What is it about?
Smallpox killed about one in ten people for centuries before it was declared eradicated in 1980. Before modern vaccines, people tried 'variolation': deliberately infecting healthy people with material from smallpox scabs to cause a milder illness and lasting immunity. This article tells how Pietro Verri, a leading figure of the 18th-century Milanese (Lombard) Enlightenment and not a physician, championed this practice. In 1766 he explained the procedure and its results in the journal 'Il Caffè', showing that among more than 24,000 inoculations in Europe only 19 people had died. He then had his own 7-month-old daughter inoculated and, worried about scarring, drew a map of every pustule on her face - a unique hand-drawn record we reproduce and discuss.
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Photo by CDC on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Vaccine hesitancy and misinformation are again weakening herd immunity. Verri's story shows that the same doubts existed 250 years ago - and how they were overcome with clear data, public communication and personal example. He anticipated Edward Jenner, who inoculated his own son in 1790, by trusting evidence over fear. His approach offers a historical model that doctors, public health professionals and communicators can still use today to promote vaccination.
Perspectives
As an infectious diseases physician, I am struck by how modern Verri's reasoning sounds: weigh the risk of the disease against the risk of prevention, look at the numbers, and then act - even with your own child. His anxious pencil sketch of his daughter's face reminds us that behind every vaccination decision there is a worried parent. History of medicine is a powerful tool to talk about vaccines without polarisation.
Professor Stefano Di Bella
Universita degli Studi di Trieste
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Pietro Verri: The History of Smallpox Vaccination Through His Pencil, JEADV Clinical Practice, September 2026, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1002/jvc2.70441.
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