When you read old books, you often come across things that have a strong connectivity. Often what seems to be something of a byway in reading becomes something of much greater significance.  At the beginning of the 19th century, Edward Jenner’s smallpox vaccines were starting to be distributed around the world, particularly along the routes of imperial trade and colonisation. In Sydney, Governor King was asking the British Government for vaccines, with the assistant New South Wales surgeon, Dr John Savage instrumental in bringing vaccination to the colony, where smallpox had killed many of the aborigines around Sydney cove in 1789.  Savage went on to write the first book solely on New Zealand, published when he was back in London in 1807.

At the same time in Macao and Canton, the East India Company’s surgeon Dr Andrew Pearson, in 1805, wrote a document promoting vaccination, with instructions on how inoculation should be carried out, It was translated into Chinese by the young George Thomas Staunton, of the Macartney and Amherst embassies to Peking, and the translated document was later published by him in a book of miscellaneous notes in 1828.

The global distribution, with its issues of keeping  the vaccine active,  and countering opposition resonates today with our experiences with covid. In both cases the vaccines proved successful, and in the case of smallpox, contributed to one of the greatest success stories in modern medicine – its eradication.

An account of these two related events based on the early books and their authors can be found in the attachment.