Abstract:
Smallpox posed a significant epidemiological threat in the early modern period. The eradication of smallpox in the 20th century was preceded by numerous medical discoveries, such as vaccination. Even before that, so-called variolation, i.e. an older and riskier form of smallpox protection, had spread in Europe after being imported from the East in the 1720s. This text explains how Europeans fought smallpox even before variolation was introduced. The records in the medical literature of the second half of the 17th century show that there were at least two independent traditions within which attempts were made to reduce the effects of smallpox. The first was based on an academic medical environment and can apparently be first found in the work of Franciscus de le Boë. The other was part of a folk tradition, the so-called “buying of pustules”, which was practised in the territory of northern Italy, the British Isles and Poland. In order to be able to present the mentioned methods in a broader context, this paper deals with contemporary views of the pathology of smallpox and also gender-specific aspects of the history of the disease.