On This Day in History: May 14

The smallpox vaccine

AUDIO VERSION HERE

If you worked with cows, you were less likely to get smallpox. The infection had a fatality rate of 30%, even higher in babies. Survivors were often left horribly scarred and even blind. People were motivated to find a way to prevent the spread of one of the most lethal diseases in history. So, yeah. Cows.

--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: May 14, 1796--

Because humans are fucking horrible, there are multiple examples of smallpox being used for biological warfare. In one case, top brass in the British Army sanctioned its deliberate spread amongst North American Natives in the 18^thcentury. But prior to a vaccine, people were also purposely given smallpox as a way to save their lives.

The process was called variolation. It dates back to 15^th-century China, where they took powdered smallpox scabs and rubbed them into superficial scratches on the skin of an uninfected person—usually during a time of outbreak—to protect them against infection by giving them a milder form of smallpox. Still, mild smallpox isn’t fun, and people diddie from this method—between 1% to 2% of those variolated got too sick and kicked off—but it was way better odds than full-on smallpox.

And a paid subscription is way better than free:

In 1752, when Edward Jenner was 13, he was apprenticed to an apothecary in Berkeley, England. At that young age, he noticed cattle workers who caught cowpox didn’t get smallpox, but being 13, didn’t give it much additional thought. Later, when he became a practicing physician, there was an outbreak of smallpox and he advised the local cattle workers to get variolated. But they were like, nah, dude. We’re good. They’d had cowpox and knew it would keep them safe.

This confirmed his childhood suspicions, and his research on creating a smallpox vaccine began in earnest. In 1796 milkmaid Sarah Nelmes came to him for treatment of cowpox, and on May 14, 1796, Jenner used the opportunity to take material from one of her lesions and inoculate his gardener’s son, James Phipps, because the FDA was not yet a thing. The boy got a mild fever and a local lesion but was fine a few days later. Then Jenner tested smallpox on the boy via variolation, and he had no reaction; he was immune. The world’s first vaccination was born. Or so the story goes. Jenner wasn’t the first to use cowpox for inoculating against smallpox, and the whole milkmaid story might not even be true. What is true is that he was a master of promotion, so Jenner did popularize the first vaccination.   

Anti-vaccine fuckwits are nothing new; it would still take almost two centuries to eradicate the disease due in part to people being resistant to getting vaccinated. Smallpox still managed to kill 300 million people in the 20^th century. Almost a third of a billion, dead. In the 20^th century. And the last case was in 1977. Fucking hell.

Vaccinate your goddamn crotch goblins.

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