Rabbi Nachman of Breslov’s Endorsement of the Smallpox Vaccine
We have written about Rabbi Nachman of Breslov’s opposition to 18-century medicine. But what about vaccination? He was all for it!
The following essay was sent to me by a reader:
This disfiguring and often fatal disease [Smallpox] was then prevalent throughout Europe and Asia. A primitive form of inoculation had been in use for some time in Turkey and spread to the rest of Europe in the 1720s. However, it was not without its dangers, and the best that most people could do when there was an outbreak of smallpox was to flee.
It was not until the 1790’s that the English country physician Edward Jenner observed that those who had been infected with cowpox did not become infected with smallpox. In 1796 he performed the first vaccination on a young boy, and found that, despite the boy’s subsequent exposure to smallpox, he did not become infected. Knowledge of the new technique spread rapidly throughout Europe, and immunization against smallpox soon became a standard medical procedure. At first it was a subject of heated controversy within the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe, but in 1804 a Dr. Shimon of Cracow printed a broadsheet entitled “A New Remedy,” in which he encouraged all Jews to have their children vaccinated as a preventive measure. Within a short time, hundreds of Jewish children were being successfully vaccinated, including those of leading rabbis and Torah scholars (Sefer HaBrit I, 17:2).
In the midst of this controversy, Rebbe Nachman came out in favor of vaccination in the strongest terms:
“Every parent should have his children vaccinated within the first three months of life. Failure to do so is tantamount to murder. Even if they live far from the city and have to travel during the great winter cold, they should have the child vaccinated before three months” (Avaneha Barzel p.31 #34).
Rebbe Nachman’s championship of vaccination is clear proof that his opposition to doctors and medicine was in no way bound up with some kind of retrogressive attitude of suspicion towards modernity and innovation per se. Here was a newly-discovered technique with a proven power to prevent a dangerous disease, and within a matter of a few years Rebbe Nachman came out emphatically in favor – Jenner first discovered vaccination in 1796, and Rebbe Nachman’s (undated) statement must have been made some time before his death in 1810.
See the rest here.