Espejo's Reflexiones on smallpox
Reflexiones sobre las viruelas de Espejo
- Date
- 1785 · confidence high
- Place
- Quito, Pichincha, Ecuador
- Credited to
- Eugenio Espejo
- Field
- Life & health
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
During the 1785 smallpox epidemic in Quito, Espejo proposed that the disease was caused by living 'little worms' passed on by contagion, and recommended isolation, cleanliness and quarantine. It is regarded as an early intuition of microbial aetiology.
Reading Espejo as a precursor of germ theory is retrospective: he reasoned by analogy with 17th-century microscopic observations and did not demonstrate the agent.
What it led to
- Public health measures in the Audiencia of Quito
- Ecuadorian Enlightenment medical tradition
- A claimed precursor of germ theory