The Creation of The World’s First Vaccine
Hello everyone. Allow me to introduce you to our second project of the year. So far, we have been learning about the story behind The Manhattan Project. We have also been introduced to a unique artist expression called conceptual art. And finally, our teachers are convinced that by the end of this project, we will believe that the Manhattan project is the most historically significant event ever.
However, today, I am going to be giving my own opinion by talking about a significant event that I believe has a lasting impact on the course of history – The Creation of the First Ever Vaccine. Before I get into how I believe it’s historically significant, let’s first explore a backstory that lead to this significant event – the disease known as Smallpox.
Smallpox was a brutal disease. Your body would ache, you’d have a high fever, sore throat, headaches, difficulty breathing and a horrible rash over your entire body (I won’t go into gory detail about that, but again, brutal). Edward Jenner was a country doctor in England, who was thought to have interest in curing smallpox by his scarring childhood experience of smallpox variolation (which was how they had attempted to treat this disease before his discovery).
It was quite well known in rural England that there was a group of people that seemed to be immune to smallpox. Milkmaids and farmers instead contracted a much more mild cattle disease called cowpox. In 1796, Jenner had gathered enough circumstantial evidence from milkmaids and farmers, that he decided to conduct an experiment. Interesting fact, this experiment was done on a child, which would’ve been super problematic if done today. But, since the mortality rate was highest for children, it was essential to this experiment.
In the late 1700’s there were very little medical advancements. Jenner, like everyone else at that time, didn’t fully understand the reason behind the success of vaccines – the creation of immunity and antibodies in the human body. Yet, his experiment was successful, and did lead to later discoveries of how the human body really worked. In his experiment, he scratched some pus from cowpox lesions on the hands of a milkmaid into the skin of an eight year old. The child recovered after a few days of mild illness and Jenner then inoculated the boy with matter from a smallpox blister to see if he would contract the disease. Turns out, he didn’t, nor did anyone he came in contact with.
After Edward Jenner published his work/findings, this news spread accross Europe. And later, around the world. When he found out, King Charles IV got a physician to deliver the vaccine to all of the Spanish empire.
Something else that I found interesting was that Jenner didn’t want to make any money from his vaccine, and wasn’t interested in patenting it. His vaccine was “free to the world”. He just wanted people to know about it and wanted to share it. This is contrary to todays world, where companies like Pfizer are making billions on vaccines.
Within 20 years of his discovery, his vaccine was already saving millions of lives. Smallpox vaccination was common around the world. Jenner’s determination and innovation changed the world and saved so many lives, and even continues to save lives today.
The creation of the vaccine and it’s rise of popularity marks the start of the medical revolution. This also increased life expectancy for mankind, the symptoms of a widespread disease (like smallpox) that were often really severe, were now easily treatable. In the following centuries, more and more vaccines have been created and the quality of medicare has increased, which has largely impacted society as a whole.
What’s important to wrap your head around, is that Jenner created the concept of vaccinology, which is something extremely important to this day – i.e. COVID-19 . Not to mention, without the start of the medical revolution, we wouldn’t have had things such as antibiotics, penicillin or much more recent, mRNA technology which is said to potentially help boost immunity against diseases such as cancer.
The discovery of the world’s first vaccine affects anyone who has access to or has taken a vaccine in their lives. It allows people to travel the world, without getting some diseases that may still be an issue in certain developing countries. Taking necessary vaccines also allows for less strain on the medical system, with less people in hospitals. To sum up, vaccines can mean the difference between life and death, they are just as important to your overall health as diet and exercise.
So this leaves me pondering with the question, what would life be like today without vaccines?
I believe that it would very different. Population growth and life expectancy of humans plays a huge role in the vast majority of human evolution. So, it could be argued that a large portion of significant discoveries and events may have never occurred if diseases that are now cured by vaccines roamed the earth killing millions. In fact, Leo Szilard was the “ripe old age” of 35 years old when he developed the idea of the nuclear chain reaction, which lead to the start of the Manhattan Project. In a world in which no vaccines existed and viruses ruled the world, Szilard may have never had the chance to be such a huge factor in the lasting impacts from the atomic bomb.