[ad_1]
THE May 14, 1796 it is a defining date in the history of mankind.
It was the day that Edward jenner From a simple English physician, he suddenly became the undisputed “father of modern immunology”, saving (in the future) millions of lives.
Jenner was born on May 17, 1749, in the small town of Berkeley, Gloucestershire. After completing his studies in 1773, he returned to Berkeley and began to practice medicine. Jenner was very observant, having many activities that required observation, such as studying plants and collecting fossils.
In her area, it was very common for cattle to be infected with vaccinia, which is a form of smallpox that mainly affects cattle.
In 1788, the smallpox epidemic in Gloucestershire was very intense and Jenner noticed that Farmers who had contracted the much milder vaccine were not affected by smallpox, whereas, on the contrary, those who were infected had never been ill with vaccinia.
His comments caught the attention of great medical scientists, but they paid no attention to Jenner’s conclusion that vaccinia germ creates immunity to smallpox, attributing the cases he mentioned to a simple coincidence.
With experiments discovered that the vaccine could be passed from one person to another through vaccination. He was sure of it the vaccinated person would not be afraid of contracting smallpox, but he couldn’t find anyone who would accept the vaccinia vaccine.
He was given the opportunity when a young farmer visited him with symptoms of hepatitis. Jenner carefully took the fluid from the ulcers that had appeared on the young woman’s hand and decided to transfuse it into the body of a healthy person. He believed that the microorganisms that caused the vaccine would make the body of a healthy person able to cope with a future case of smallpox.
TO On May 14, 1796, Jenner conducted her experiment with eight-year-old James Phipps., who was the son of his gardener. To Jenner’s surprise, her gardener agreed to perform the experiment.
Jenner somehow vaccinated him Pips with vaccinia germ. If he his theory was correct, James he would never get smallpox. Jenner then made two small, shallow incisions on the boy’s left arm and smeared them with the liquid she had taken from the young farmer. Then he bandaged his arm.
Little James got a very mild form of vaccinia. The following July, when the little one made a full recoveryJenner vaccinated him again, this time with a normal smallpox virus. The little boy was not infected with smallpox and that is why Jenner had the confirmation of his theory. Jenner did not hesitate to repeat the experiment on other children, including her 11-month-old son. After the success of the experiment, many readily agreed to vaccinate them against smallpox.
In 1797 he presented the results of his research to the Royal Society, which rejected them. In 1798, Jenner resubmitted his discoveries and the Society approved the its publication, which took place under the title “Research on the causes and effects of smallpox” (Research on the causes and effects of Variolae Vaccinae).
Jenner called the process vaccination (vaccination) from the name of the virus variolae vaccinae, which means in Latin “Cow pox”, while he was also first to use the term virus (virus).
Its publication was not welcome. On the contrary, he was insulted by almost the entire press, while the attack he received from the church who claimed that “The vaccination was an abominable act and against the divine will.”
Shortly after, and despite the reactions, the vaccine was introduced at St. Thomas Hospital. In practice, it was first used in the British army and navy and later spread throughout England. The method quickly spread to both the United States and the rest of Europe.
Now, two centuries later, its discovery is believed to have saved more lives than any other.
Human oligarchy, this scourge
How much vaccines have changed the course of humanity for the better, of course, he admits. Korando Outzas in your text in “The Republic».
The Italian writer and journalist cites the deadly plague epidemic that struck Milan between 1629 and 1631, not so much because more than a million people died, but because for the first time the evil was not interpreted as divine punishment but as a “consequence of human malice or nonsense ”, and although the spread of the pandemic in the wider area contributed (almost exclusively) to the oligarchy of local authorities to take action against the disease.
“In this war of adventure between humanity and viruses, I confess that I was very impressed by the story of the victims of the seventeenth century plague brought to Milan by the German mercenaries of the time. Attributing the cause of the plague to a group of bad or selfish men who supposedly went out to knowingly poison the crowds is clearly nonsense. But behind this absurd explanation hides a crude popular interpretation of that time, where evil is no longer seen as the result of divine wrath, but as an affliction derived from human evil or stupidity. The transmission of the cause of the plague “from heaven to earth” was a precondition for the people of that time to imagine that they could cure it., as soon as the tools are found. And these came, with the discovery of the microscope and the world that emerged from what came under it. “It took many years between the first experiments with a pair of lenses attached to a metal tube until a real microscope capable of detecting viruses was invented.”
“These little devices, microscopes, revealed a world that no one had suspected existed. A drop of vinegar under the tiny lens revealed that it is inhabited by tiny eels. Likewise, a drop of blood, a drop of semen, a fly’s eye, a little stagnant water. “We discovered viruses, we learned to analyze them, to treat them with vaccines,” concludes the Italian in a significant way.
