For centuries, Europeans found themselves vulnerable to the dread disease of smallpox. But in the 1720s, they learned of the process of inoculation from their Turkish neighbors and realized that they could control both the severity and the timing of the illness, thereby increasing their chances of survival. Inoculation was still a dangerous business, however, as it involved purposeful infection with live smallpox matter. Yet as it improved one’s chances of surviving smallpox so greatly, many men and women of letters took it upon themselves to promulgate the technique throughout Europe.

I propose a paper on the major champions of smallpox inoculation in France, the philosophes, and the ways in which they turned themselves and their family members into “living proof,” proof they hoped would sway public opinion in favor of inoculation. Men of letters inoculated their own children and, in the process, turned ostensibly private medical decisions into public demonstrations. By drawing attention to their own families, philosophes were able to acquire more evidence in favor of their theories and — more importantly — to transform themselves into models of what they called “enlightened love.” They depicted themselves as ideal fathers: enlightened parents who relied upon both reason and emotion in making family decisions. They used their domestic lives as a way to teach French parents how to love their children properly, which is to say in the same way that men of letters loved their children. Philosophes thus utilized their families to legitimate their claims about inoculation and about themselves. In doing so, they not only claimed new authority for savants to influence social practice but also transformed the relationship between public and private.

This paper contributes to the study of “knowledge at work” in several ways. It sheds light on how Enlightenment savants attempted to practice their ideas and helps us better understand how Enlightenment thinkers wished to remake their world. Particularly, it encourages to think of the Enlightenment not as an abstract movement divorced from social practice but instead to think about the ways in which savants created small social laboratories, most often using their families, to demonstrate the validity of their ideas. Finally, it contributes to scholarship showing that “knowledge” and “work” were not only public categories but were also private, even intimate, ones.