“Geographies” describes how hunger artists’ itinerancy became a key factor to explain their growing reputation and prestige in the period under study. It discusses how the geographical turn can be applied to the analysis of the tension between local and global events, to the spatial dimension of their practices, and to their professional status as itinerant travellers. The chapter describes Giovanni Succi’s trips to Africa, Europe, and America as a paradigm of the global dimension of a professional faster, and the way that colonial, commercial factors acted as preconditions for the later itinerant nature of the artist. The chapter also discusses the synchronic nature of the public fasts as described in the daily press on a global scale. Like natural catastrophes, wars and accidents, the long fasts were immediately reported to urban readers world-wide and contributed to the emergence of new global publics. In addition, the geographical dimension of hunger artists also includes the dynamism of medical networks and research schools that shared results and experiments on fasting and added new nodes to the global network. Similarly, impresarios of the show business accompanied hunger artists, and reinforced the itinerant nature of the metier.

Chapter 1 examines the construction of large-scale national systems for rehabilitating the war disabled, which began in the final months of 1914, with the establishment of the first wartime institutions for vocational re-education, and grew, over the course of the conflict, to include administrative bodies, organisational structures, and legal frameworks for the provisioning of care. They were constantly retooled and restructured in order to make them more efficient and more responsive to the needs of nations at war. By 1918, they had become remarkably sophisticated and, moreover, strikingly similar to one another – the result of a dedicated transnational movement of people and ideas and of a shared aim. This unity of purpose, however, did not exclude revisionist interpretations of rehabilitation programmes that overstressed their dissimilarities and imagined such systems – and the men they served – as nationally or ethnically particular nor did it resolve tensions between competing ideas about care, philanthropy, and the state.

Chapter 5 explores the early spread of vaccination in continental Europe. If news of Jenner’s discovery quickly spread abroad, the delivery of vaccine in a viable state proved a major challenge. Diplomatic and medical networks explain its early arrival in Germany and Austria. From 1799, Dr De Carro made Vienna a major centre for the spread of the practice, with the samples sent to Lord Elgin in Istanbul seeding the practice in Greece. The British military build-up in the Mediterranean opened new channels for the dissemination of English cowpox. By vaccinating sailors aboard ship, Drs Marshall and Walker brought fresh vaccine to Gibraltar and Malta and Marshall established vaccination in Sicily and southern Italy early in 1801. Dr Sacco’s discovery of a local source of cowpox in cattle in Lombardy in late 1800 led to important trials and, over the following decade, an impressive vaccination programme in northern Italy. In the interstices of war in Europe, the practice developed as an international enterprise with several important new hubs.

Chapter 7 discusses the spread of vaccination in northern Europe. Familiarity with smallpox inoculation, its disadvantages as well as its advantages, assured a strong constituency of interest in the Netherlands, Germany and Scandinavia and a generally positive response to the potential of the new prophylaxis. Medical men in Germany, well-networked professionally, conducted trials of the new prophylaxis, rapidly achieved consensus as to its value and collaborated in extending it nationally. They invested culturally in vaccination, celebrating the ‘guardian pox’ in festivals and promoting a cult of Jenner. In the Netherlands, most German states and in the kingdoms of Denmark and Sweden, rulers acted on the advice of their physicians to endorse and support vaccination. Government officials and the clergy, Catholic as well as Lutheran, needed little prompting to assist in establishing it in their spheres of influence. Vaccination put down strong roots across northern Europe, becoming compulsory in Bavaria in 1805, Denmark in 1810–11 and Sweden in 1816.

Chapter 10 discusses the beginnings of vaccination in India. From Bombay in June 1802, the practice was extended to Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Madras and Calcutta by the end of the year. Medical men in the service of the East India Company made the running, but civil and military governors provided strong support for the establishment of the practice. Children under vaccination were often used to deliver the vaccine, Indians were trained and paid for their work in vaccinating and systems were devised to maintain the supply of vaccine. The new prophylaxis was taken up in the European enclaves, but won some acceptance, too, among the Indian and Sinhalese, especially in Madras. Intrusive measures caused resentment and arm-to-arm transmission raised concerns about pollution. Still, the tally of vaccinations probably reached one million in the first five years of the practice. By this stage, too, India was serving as a hub for the spread of the practice in all directions.