SLOVENIAN INFLUENCE IN EARLY 18TH CENTURY INOCULATIONS

Abstract

In 1715, two Slovenian physicians, Johann Baptist Werloschnig de Perenberg and Antonius Loigk, published an extensive volume on the last plague epidemic in Central Europe. Hidden within its pages is a description of smallpox inoculation, which predates any record of this procedure in Europe by several years. The procedure was personally witnessed by Loigk in Vienna in or before 1714. Very little is currently known about the context of this event. We do not know how many inoculators there were, how many patients were treated and, crucially, how the procedure was received by the medical establishment in Austria. All these pieces of information would be necessary to understand the impact of this discovery on early 18th-century Austrian (and, by extension, Eastern European) society. In order to sketch out the possible connections, we will focus on a reconstruction of the intellectual network of both Slovenians as it appears in the academic literature of the time. We hope that these links may reveal something about a group of physicians who may have had early knowledge about this important anti-epidemic measure.