Defying Providence: Smallpox and the Forgotten 18th Century Medical RevolutionDefying Providence is the history of inoculation, the terrifying practice of deliberately infecting individuals with virulent smallpox. This book shows how and why it became widely adopted in the 18th century and how it shaped the development of some of modern medicine's power tools. In particular it shows that vaccination (cowpox) could not have been discovered or used to eradicate the dreadful disease smallpox if inoculation was not already widespread. Defying Providence is a major revision of standard views of 18th century medicine |
