El legado de la Real Expedición Filantrópica de la Vacuna (1803-1810): las juntas de vacuna

Abstract

The Royal Vaccination Expedition, directed by the physicians Francisco Xavier Balmis and José Salvany, was the most important scientific and medical achievement of the Spanish colonial era. It took place at a time of political restlessness, and its achievements were thus conditioned by each of the cultures into which the vaccine was introduced. As its legacy, the philantropic expedition left the Vaccination Boards, established in the Americas as centers of medical expertise to sustain the expedition´s principal objetive: the battle against the smallpox epidemics in pursuit of public health.