Paul Ramírez. Enlightened Immunity

Enlightened Immunity: Mexico’s Experiments with Disease Prevention in the Age of Reason is a stellar addition to the history of medicine in Mexico and Latin America. Paul Ramírez locates the work within “the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century transition in medical techniques, theories, and policies within a backstory of epidemic management in colonial Mexico” (18). Colonial officials sought to monitor both the introduction of enlightened medical knowledge and how this knowledge should be adapted to the Mexican environment. Particularly enlightening is the central role of the Catholic Church and clerics during epidemics and the vaccination campaigns. Throughout, the author painstakingly traces the complex—and often contradictory—popular responses to state efforts to control epidemics and to vaccinate the populace. Ramírez divides the work into two sections, “Contagion” and “Immunization,” that roughly correspond to the periods before and after the introduction of Edward Jenner’s smallpox vaccine and the Royal Philanthropic Vaccination Expedition (1803–1806). An introduction provides an intricate primer to Enlightened Immunity; a conclusion includes speculation about the value of the work to contemporary public health. Each section has three chapters, the first subtitled “The Dramaturgy of Colonial Epidemics,” the second “The Nature of Medicine and the Fashion of Science,” and the third “Preventing Smallpox, 1796–1798.” The section on immunization focuses upon the domestication of the technologies of smallpox vaccination, the so-called “republics of vaccinators” during the Mexican War for Independence, and an oral history of resistance to and acceptance of vaccination efforts.

Disease · Immune system · Immunity · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Immunology · Internal Medicine · Medicine · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies · Yersinia bacterium, plague, ectoparasites research · Gerontology