Vaughan M
Nuffield College, Oxford, UK.
Soc Hist Med. 2000 Dec;13(3):411-28. doi: 10.1093/shm/13.3.411.
In 1792 a slave-ship arrived on the french Indian Ocean island of Ile de France (Mauritius) from South India, bringing with it smallpox. As the epidemic spread, a heated debate ensued over the practice of inoculation. The island was in the throes of revolutionary politics and the community of French colonists were acutely aware of their new rights as 'citizens'. In the course of the smallpox epidemic, many of the political tenisons of the period came to focus on the question of inoculation, and were played out on the bodies of slaves. Whilst some citizens asserted their right, as property owners, to inoculate their slaves, others, equally vehemently, objected to the practice and asserted their right to protect their slaves from infection. Eighteenth-century colonial medicine was largely geared to keeping the bodies of slaves and workers productive and useful, but formal medicine never had a monopoly. Slaves on Ile de France brought with them a rich array of medical beliefs and practices from Africa, India, and Madagascar. We have little direct historical evidence for these, but we do know that many slaves came from areas in which forces of smallpox inoculation were known and practised.
1792年，一艘贩奴船从南印度抵达法属印度洋岛屿法兰西岛（毛里求斯），带来了天花。随着疫情蔓延，关于接种疫苗的做法引发了一场激烈辩论。该岛正处于革命政治的阵痛之中，法国殖民者群体敏锐地意识到自己作为“公民”的新权利。在天花疫情期间，这一时期的许多政治紧张关系都聚焦于接种问题，并在奴隶的身体上展现出来。一些公民主张，作为奴隶主，他们有权为自己的奴隶接种疫苗，而另一些人则同样强烈反对这种做法，并坚称自己有权保护奴隶免受感染。18世纪的殖民地医学主要致力于让奴隶和工人的身体保持高效和有用，但正规医学从未占据垄断地位。法兰西岛上的奴隶从非洲、印度和马达加斯加带来了丰富多样的医学信仰和实践。我们几乎没有关于这些的直接历史证据，但我们确实知道，许多奴隶来自已知并实行天花接种的地区。
