Eusebio Valli

Eusebio Giacinto Valli was an Italian physician and scientist, born at Casciana Alta near Pisa in 1755 and dead at Havana in 1816. He graduated in medicine and philosophy in 1783, worked as a surgeon in several places, was primary physician of the Spedal Civile of Mantua and professor of clinical medicine, studied plague and smallpox in Turkey, Greece and Egypt, and served as a military doctor in Dalmatia. A follower of Luigi Galvani, he lectured publicly on animal electricity and in 1793 published Esperimenti sullelettricita animale, one of the most organic analyses of galvanism of its day. He theorised that smallpox infection excluded plague and experimented with inoculation, and he is considered a forerunner of vaccination and the first vaccinator to operate in several countries. In 1816 he visited a hospital in Havana to study the epidemiology of yellow fever, and he died there that year after not injecting enough attenuated germs into his own body.