The Cowpox Controversy: Memory and the Politics of Public Health in Cuba

Vaccination played an important role in the formation of a national consciousness in Cuba, and vaccination's earliest promoters dominate nationalist narratives of medical achievement on the island. This article investigates the intense hostility exhibited by the creole medical elite toward a pivotal figure in the history of smallpox vaccination in Cuba, Spanish physician Dr. Vicente Ferrer (1823-83), the first in the Americas to mass produce smallpox vaccine using calf vaccinifiers. I argue that anger and mistrust of both Ferrer and his innovatory vaccine production technology originated in the relationship between medical politics and cultural identity in late nineteenth-century Cuba. By the late nineteenth century, smallpox vaccination was linked to glorified memories of a Cuban creole-led vaccination program and a disinterested medical profession. Both Ferrer and his private institution for the mass production of "cowpox" became associated with destructive changes in public health, challenging cultural narratives and regional power structures.