The smallpox vaccine

 

The Smallpox vaccine

 We all know Edward Jenner as the Father of Vaccination as he is credited with discovering the first vaccination which was against the deadly small pox (the speckled monster, as it was called in those days).

 However, the story of vaccines should actually start with a bold lady who went against the prevailing views and dared to inoculate her children to protect them from this nasty smallpox infection. The name of this brave woman was Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Wife of a British ambassador to Turkey, Mary was fiercely independent with an open mind and great a observation. During her interactions with the beautiful Turkish women she observed that they didn’t bear any small pox marks. Having herself being badly affected with the smallpox when in England( her skin was scarred, her eyelashes were lost and the skin around her eyes was left red and irritable for the rest of her life), she was surprised to know that the people in Turkey suffered a very mild form of the disease. This was ascribed to a practice of inoculation carried out by old women who carried needles and the material from the pustules of smallpox! This was sometime in the year 1717. Mary lost no time in getting her son inoculated before moving back to Britain where she had seen the devastating effects of the infection. Later she also had her daughter who was born after her return to England inoculated. She invited people to watch the process of her daughter going through the process and recovering without any harm. This made the practice popular among her aristocratic friends and eventually being adopted even by the royal family. After two of the King’s granddaughters were inoculated, the practice began spreading. Edward Jenner, born in 1749 may himself have been inoculated by the same practice! However, in 1796, Jenner, a respected practicing physician now, demonstrated the efficacy of his vaccine made from the less dangerous cowpox. We all know how he converted his observation of people previously affected by cowpox not contracting smallpox into a successful vaccine. His efforts were lauded and the vaccine became popular leading eventually to eradication of the disease in 1970s. However, Lady Montagu who first brought the practice to England and made it popular was forgotten.

As the scientist Francis Galton later puts it, “In science the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not to the man to whom the idea first occurs.”

                                   

                                                    Lady Mary Wortley Montagu



                                                                           Edward Jenner

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