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The management of the coronavirus pandemic required huge worldwide vaccination efforts. In this endeavour, healthcare workers faced the twofold challenge of reaching remote areas, and persuading people to take the vaccine. As it happens, this is nothing new in the history of medicine. Health workers may indeed continue to take inspiration from Francisco Xavier Balmis, a Spanish physician of the 19th century who realised the importance of Jenner's vaccine against smallpox, and led a successful expedition to administer the vaccines in the Spanish colonial possessions of the Western hemisphere and Asia. This article presents a biographical sketch of Balmis, focusing on his expedition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After being ravished by a bloody civil war in the 1860 s, Venezuela's healthcare system was very precarious. In this context, one particularly bright medical student stood out, José Gregorio Hernández. As part of a program to modernize medicine in Venezuela, José Gregorio was sent on a scholarship to pursue medical studies in Europe. He brought back to Venezuela equipment and medical knowledge in bacteriology and pathophysiology. This was instrumental in laying the foundations for major healthcare modernization in Venezuela. Throughout his life, José Gregorio negotiated his intense Catholic faith, with his scientific leanings as a physician. His untimely tragic death in 1919 elevated him to a saintly status amongst Venezuelans. Consequently, his image became a powerful symbol for practitioners of prescientific medicine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bullfighting has a strong historical tradition in Spain, but now it is beginning to be challenged by various sectors in society. The debate about the ethics of bullfighting is by no means new. But, perhaps because of its continuous decline in popularity, and as a result of emerging political circumstances in Spain (particularly in Catalonia), some public intellectuals have attempted a new defence of bullfighting, renewing an ethical discussion that seemed to be over. In this article, I review one particular type of argument that is sometimes used as a defence of bullfighting: the appeal to culture and tradition. I conclude that most of these arguments rely on questionable assumptions and faulty reasoning, and consequently, bullfighting remains ethically indefensible. Yet, I point out that human nature appears to crave for violent entertainment, and we will need to find ethical ways to deal with that. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]