Smallpox and Vaccines – Artifact 4

The Old World

Smallpox has been called one of the most devastating diseases known to humanity, but in the modern world it doesn’t even exist. Living in the old world, almost everyone would be subject to a smallpox infection. Initial systems begin 7 to 17 days after exposure and begin with high fever, body aches, and sometimes vomiting. A rash follows that spreads and eventually leads to raised bumps and puss-filled blisters that last for about 3 weeks leaving a pitted scar. The majority of people survive, but live on with the scarring. Death occurs in 30% of cases. It can spread through contact with infected people, which is a problem considering the nature of the open sores.

Treatment and Prevention

In 12th century Europe, prevention was available solely in the form of avoiding sick people. Treatment was, quite literally, medieval. Bleeding, red therapy, heat therapy, leaching, and other entirely useless treatments were the go-to with medieval doctors. Obviously, they wouldn’t help you at all.

Later on, the folk wisdom that milk maids never got smallpox was investigated through actual scientific inquiry. This led to the discovery that cow pox inoculated the lactose ladies which led to inoculation. Later, this technique evolved into actual vaccination that led to the eradication of smallpox as we know it.

The Push Against Vaccination

In ye olden days, much like today, vaccination had it’s critics. People did not trust the cow pox inoculation, for some reason that I still don’t understand! WHY ARE PEOPLE SO DUMB!? Okay. Okay. People… are scared. It is human nature to fear things that people do not understand. People are incapable of understanding the nature of, and envisioning, how the process works. Instead, they envision things like this:

We can look on this and laugh, but people will always imagine conspiracy and create the evidence that fits their previously held notions. Objections did, and still do, rotate around a nexus of misinformation. They believe that tampering with the body is unnatural or impure. They believe a whole host of whatever they want despite the fact that scientific evidence displays the effectiveness of vaccination.

Eradication

Smallpox was eventually eradicated in the 20th century through the use of vaccination, close surveillance, and containment. The biggest difficulty in the modern world is travel. The ability for individuals to travel across the world at incredible speed allows the disease to spread incredibly quickly and dangerously.

In today’s world, with smallpox eradicated, the fear persists that smallpox will re-enter the ecosystem by some unforeseen event. If that occurs, the government maintains enough medicine to vaccinate the entire population. Therefore, there is nothing to fear!