Artifact #4 (prompt #2)
Smallpox can first be seen on mummies from Egypt in dating back to the 3rd century, and there have been descriptions of the disease dating back to the 4th century, found in China. Over the two millennia since having been aware of the disease, smallpox has claimed over 300 million lives, until its eradication in 1980. Some of the early cures that people tried to get rid of the disease was; bloodletting, red therapy, leeches, laxatives, cold therapy, and heat therapy. Later, people started to use variolation, otherwise known as inoculation, to try and become immune to the disease. This would involve taking fluid or powder from the scab from someone who had smallpox, then putting that into a superficial wound into someone who had not contracted the disease yet. People would not develop as severe symptoms as if they had contracted the disease naturally and after a couple of weeks, the symptoms would subside. This technique was first used in the Middle East and China. Another early method was insufflation, which was the same as variolation in principle. The crust of the scab would be scraped off of someone who had smallpox, to which someone else would inhale the powder. The person would get sick, but with less severe symptoms. In 1796, Edward Jenner tested his theory on the eight-year-old next-door neighbor. There was a wife’s tale that milk maids who contracted cowpox at some point in their lives, a disease that is much milder than smallpox. After years of research, Jenner tested his theory by taking fluid from a cowpox sore and rubbing it on a superficial wound on the boy. The child became ill with cowpox, but then quickly recovered. Jenner then put the deadly smallpox on the superficial cut, and after a period of time, the boy showed no effects. From this the world had its first vaccination, vacca coming from the Latin word meaning cow, due to the cowpox being the reason for smallpox immunity. At first, he was met with much opposition and ridiculed greatly for his findings. This was due to the fact that he had no true explanation as to how his vaccine worked, as well as some thought it was nasty that you would use a diseased animal to inoculate yourself. It was more after his death did people start to widely accept his vaccination method and it became commonplace while banning the variolation method. Some of the pros to compulsory, or mandatory, vaccinations are that it protects many people from the disease, extreme reactions are rare, it saves children’s lives, and they protect future generations. Some of the cons are that it infringes upon our rights, like religious freedom, and that the government should not be telling us what to do. Also, it has the potential to be fatal or you having a more adverse reaction to the vaccine. In 1979, the last person who naturally contracted variola major was treated in Bangladesh. And in 1977 the last person who naturally contracted variola minor was treated in Somalia. Both of these accomplishments took a huge effort and a lot of manpower. This was because these areas were poor and did not have a good enough infrastructure to track everyone down who had the disease or who may have the disease and then give those people the vaccination. Due to the vigilant efforts of thousands of people, they were able to track everyone down who had the disease and cure them of it, eventually eradicating it from the world.
Works cited
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox_vaccine
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/jenner-tests-smallpox-vaccine
http://broughttolife.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/people/edwardjenner