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View Full Version : Good Morning...An English country doctor makes history



Okla-homey
5/14/2009, 06:11 AM
May 14, 1796: Jenner tests smallpox vaccine

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213 years ago today, Edward Jenner, an English country doctor from Gloucestershire, administers the world's first vaccination as a preventive treatment for smallpox, a disease that had killed millions of people over the centuries.

The term "smallpox" was first used in Europe in the 15th century to distinguish variola from the "great pox" (syphilis). Smallpox was a serious disease which had an overall mortality rate of 30–35%.

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20th century smallpox victim. Those sores are pus-filled blisters.

While still a medical student, Jenner noticed that milkmaids who had contracted a disease called cowpox, which caused blistering on cow's udders, did not catch smallpox. Unlike smallpox, which caused severe skin eruptions and dangerous fevers in humans, cowpox led to few ill symptoms in these women.

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Trust me kid.

On May 14, 1796, Jenner took fluid from a cowpox blister and scratched it into the skin of James Phipps, an eight-year-old boy. A single blister rose up on the spot, but James soon recovered. On July 1, Jenner inoculated the boy again, this time with smallpox matter, and no disease developed. The vaccine was a success.

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These lancets were owned and used by Edward Jenner, the Gloucestershire doctor who introduced vaccination to the world.

Doctors all over Europe soon adopted Jenner's innovative technique, leading to a drastic decline in new sufferers of the devastating disease.

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Just as now, some superstitious folks claimed vaccination was flirting with disaster because the risks outweighed the benefits. Balderdash of course, but there you have it. This 18th century cartoon depicts those vaccinated under Jenner's procedure developing bovine characteristics as a result of being injected with cow pox pus.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, scientists following Jenner's model developed new vaccines to fight numerous deadly diseases, including polio, whooping cough, measles, tetanus, yellow fever, typhus, and hepatitis B, and many others.

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Jenner's paper.

For about eighty years, most everyone in the developed world recieved the smallpox vaccination in childhood. Just like young James Phipps way back in 1796, the vaccination patient developed a blister at the site that eventually healed and left a scar. Mine's on my upper left arm.

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Mommy noooooooooo!!!!!! Boy getting his smallpox shot.

More sophisticated smallpox vaccines were also developed and by 1970 international vaccination programs, such as those undertaken by the World Health Organization, had eliminated smallpox worldwide. To this day, smallpox is the only human infectious disease to have been completely eradicated from nature. Thus, today's kids are no longer vaccinated against smallpox.

XingTheRubicon
5/14/2009, 07:44 AM
Just as now, some superstitious folks claimed vaccination was flirting with disaster because the risks outweighed the benefits. Balderdash of course, but there you have it.

This should be fun

NormanPride
5/14/2009, 08:14 AM
I'd rather celebrate one of, if not the, biggest win in medical science. The eradication of smallpox and the creation of vaccines changed the planet.

C&CDean
5/14/2009, 08:34 AM
I'd rather celebrate one of, if not the, biggest win in medical science. The eradication of smallpox and the creation of vaccines changed the planet.

And when I look around at all the human fecal matter, I'm not so sure this is a good thing...

I've got my scar, and I vaccinated all my kids for all the crap you're supposed to MMR, polio, etc. However, you come near me with a flu vaccine and I'll shove it up your pee hole. Every single person I know who copped the flu this year had a flu shot. I haven't had one since 1976 (at which time I became so sick I damn near died), and I've had one bout of the "flu" since (about 1988 or so). I'll take my chances.

badger
5/14/2009, 08:48 AM
I wonder if we've really eradicated small pox. It is not as widespread as it once was, of course, but I recall W. ordering more small pox vaccines because of the terror threats and all.

Of course, not much good small pox terrorism would do, in a world where a majority of the population has already been vaccinated for small pox.

NormanPride
5/14/2009, 08:53 AM
And when I look around at all the human fecal matter, I'm not so sure this is a good thing...