How to get rid of smallpox and cholera
The first epidemic smallpox, also known as Variola (from the Latin word “varus” meaning “mark on the skin”), mentioned in history occurred in 1350 BC. in ancient Egypt and Asia. THE Pharaoh of Ramses the fifth died of smallpox in 1,157 BC. C. as Signs of smallpox were found on the mummy. of.
In the 18th century, more than 60 million people died of smallpox in Europe alone. A third of those who survived went blind. The fact that people who survived the disease did not get sick again pushed one Buddhist nun in China (1022-1063), to take smallpox leftovers, put them into powder and blow them into the noses of healthy people (Variolation). This practice continued until 1800 in many Asian countries. In Europe it began in 1710 and continued until the discovery of the vaccine.
Somehow the The last smallpox epidemic occurred in 1967 with 15 million patients and 2 million deaths. That year, the World Health Organization launched a global campaign to reduce and eradicate the disease. The systemic administration of the vaccine began worldwide only in 1956.
Mass vaccinations were very effective and the last case of smallpox occurred on October 26, 1977 in Somalia, while the last death was recorded on September 11, 1978 in a Birmingham laboratory due to accidental infection. The vaccine continued for another two years and ended with the announcement of the World Health Organization in Geneva on May 8, 1980 about the complete elimination of smallpox all over the world.
Same with anger, a disease caused by the cholera bacterium Vibrio cholerae and characterized by severe diarrhea, which can cause severe dehydration. It is due to the consumption of water, milk or food that has been contaminated due to unhealthy ways of operating the water supply and sewage systems.
The first to discover the cholera bacteria was The Italian physician Filippo Pacini in 1854, during an epidemic in Florence. Unfortunately, the Italian medical community completely ignored their discovery, because they did not believe that diseases like cholera were caused by germs. In the same year or British physician John Snow showed that cholera is transmitted through contaminated water, especially stagnant waters of the Thames, and not through the air as was believed at the time.
In 1865, during a cholera epidemic in Marseilles the Louis Pasteur He did a series of experiments to detect the germ, but to no avail. The cholera bacteria was finally rediscovered in 1883 by the German physician Robert Koch, convincing the medical community that diseases like cholera were caused by germs
In 1879, oh Charles Samberlan, Pasteur’s assistant, discovered it accidentally cholera vaccine. He vaccinated the chickens with a vaccine made from an old crop of material from chickens suffering from cholera and found that the vaccinated chickens were not sick. Although the vaccine was discovered in 1879, the first cholera vaccines were released in 1917.
There have been a total of seven cholera pandemics from 1817 to 1970. A total of more than 45 million people have died of cholera since 1817, including the famous composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky who died of cholera on November 6, 1893 at the age of 51.
Polio, the shameful “infantile paralysis”
Poliomyelitis appeared in prehistoric times. Paintings and reliefs show paralyzed people in ancient Egypt. In 1916, more than 9,000 cases were registered in New York.
In 1921, the later president of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt you get polio at the age of 39. When he was elected President of the United States in 1932, he successfully concealed his disability during his presidency. Photos usually showed it from the middle up!
In 1934 there was a new epidemic in Los Angeles, with more than 3,000 cases, while the next great epidemic occurred after World War II with 20,000 cases (1945-1949). In 1952-53 a new major epidemic occurred in the 48 states of the United States with 93,000 cases, 5,000 deaths, and more than 30,000 paralyzes, the vast majority of children between the ages of 8 and 16.
In 1935 the first attempt to make the vaccine was made with total failure. The vaccine itself caused severe and fatal polio. The first effective polio vaccine was manufactured in injectable form by Jonas Schalk in 1954 in Pittsburgh from the US using killed viruses. His administration began the following year.
the 1959 Albert Sabin manufactures and tests the new vaccine with great clinical success and in 1962 completely replaces the Schalk vaccine. New the vaccine was administered orally and it was considered more effective. Mass vaccination of this vaccine in 1961 and 1963 contributed to the dramatic decline in polio cases worldwide, from 350,000 cases in 1988 to 1,170 in 2004 and only 105 in 2005 (Sudan, Nigeria). In 1993 and 1994 in India and China alone, 163 million children were vaccinated in just a few days (polio week).
By 1995, 140 countries had been declared by the World Health Organization as polio free.
Currently, polio is endemic mainly in four countries, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria, while sporadic cases continue to occur in 30 other African and Asian countries. In recent years, within the framework of the Global Poliomyelitis Eradication Initiative (GPEI), mass vaccinations have been carried out in these countries with the aim of completely eradicating the disease in the next five years, by 2025.
[ad_2]
