Advocating Inoculation in the Eighteenth Century

Exemplarity and Quantification

Bibliographic Data

ID4516263
AuthorsAnne M H Eriksen (0000-0001-5243-5207, University of Oslo, corresponding author), Anne Eriksen (0009-0003-5053-3374)
Year2016
Volume29
Issue2
Pages213-239
Publication date2016-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueScience in Context (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0269-8897 • E-ISSN: 1474-0664
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0269889716000028
PMID27171893
OpenAlexW2365681039
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited21

ArgumentSmallpox inoculation was introduced in Europe in the early eighteenth century and has been considered the first mass treatment of disease based on practical use of probability calculations and mathematical tools of computation. The article argues that these new approaches were deeply entangled with other rationalities, most emphatically that of exemplarity. Changes in inoculation methods around mid-century gradually changed the conceptualization of disease, seeing all cases as fundamentally equal, and thus making it more relevant to count them. Arithmetic changed the ways of thinking about smallpox epidemics, but new ways of conceptualizing disease were vital to making it a matter of arithmetic at all. The article investigates what happened when numbers and figures were introduced into medical matters: Who did the figures really concern, and what types of argument were they fitted into? How were numbers transformed into metaphors, and how did quantitative argument work together with arguments from exemplarity

Biology · Conceptualization · Epistemology · Inoculation · Linguistics · Smallpox · Sociology · Vaccination · Engineering · Historical Medical Research and Treatments · Philosophy · Yersinia bacterium, plague, ectoparasites research · Immunology · Virology