The history of smallpox vaccination in Italy: the vaccination campaign in the Ligurian Republic between the end of the Ancien Regime and the advent of the Napoleonic period (1797-1805)

In 1798, Edward Jenner publicized his technique of smallpox vaccination, thus making obsolete what had been for centuries the most effective weapon against smallpox: variolation. News of this sensational breakthrough spread quickly throughout Europe, reaching Italy, and particularly Genoa, then the capital of the Ligurian Republic (1797-1805). Indeed, the first vaccinations in Italy were carried out in Genoa, and several doctors there, first individually and then collectively (within the “Medical Emulation Society”), went on to implement and spread the practice of vaccination. Although it was only with the annexation of Liguria to the French Empire that the practice became more structured and more widely implemented, this period still marked an extremely prolific time for medical science in the Genoa area.