Edward Jenner and the Discovery of Vaccines
Edward Jenner (1749-1823) trained in London, under John Hunter, and
was an army surgeon for a period of time. After that, he spent his
whole career as a country doctor in his home county, Gloucestershire
(West of England). His research was based on careful case studies and
clinical observation more than a hundred years before scientists could
explain what viruses and diseases actually were. His innovative new
method was successful to such an extent that by 1840 the British
government had banned alternative preventive treatments against
smallpox.
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His invention of vaccination against smallpox was the medical
breakthrough that saved the most lives, before antibiotics came into
mass use. Before Jenner's vaccine, smallpox was a killer disease; the
majority of its victims were infants and young children. In the
twentieth century alone it killed more than 300 million -
approximately three times the number of deaths from all of that
century's wars and battles combined.
The last reported case of smallpox occurred in Somalia. There, on
October 26, 1977, a youth named Ali Maow Maalin recovered from a rash
caused by smallpox. He was entitled the last case of natural smallpox
in the world. In 1980, thanks to Jenner's discovery, the World Health
Assembly officially declared "the world and its peoples" free from
endemic smallpox.
When Jenner began medical practice at Berkeley (in Gloucestershire) he
was asked a lot, to inoculate persons against smallpox. Inoculation
was not a common practice in the English countryside until around 1768
when Robert Sutton (of Debenham, Suffolk) i...
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...any - it was his
gift to the world.
The word vaccination comes from the Latin 'vacca' which means cow - in
honour of the part played by the cow Blossom and Sarah in Jenner's
research. "Vaccination," the word Jenner invented for his treatment,
was adopted by Pasteur for immunization against any disease.
We now know that one way to create a vaccine is to use an organism
which is similar to the virulent organism but that does not cause
serious disease, such as Jenner did with his use of the relatively
mild cowpox virus to protect against the similar, but often lethal,
smallpox virus. A more modern example of this type of vaccine is the
BCG vaccine used to protect against Tuberculosis.
Strangely enough, Jenner invented vaccination before physicians and
scientists had a proper understanding of viruses and disease.
In the United States there was a vicious enemy everyone feared. In the 1950s the United States was under attack by the ruthless Poliomyelitis virus. Americans lived in constant fear of their children contracting this horrible virus that left many children paralyzed. During the outbreaks in the 1950s foundations were created to fund research and create awareness to help find a way to eradicate the virus. Americans become focused on doing anything in their power to fight this virus off. Jonas Salk’s Exploration of Medicine and research led to the creation of the Polio vaccine that united the country, prevented further outbreaks, and introduced a new form of treatment which has limited the fatality of polio infections today.
My siblings and I have never received any vaccinations because my parents opted out of them. Up until second grade, I thought it was rare for people to get shots. I didn’t realize that vaccines were required to go to school and that I was in the minority. Now that I know this, I am meeting more people that aren’t vaccinated. For example, my next door neighbors have five children who aren’t vaccinated, and they homeschool. Similarly, my second cousins, have five children that homeschool and have not been vaccinated. This made me wonder if maybe not vaccinating a child fits into a view of life that includes homeschool and large families. Lastly, my sisters and I all had the Chickenpox when we were younger so I think we are immune to getting them again. I am curious whether beating the disease is better than just getting the vaccine.
Vaccine safety is one of the most controversial topics in today’s public discourse. Everyone has heard of them, but few know why they are so encouraged. A vaccine contains a weak or dead version of a microbe. This creates a small scale invasion of the immune system, which activates cells to destroy the microbe. Once these cells have been made they are always there to provide protection. This protection is immunity, for those cells are then able to recognize any live version of the same microbe and attack it immediately. This can save lives but also be dangerous, vaccines carry many other components which can cause side effects. These could be simple adverse effects such as a small cold or, in the rare case,
The 1950s were a decade in American history that was filled with many of successes. Everybody was excited and relieved now that the war was finally over and that their loved ones were safely home with their families. Families in the 1950s were very conservative and always had the perfect family image, until the “teenagers” came along. Teens were not the most likable people in society, because they listened to crazy, tasteless music and were known as rebels. The crazy, tasteless music changed music forever. Since the 50s were right after WWII, many foreign policies emerged, some provided assistance to countries that were in need. The U.S. was also dealing with and epidemic for years, until the early 50s when a vaccine was created which also changed the way vaccinations were given to the public. The 1950’s were the most influential decade towards contemporary America because, throughout this decade not only did we discover vaccinations that saved hundreds of live, but we also had the rise of Rock N’ Roll which changed music forever including a foreign policy which helped rebuild economies in Europe called the Marshall Plan.
