ABSTRACT

At the end of the nineteenth century, British imperial doctors found that the glycerinated lymph they received from British-based pharmaceutical companies became inert, failing to protect colonial populations against smallpox. Colonial doctors and their British suppliers thus took a fresh look at the preservation media used for lymph as they discovered how different kinds of lymph reacted to ‘tropical’ climates. British lymph distributors like the Society of Apothecaries sought to maintain their economic hold and influence on the colonies, which provided them with significant commercial outlets to sell lymph, through exploring new modes of preserving lymph. Colonial doctors, however, used the issue to argue for the ability to locally produce vaccine, creating a more economical and dependable production line for the colonies. Building on scholarship on imperial climates, public health, and pharmaceutical manufacturing, I argue that together, colonial climates and local preferences forced calf vaccine lymph producers and users in Britain to redefine their ideas about what constituted smallpox vaccination. These issues affected where colonial lymph was produced and who benefited from lymph’s economic power and scientific authority across international borders, exposing how the tropical colonial climate shifted how long-standing medical technologies were produced and distributed across international borders.

摘要

在 19 世纪末，英国皇家医生发现他们从英国制药公司获得的甘油化淋巴液变得惰性，无法保护殖民地人口免受天花的侵害。因此，殖民地医生和他们的英国供应商重新审视了用于淋巴液的保存介质，因为他们发现了不同种类的淋巴液对“热带”气候的反应。像药剂师协会这样的英国淋巴分销商试图通过探索保存淋巴的新模式来维持他们对殖民地的经济控制和影响，这为他们提供了销售淋巴的重要商业渠道。然而，殖民地医生利用这个问题来证明当地生产疫苗的能力，为殖民地创造了一条更经济、更可靠的生产线。基于对帝国气候、公共卫生和制药制造的学术研究，我认为，殖民气候和当地偏好共同迫使英国的小牛疫苗淋巴生产者和使用者重新定义他们对天花疫苗接种的概念。这些问题影响了殖民地淋巴液的生产地点以及谁从淋巴液的经济实力和跨国界的科学权威中受益，揭示了热带殖民气候如何改变了长期医疗技术的生产和跨越国际边界的分布。