Dr. Anthony Fauci recently wrote a book (On Call) describing, in part, his time fighting COVID. I remember all the controversy surrounding the development of the vaccines. I wonder how Edward Jenner would have handled that situation….
Smallpox was mentioned by the Chinese as far back as the twelfth century B.C. and by the eighteenth century A.D. it was still one of the world’s most dreaded diseases — it left scars, and its victims could be left blind or even die.
In the 1770s, in England, the only people who would care for smallpox patents were those who’d survived the disease and couldn’t catch it again. A surgeon’s apprentice, Edward Jenner, found out that a woman that was nursing one of his patents was also his milkmaid. She told him that even though she’d never had smallpox, she was immune to it because she’d had cowpox. Cowpox affected cows and sheep — it also made people sick, but it was a mild disease compared to smallpox. Jenner told the surgeon he worked for about the woman, but the surgeon told him not to listen to worthless old wives’ tales.
But Jenner started to keep track of what happened to people who’d recovered from cowpox and were later exposed to smallpox. Turns out that the milkmaid was right. Edward Jenner eventually published a pamphlet stating that inoculations with cowpox would save people from dying of smallpox. After years of ridicule, his idea was accepted. Jenner is now known as the inventor of vaccinations. Smallpox has pretty much been wiped out, and countless lives have been saved with vaccinations — a word that’s derived from the Latin word “vacua.” It means “cow.”
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