Tag: small pox

Vaccine Basics: The Truth About Vaccines

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VACCINE BASICS

The strength of the anti-vaxxer movement in the U.S. is dangerous to the public health.

Vaccine Basics: The Truth About Vaccines

The Chinese were using inoculation over a 1,000 years ago in an attempt to protect people from the scourge of small pox. Those early physicians would make a scratch on a person’s arm or leg and then rub fluid from the pox pustules into the broken skin. Another method involved blowing infected dust from scabs into the nostrils of a healthy individual. The first record of an injection of a weakened form of small pox was by a British physician, Edward Jenner, in the 18th century. 

D. S. Mitchell

An Army

Any regular reader of this website knows that I am a retired RN. And as such, health and wellness issues are an important part of the information I share on this site. The COVID-19 pandemic brought out an army of anti-vaxxers, led by a-holes like RFK, Jr. There’s a guy despised by his family and recognized world wide as a “nut cake,” but even someone as despised and discredited as Kennedy has followers. Just because his dad was famous and cool does not mean he passed any of that charisma, intellect, or personality on to his children, particularly junior, in this case.

A Veritable Quandary

I don’t understand it. During my life time vaccines have nearly caused us to forget the severe outbreaks of “childhood diseases” including polio, tetanus, hepatitis A and B, rubella, mumps, whooping cough, rotavirus, smallpox, measles, and more. Vaccines save money. If you don’t care about the human cost, there is the financial cost of infectious diseases on our country. The CDC estimates that inoculation against measles has saved the United States $295 billion in hospital costs and $1.4 trillion in societal costs over a 15 year span, according to an article in the August 2020  Prevention magazine, by Jennifer Wolff

Whatever

Fear, misinformation, and superstition are all drivers of the anti-vax movement. Because of all the screaming and hollering and the threats against Dr. Fauci, I thought now might be as good a time as any to provide a short refresher course on what vaccines are and what they are not.

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The Value of Vaccinations

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The Value of Vaccinations

By Michael Leonard Douglas & D. S. Mitchell

History

Have you ever heard of the Black Death? Only in text books I’m sure. This was a time before vaccinations. In 1347 The Black Death arrived in Europe. Over the next five years the devastating epidemic would kill 20 million people in Europe alone. Prior to reaching Europe The Plague is believed to have taken the lives of over 200 million people worldwide.  The first recorded “pan epidemic”. It was one of the most devastating periods in human history.

A Scratch Or A Cut

I have wondered what it would have been like to live in a world without vaccines.  I’m sure I would have died at an early age as did most people before the modern era. The first efforts to inoculate a human being against disease was in China as early as 900 BCE. At that time smallpox was rampant in China. It was observed that if a person survived smallpox they would be immune to further outbreaks of the disease.

Chinese Physicians

To protect people from infection, ancient Chinese physicians would cut or scratch the skin of healthy people and then rub powdered smallpox scabs or fluid from pustules into the cut in the skin. Another method was to blow powdered smallpox material up the nose of a healthy person. This exposure to live bacteria and viruses was called inoculation or variolation. This was a precursor to modern vaccination. In 1700 the wife of England’s ambassador to Turkey, Lady Montagu, brought news of this Eastern practice to England.

Smallpox an Ancient Problem

Smallpox was a disfiguring and often fatal infectious disease that plagued humanity for at least 5,000 years.  In 18th century Europe smallpox was widespread and was believed to kill 3 out of every 10 people who contracted it. Of the 30% that died most were young children, making smallpox a death sentence for the most vulnerable. Many survivors were left terribly disfigured from scars from the rupturing skin pustules.

Enter Edward Jenner

Edward Jenner was an English country physician.  Dr. Jenner observed that dairy workers who had been infected with cowpox, were immune to later smallpox outbreaks. This observation led him to inoculate a boy with cowpox. Later, Jenner would infect the same boy with fresh smallpox and when no disease developed Jenner concluded that the boy was protected against smallpox. His work would lead to what would become **”attenuated vaccines”. In 1801 Jenner published his findings in his treatise, “On the Origin of the Vaccine Inoculation” Jenner summarized with the hope that “annihilation of  smallpox, the most dreadful scourge of the human species, must be the result of this practice (vaccination).”

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