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Vaccination Against Smallpox
effect of smallpox
Vaccination Against Smallpox
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Recommended: Vaccination Against Smallpox
Smallpox Treatment
Smallpox has threatened our world for the past twelve thousand years. Treatments were desperately searched for until a cure called variolation was discovered. Variolation is the use of the virus placed into a being to which they will receive the illness to a lesser degree and overcome the illness forming an immunization to it. This process was started in China and went worldwide after Lady Montagu took the process from Turkey and informed the British about it. From here the process set fire and spread across Europe, curing many, but also killing them too. This new discovery opened a channel of research for many doctors, until in 1774 a farmer named Benjamin Jesty discovered that the lesser illness of cowpox could vaccinate one from smallpox. Jesty’s discovery plagued the world and set another opening for research, into which doctors searched for the best way to vaccinate citizens with. Vaccination helped a plethora of people until 1980 when the disease was finally eradicated. However, smallpox’s ugly face reared itself just recently with the new threat of bioterrorism. Yet this will most likely not affect our society due to the huge amount of preparatory work that would need to be placed into a new smallpox outbreak.
For the past twelve thousand years, Smallpox has obliterated societies with ease. Many civilizations found ways to inoculate their citizens with the least amount of symptoms through processes known as variolation and vaccination. Development of the treatment for smallpox mostly began in the end of the eighteenth century and continued through 1970s, until smallpox was eradicated in 1980.
Smallpox is thought to have first started in Africa and then moved to...
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... Vaccine. 1st ed. Vol. 1. London: Heinemann Educational Books Ltd, 1981. 1-196.
Brannon, Heather. "The History of Smallpox." About.Com. 24 Sept. 2005. Health on the Net Foundation. 26 July 2007
smallpoxhx.htm>.
"The First Recorded Smallpox Vaccination." The Dorset Page. 2000. The Dorset Page. 27 July 2007 .
Krasner, Gary. "Smallpox Vaccination Dangers." NaturoDoc. 2007. NaturoDoc LLC. 27 July 2007
_vaccine.htm>.
Ogden, Horace G.. CDC and the Smallpox Crusade. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1987.
Razzell, Peter. Edward Jenner's Cowpox Vaccine: the History of a Medical Myth. 1st ed. Vol. 1. Great Britain: Caliban Books, 1977. 5-107.
This summer we had an opportunity to dive into the world of bioweapons, through Richard Preston’s novel The Demon in the Freezer. His book explored the colorful world of smallpox and its use as a biological weapon. Earlier this week we were graced with this authors present for an ACES event. He discussed some of the found topics in his book such as animal testing, what small pox is, and even its eradication. One of the great things we had the chance of vocalizing were our many opinions on the gloom associated with this intriguing disease.
“Future nations will know by history only that the loathsome smallpox has existed and by you extirpated”. This quote comes from Thomas Jefferson to Edward Jenner, he founder of the smallpox vaccine. It would only be 100 years later that Jefferson would see his dream fulfilled, but not without struggle. In House on Fire, author William H. Foege shares his first hand view of the lengths that society needed to go through to rid the world of the disease that had plagued it for so long. The story of the fight against smallpox extends long before our efforts for global eradication and is a representation of how society deals with widespread disease. House on
The Demon in the Freezer by Richard Preston is an intriguing book that discusses the anthrax terrorist attacks after 9/11 and how smallpox might become a future bioterrorist threat to the world. The book provides a brief history of the smallpox disease including details of an outbreak in Germany in 1970. The disease was eradicated in 1979 due to the World Health Organization’s aggressive vaccine program. After the virus was no longer a treat the World Health Organization discontinued recommending the smallpox vaccination. In conjunction, inventory of the vaccine was decreased to save money. The virus was locked up in two labs, one in the United States and one in Russia. However, some feel the smallpox virus exists elsewhere. Dr. Peter Jahrling and a team of scientists at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Maryland became concerned terrorists had access to the smallpox virus and planed to alter the strain to become more resistant. These doctors conducted smallpox experiments to discover more effective vaccines in case the virus were released. Preparedness for a major epidemic is discussed as well as the ease with which smallpox can be bioengineered.
In closing, the variola virus affected a great amount in that era including, military strategy, trade, and native populations. Elizabeth A. Fenn’s book Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82 sheds light on a significant aspect of that era that had not been given proper credence beforehand. She also illuminated the effect of smallpox when it came to race and social status. With regard to race, smallpox decimated much of the non European populations partly because of their lack of an innate immunity to that virus and Europeans lack of regard for those of a different race. Fenn’s argument on social status showed how the poorer strata’s of society suffered more severely from the variola virus because of their lack of finances to get inoculated; thus, the poor often suffered a worse strain of the virus which often lead to death.
Blackbird's book, like many similar autoethnographic texts, is a combination of autobiography, history, ethnography, and polemic. He opens with a conventional reference to inaccuracy in current histories. In the course of correcting the record he relates the story, preserved by elders of his nation, of a smallpox epidemic during the height of the French and Indian War, about 1757. Blackbird's story is unique because of the unusual disease vector.
Murphy, Jim. An American Plague: the True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793. New York, NY: Clarion Books, 2003. Print.
Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth century a disease dominated the world killing one in three people who caught it, smallpox. The few that survived the disease were left with very disfigured bodies and weak immune systems. In modern days this disease seems very unusual and hard to catch; it is all because of one man, Edward Jenner.
Krebsbach, Suzanne. “The Great Charlestown Smallpox Epidemic of 1760.” The South Carolina Historical Magazine 97, no. 1 (1996): 30-37. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27570134.
The perspective the author gives to this book is a unique. Smallpox according to most histories does not play the role of a major character, but a minor part. In my opinion smallpox was a major factor during the Revolutionary War, and Feen focuses on several key areas which allows us to see just how bad this epidemic was and the grip it had not only on the soldiers, but the colonist as well.
From 166 A.D. to 180 A.D., The Antonine Plague spread around Europe devastating many countries. This epidemic killed thousands per day and is also known as the modern-day name Smallpox. It is known as one of deadliest plagues around the world.
Kent, Susan Kingsley. The Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2013. Print.
Murphy, Jim. An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic 1793. New York, New York: Clariton Book, 2003. Print.
Illness has been a major part of humankind’s lives almost since the beginning of time. Throughout history, illnesses caused fatal epidemics that caused deaths between young and old, and brought fear upon all for the absence of a cure. Having an illness throughout most of history was considered an inevitable death sentence, as the majority of causes of death (Offit). Vaccinations have been experimented in China and Turkey in the 15th century, with methods such as inhaling or rubbing grounded up smallpox scabs against open cuts (Clem). Then in 1700s, the first form of modern vaccination was invented by Edward Jenner with the cowpox virus acting against smallpox, giving immunity against it (Offit).
“The Influenza Pandemic of 1918.” Billings, Molly. Stanford University Virology. June 1, 1997. retrieved from http://virus.stanford.edu/uda/
For innumerable centuries, unrelenting strains of disease have ravaged society. From the polio epidemic in the twentieth century to the measles cases in the latter half of the century, such an adverse component of nature has taken the lives of many. In 1796, Edward Jenner discovered that exposure to cowpox could foster immunity against smallpox; through injecting the cowpox into another person’s arm, he founded the revolutionary concept known as a vaccination. While many attribute the eradication of various diseases to vaccines, many United States citizens are progressively beginning to oppose them. Many deludedly thought that measles had been completely terminated throughout the United States.