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Who Invented
The Smallpox Vaccine?
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The much dreaded, but much needed poke in most developing countries. The drops that are
administered even before the child realizes what is happening.
Aren’t these the pictures that come to mind when one thinks of
vaccinations? There's more to vaccination than just these. There is
vaccine against polio and vaccines to prevent cholera, brain fever,
whooping cough, typhoid fever, hepatitis, tetanus and many more such
diseases that were once considered fatal.
Smallpox was one such disease against
which mankind had no shield with which to protect himself. Like
cholera, it has claimed human lives in epidemic proportions. Today,
smallpox too is considered totally eradicated. The credit for the
achievement goes to an English physician Edward Jenner. He was the
one who developed the first effective shield, a vaccine against
smallpox. His discovery, made in the year 1796 is said to have laid
the foundation for the science of immunology. |
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During Jenner’s time, the protection against small pox was a
procedure called variolation. We’d shudder reading about it. A
substance would be obtained from the blisters on the body of a
person with a mild attack of the disease. This substance would
then be administered into a healthy person’s arm through
scratching. The reasoning was this: A mild case could come and
go away, but a person could not take chance against a severe
attack. The catch here was that the procedure itself was
dangerous.
How Jenner chanced upon his discovery is an
interesting story. When he was working as an apprentice to a
surgeon, milkmaids who came to the clinic gave him an interesting
clue. They said that those who had suffered an attack of cowpox, a
harmless disease generally attacking the hands and arms, usually
never got small pox. At that time, Jenner was barely thirteen.
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Edward Jenner |
Jenner later decided to experiment and find out if cowpox was indeed
a protection against the dreaded small pox. On May 14, 1796, Jenner
made two small scratches on the arm of an eight-year-old boy and
rubbed fluid obtained from a milkmaid’s cowpox blister. Eight days
later, the boy had an attack of cowpox. There were small cowpox
blisters on the scratches. About a month and a half later, Jenner
administered fluid from a small pox blister through scratching, on
the same boy. To Jenner’s thrill and happiness, the boy did not get
even a mild attack of small pox.
With the experiment, Jenner had stumbled upon two discoveries. He
had confirmed that cowpox was indeed a protection against small pox;
he had also discovered that cowpox could be transmitted. He
experimented on other children, including his son. He submitted his
study results in the year 1798, but was unfortunately rejected.
Undaunted, Jenner continued to experiment and finally published the
results at his own cost.
Initially, the procedure was considered unnatural and bizarre.
Decades later, Louis Pasteur showed the technique for developing
modern preventive vaccines. For Jenner’s discovery, the Oxford
University presented him with an honorary degree. |
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