Between 1803 and 1814 the "Filanthropic Expedition da Varíola" distributed the first vaccine in history worldwide. He left A Coruña and was part of it his impulsor, the Sicantine Francisco Javier Balmis, the Coruñesa Isabel Zendal Gómez and 22 children who changed the world.

Six years after the English doctor Edward Jenner discovered that the farmers who milked cows infected with smallpox were immunized against their contagion, Charles IV arranged an expedition to take the vaccine to the Spanish provinces of America and the Philippines, as a violent plague of smallpox decimated the indixine poboations leaving the Crown without taxpayers.

The expedition led by Balmis reported and confirmed that the perfect immunization against epidemics consisted of previously contaminating healthy people with small doses of the plague itself. Given the need to keep the virus active for transport, the method chosen was a chain of people who carried the epidemic in their body. Thus, from arm to arm, and by renewing every ten days the transvases when the grains reached their high point, one of Galicia's most important contributions to the legacy of the history of humanity is developed.

22 children da Casa de Exfundas de A Coruña were part of the Expedition carrying the vaccine with them. Other members were: two chamber doctors from Charles IV (Balmis and Joseph Salvany himself), two surgeons, two practitioners and three nurses (one of them the coruñesa Isabel Zendal Gómez, rector of the House of Exposition). They sailed in the corvette Maria Pita of the Coruñés port on November 30, 1803, to return to Spain on September 7, 1806.

The official act that certified the total eradication of smallpox in the world was signed on December 9, 1979

One of the great undervalued actors in this philanthropic adventure was the titular coruñés doctor Vicente Antonio Posse and Roybans, who maintained a close relationship with Balmis during his stay in the weeks before the departure of the Expedition, his intervention being decisive. Roybanes was a pioneer in Galicia in the spread of the vaccine to mitigate smallpox, contributing to the implementation of the vaccination room of the Hospital de la Caridad and obtaining recognition of the Crown itself.

As for the itinerary followed by the Expedition, when it arrived in Caracas it was divided into two groups: that of Balmis with Isabel Zendán, and that of Salvany. The first one went through Cuba, Guatemala and Mexico, where the child carriers were adopted, to leave later with a group of Mexican children from Acapulco heading to the Philippines, reaching the coast of China and returning to Spain on a previous scale on the island of St. Helena. Salvany sailed to Barranquilla and from Colombia he was vaccinated in populations of Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia until 1810, when Salvany died in Cochabamba.

In Spain, Balmis was commissioned by the Central Board of Seville to make his last trip to Amércia (1809-13) and continue with his extraordinary public health campaign. Unfortunately, there are no detailed records of the expedition, as the newspaper that Balmis kept disappeared during the looting of his house perprestrated by the French invaders. Francisco Javier Balmis died in Madrid on 12 February 1819.

A work of the University of A Coruña
https: / / udc.gal / en / libraria.oza / divulgacion / expositions / smallpox /