September 2017
Dr. Robert Wilson. Image source: http://www.museumofhealthcare.ca/
Smallpox eradication, laboratory visits, and a touch of tourism: travel notes of a Canadian scientist in Brazil, Steven Palmer, Gilberto Hochman and Daniel Arbex. Hist. cienc. saude-Manguinhos vol.17 no.3, 2010.
The paper presents and discusses the travel notes diary of Canadian scientist Robert J. Wilson when he visited Brazil in April 1967 during the Smallpox Eradication Programme run by the World Health Organisation.
Wilson’s report makes it possible to reflect on the smallpox eradication campaign in Brazil; on the Canada-Brazil cooperation to improve the quality of the smallpox vaccine; on his assessment by of scientists and Brazilian laboratories; on the effects of intersections between scientific activity and social and cultural activities; on the role played by specialist communities of experts role in international scientific cooperation projects; and on a Canadian traveller’s concepts and prejudices about Brazil at the end of the 1960s.
