombrone proclama del Comitato Centrale di Vaccina sedente in Siena. Abitanti del dipartimento dell’Ombrone. Una insigne utilissima scoperta per l’umanità, sopra tutte quelle fatte nel secolo decimottavo …

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A seemingly unrecorded broadside promoting smallpox vaccination, issued in the short-lived Italian department of Ombrone under the First French Empire by the Central Vaccination Committee in Siena.

The text opens by describing the smallpox vaccine as the greatest discovery for humanity of the eighteenth century, acknowledged ‘by the greatest monarchs, the most zealous magistrates, academies, scholars of the most cultured nations, and all those who promote the public good’ (trans.). By saving ‘the lives of so many innocent people in their prime’, it is a boon to parents, the nation, agriculture, and the arts.

The Central Vaccination Committee hereby decrees that the smallpox vaccine should be made freely available to anyone wanting it; that supplies will be made available to government authorised inoculators; and that the government will issue free, clear, and easy instructions for those administering the vaccine, with illustrations of the development of smallpox pustules, as well as advice on containing outbreaks of the disease. The Committee also promises rewards to those who have helped administer the vaccine, and encourages ‘affectionate fathers, tender and sensitive mothers’ to vaccinate their children.

The department of Ombrone, with Siena as its capital, was formed in 1808 following the annexation of Tuscany by the French, lasting only until Napoleon’s defeat in 1814. The Italian Ange Gandolfo, whose name appears here, served as prefect. As promised in the text, the Sienese printer Onorato Porri issued Istruzione sul metodo d’inoculare il vaiolo vaccino in 1809. The note on the verso and the pinholes at the head and foot suggest that this copy was likely displayed in the town of Buonconvento, sixteen miles south of Siena.

No copies traced on OCLC or OPAC SBN.

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