Vaiolo e Lumi. Il dibattito sulla variolizzazione tra medicina e politica.

In the eighteenth century, together with the intellectual movement of the
Enlightenment, a debate arises on smallpox inoculation or variolation: medical-surgical practice in use for centuries among peoples of the Caucasus, Turkey and the Far East as a method of preventing smallpox. Through letters and texts, information circulates throughout Europe. Doctors, naturalists and intellectuals take sides for or against variolation after the King of Great Britain, George I, had officially approved it (1721). In France, partisans of variolation are the illuminists. With Voltaire’s Lettre sur l’inoculation de la petite vérole (Paris 1734) and with the article inoculation (1765) of the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d’Alembert, the philosophes offer an important contribution to smallpox prophylaxis, undertaken as a commitment to the renewal of science, civil progress and the well-being of human society.