Helena Perpenti

Maria Medina Coeli (1764 in Chiavenna – 1846 in Pianello Lario) (also known as Helena Perpenti) was an Italian medical doctor, inventor and botanist.

Maria was the daughter of the medical doctor Sebastian Medina Coeli and his wife Isabella Battistessa Coeli, who belonged to one of the most prominent families in the alpine town where Maria was born. She was the youngest of five children.

Medical studies Maria took an early interest in medicine as practised by her father, especially the scourge of smallpox and possibilities of early vaccines. To pursue the subject, she corresponded with the physician Luigi Sacco in Milan. She developed a vaccine against smallpox and tested it on herself and her family (not an uncommon procedure at that time), and the introduction of vaccination in the Como area is attributed to her efforts. ... she herself experimented with the same practice in her family, on her own children. It is to her example and her commitment to the promotion of smallpox prophylaxis that we owe the introduction of this practice in the territory of Como. studied the flora of the Lario valleys near Lake Como. In 1817, she found a specimen of campanula which later became known as: campanula Perpentiae. After her discovery of this rare species of flower was published, she earned a place, as a distinguished naturalist, in the French Dictionary of Inventions.