Vaccination

It seems that it was the court physician, Dr Domaire, who first carried out experiments in vaccination against smallpox in Madeira. He was followed by Dr Adams, to whom we have already referred on page 16 of volume I of this Elucidário. In a petition approved by the Governor and presented to the Municipal Council (Câmara Municipal) at its session of 27 October 1802, Dr Adams asked that ‘every eight days they should send him four foundlings, on whom to test the vaccine against smallpox’. The same physician presented the results of the experiments he had carried out in a report written in English, which was translated by the interpreter major Francisco Manuel Patrone.

After Dr Adams, vaccinations were carried out by the Madeiran physician Dr António Caetano de Freitas, who also gave an account of what he had observed in two reports, one written in 1804 and the other in 1807.

In 1815, under a ministerial order (portaria) from the governor, the Council established that the foundlings should be vaccinated every month by the chief physician (físico-mor). At its session of 7 June 1823 the same body resolved to invite heads of families, by public notices, to send their children to be vaccinated at the hospital, where there was ‘a free establishment for that purpose, created last year through the efforts of the Council, in agreement with the chief health officers and the superintendent (provedor) of the same hospital.’

It seems, therefore, that the use of vaccination began to become general in Madeira only from 1822 or 1823 onwards. It is known, however, that the foundlings were vaccinated before then, and that in 1804, when many people still doubted the usefulness of inoculation, the governor Sequeira Freire was already recommending it to everyone as the only effective means of preventing the contagion and spread of smallpox.