I've got my scar, and I vaccinated all my kids for all the crap you're supposed to MMR, polio, etc. However, you come near me with a flu vaccine and I'll shove it up your pee hole. Every single person I know who copped the flu this year had a flu shot. I haven't had one since 1976 (at which time I became so sick I damn near died), and I've had one bout of the "flu" since (about 1988 or so). I'll take my chances.

I'll agree on the overpopulation bit. But who can blame individuals for liking kids? Do you hate kids, Deaner? ;)

I've never gotten the flu once I've had a shot, but I've gotten it when I haven't... But I've only had the true "flu" a few times.

C&CDean
5/14/2009, 09:14 AM
Dude, kids suck.

And you can take an extra flu shot for me.

soonerscuba
5/14/2009, 09:18 AM
I wonder if we've really eradicated small pox. It is not as widespread as it once was, of course, but I recall W. ordering more small pox vaccines because of the terror threats and all.

Of course, not much good small pox terrorism would do, in a world where a majority of the population has already been vaccinated for small pox.I read a book about the Russian biological weapons program, and if true, I wouldn't be so quick to say we'll never see it again. At it's peak, the Russians were producing tons of biological agents a day, and after the USSR tanked, they aren't positive where it went. The good news is that these things have a pretty limited shelf life if you don't have equipment or know-how, they bad news is that they have no idea who has it and what they know.

I wouldn't be too worried about terrorist threats with smallpox in that biological weapons are tricky even for sophisticated militaries, cave dwelling people that believe science is for the devil are going to have a tough go of them.

As for the OP, how do we not know that smallpox would have been eradicated by hygiene and nutrition? :rolleyes:

Okla-homey
5/14/2009, 04:01 PM
Of course, not much good small pox terrorism would do, in a world where a majority of the population has already been vaccinated for small pox.

Au contraire mon frer. If you were vaccinated as a little kiddoe, you needed a booster at about 25 and every twenty five years or so thereafter. Thus, even us codgers sporting a smallpox scar probably aren't safe if weaponized smallpox is ever unleashed.

In truth, probably the most important medical advance of the last 2000 years is wide spread access to sanitary drinking water. That, and we stopped pooping in the street. At least in North America and Europe.

TheUnnamedSooner
5/14/2009, 04:27 PM
I used to get the flu shot every year, and I got sick every year. Apparently I'm allergic to something in the vaccination. Now I don't get it.

I decided it's best to not get the shot and maybe not get sick instead of getting the flu shot and knowing I will get sick. I've caught the flu twice in the last 12 years.

Okla-homey
5/14/2009, 08:05 PM
However, you come near me with a flu vaccine and I'll shove it up your pee hole. Every single person I know who copped the flu this year had a flu shot. I haven't had one since 1976 (at which time I became so sick I damn near died), and I've had one bout of the "flu" since (about 1988 or so). I'll take my chances.

You know I love you man, in a manly, heterosexual, fellow paratrooper kinda way...but...there is no flippin' way a flue shot can give you the flu, unless those dead microbial creatures are capable of arising zombie-like in your system and run amok while trying to eat your brain. Which ain't happenin'.

They are D-E-A-D. Like a possum on I-35 during rush hour. Verklempt. Deceased. Passed on. They've joined the celestial choir eternal. They have ceased to be. Mort. KIA.

stoopified
5/14/2009, 08:57 PM
You know I love you man, in a manly, heterosexual, fellow paratrooper kinda way...but...there is no flippin' way a flue shot can give you the flu, unless those dead microbial creatures are capable of arising zombie-like in your system and run amok while trying to eat your brain. Which ain't happenin'.

They are D-E-A-D. Like a possum on I-35 during rush hour. Verklempt. Deceased. Passed on. They've joined the celestial choir eternal. They have ceased to be. Mort. KIA.Finito,kaput, non sequitor.