Smallpox had ravaged humankind for thousands of years proving to be a formidable disease that did not discriminate between peasant and nobility. Fortunately scientists were eventually able to destroy smallpox by eradicating it using a vaccine, but before the vaccine a vast history of eradication efforts had been performed. To understand how the modern day vaccine was created one must understand the history of previous vaccination methods.

The earliest forms of remedies for smallpox included such things as prayer because the underlying cause of smallpox could not be understood in early times, so they would turn to their gods for comfort and a hopeful cure. Other things like living an “unpure” life were thought to lead to the disease, so people were advised to cut the “sin” out of their lives like gambling and lust. Once people began to experiment with smallpox they began to understand what happens when the “crust” comes in contact with other people. They discovered “variolation (inoculation)”, that if the crust is scratched into someone else’s skin they would gain partial immunity from the disease and only get slightly sick (mild case of smallpox). Insufflation was also utilized, the only difference between insufflation and variolation is that the crust is placed up the nose to grant partial immunity. Once that variolation and insufflation had been discovered people began to realized that smallpox was not invincible and more research was needed to be done to grant total immunity. Jenner wanted to discover this “total immunity”, he focused on cattle and how they contracted cowpox. Jenner discovered that he could use cows to transfer cowpox to humans and essentially inoculate them, so smallpox could not infect them. Jenner’s idea would eventually lead people to discover the modern day vaccine for smallpox, since using cattle was not very practical. The actual eradication of smallpox was no small feat, it required the use of “surveillance and containment”. Scientists tracked where smallpox outbreaks occurred and would vaccinate the original patient and anyone they came in contact with, then they would vaccinate anyone that those people made contact with and so on, essentially creating a “ring” of immunity. The use of draconian public health measures were essentially the key to success in eliminating smallpox because with more drastic health actions like surveillance and containment it became easier to utilize resources to combat smallpox.

With the invention of vaccines, including the smallpox vaccine, social and societal issues arose across the world. Many people are for vaccines while some people are firmly against them, so I will list some pros and cons of vaccines. Some pros include that they save lives, they are proven to be safe, and they protect herd immunity. While vaccines are mostly pros some believe that they hold cons, some of which include, they infringe upon individual’s rights, they are “unnatural”, and that they can have serious side effects for people who may be affected. Even though some people focus on the negative of vaccines, the positive far outweigh the negatives.

Help Received:  https://vaccines.procon.org/, https://www.cdc.gov/smallpox/history/history.html, video in class