In order to understand the history of smallpox one first has to understand how diseases like it evolve. Much like other species, diseases that survive in the long run are the microbes that most effectively reproduce and are able to find suitable places to live. For a microbe to effectively reproduce, it must "be defined mathematically as the number of new infected per each original patient." This number will largely depend on how long each victim is able to spread the virus to other victims (Diamond, 198).
By preserving the virus, Boylston personally inoculated 247 people in 1721 and 1722 to prevent transmission. However, from there only six people died, and Boylston was the first American surgeon to inoculate his patients personally. The author portrays the background data Boylston used to examine the inoculation practice on different age and gender of persons to treat his patients from previous experiments. The inoculation method provided higher level of immunity in preventing smallpox infection. The prevention of smallpox is through inducing antibodies through vaccines which last longer for a person taking it.
Vaccines have been used to prevent diseases for centuries, and have saved countless lives of children and adults. The smallpox vaccine was invented as early as 1796, and since then the use of vaccines has continued to protect us from countless life threatening diseases such as polio, measles, and pertussis. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (2010) assures that vaccines are extensively tested by scientist to make sure they are effective and safe, and must receive the approval of the Food and Drug Administration before being used. “Perhaps the greatest success story in public health is the reduction of infectious diseases due to the use of vaccines” (CDC, 2010). Routine immunization has eliminated smallpox from the globe and led to the near removal of wild polio virus. Vaccines have reduced some preventable infectious diseases to an all-time low, and now few people experience the devastating effects of measles, pertussis, and other illnesses.
Edward Jenner is often regarded as the “Father of Immunology” for his development of the smallpox vaccine. His remarkable discovery has laid the foundation for future scientists working with immunizations. Jenner’s impact is seen worldwide to this day with the complete eradication of the deadly smallpox virus. Edward Jenner’s Legacy will always live on as the first to vaccinate using a live virus. Vaccines are improving everyday, which benefits the public’s health, all thanks to Edward Jenner.
The first discovery was made in 1952, in the developing field of virology. Virology is the study of viruses and how they behave. To develop the vaccines for the viruses, researchers infected the HeLa cells with many types of infections, such as measles, mumps, and the infamous poliomyelitis virus, also known as Polio. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), whose mission is to save lives and protect people’s health security, Polio is a "crippling and potentially deadly infectious disease caused by a virus that spreads from person to person invading the brain and spinal cord and causing paralysis" (Freeman). Jonas Salk, who was a virologist at the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (NFIP), used inactivated viruses (virus particles grown in culture and then killed by a form of heat) to create a polio vaccine. Salk drew blood from about two million children, which the NFIP checked for immunization.Through the collection of many HeLa cells and trial and error, the polio vaccine wa...
Vaccinations are designed to help people go through their everyday lives. A country doctor, Edward Jenner, who lived in Berkeley, England, first administered vaccines in 1796 (Health Affairs). Throughout history, vaccinations have become better where they are safer for the human body. Everyone should get vaccinated against certain diseases to stay healthy. Vaccines have been proven to make people immune to serious diseases (Childhood Immunization).
Omer, S. B., Salmon, D.A., Orenstein, W. A., deHart, M. P., & Halsey, N. (2009). Vaccine
... because of the need to fight back against infectious diseases. As vaccine development progresses into the 21st century, it’s important to build on the experience and knowledge generated in the past, in an effort to surpass the limita-tions that currently hamper the development of new and more effective vaccine technologies.
Today eighty percent of infants are being vaccinated for diphtheria; pertussis (whooping cough), polio, measles, tetanus and tuberculosis (Landrige 2000). This percentage is up from about five percent in the mid-1970s; however, the death toll from these infections is roughly three million annually. Millions still die from infectious diseases for which immunizations are non-existent, unreliable, or too costly. Vaccines all function with the same idea in mind, priming the immune system to swiftly destroy specific disease-causing agents, or pathogens, before the agents can multiply enough to cause symptoms (Landrige 2000). Classically, this priming has been achieved by presenting the immune system with whole viruses or bacteria that have been killed or made too weak to proliferate much (Landrige 2000).
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; however, many children have been patronized by