Posted on 12/01/2021 2:53:40 PM PST by nickcarraway
Were horses involved?...
Very interesting. And if I'm reading this other reference correctly, it suggests that smallpox vaccine was developed / discovered in 1796.
Smallpox vaccine
On the other hand, when George Washington took over the Continental Army in 1775, he seems to have beat Catherine the Great to vaccine greatness by allegedly using vaccine to fight smallpox among the troops.
Rep. Thomas Massie: George Washington understood natural immunity (9.13.21)
But regardless when smallpox vaccine became available, unlike computer model experimental CV19 “vaccines,” smallpox vaccine had been in use at least 100 years before Supreme Court sided with a state for the administration of smallpox vaccines in Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 1905.
Jacobson v. Massachusetts
Finally, I wonder if medical history would have turned out better if vitamin D3 had been discovered before vaccines were.
Corrections, insights welcome.
And Covid has much less than a 1% death rate for people under the age of 60.
So did "variolation" the method Washington used to inoculate his troops.
How Crude Smallpox Inoculations Helped George Washington Win the WarBut immunization in the 1770s was not what it’s like today with a single injection and a low risk of mild symptoms. Edward Jenner didn’t even develop his revolutionary cowpox-based vaccine for smallpox until 1796. The best inoculation technique at Washington’s disposal during the Revolutionary War was a nasty and sometimes fatal method called “variolation.”
“An inoculation doctor would cut an incision in the flesh of the person being inoculated and implant a thread laced with live pustular matter (of smallpox) into the wound,” explains Fenn. “The hope and intent was for the person to come down with smallpox. When smallpox was conveyed in that fashion, it was usually a milder case than it was when it was contracted in the natural way.”
Variolization still had a case fatality rate of 5 to 10 percent. And even if all went well, inoculated patients still needed a month to recover. The procedure was not only risky for the individual patient, but for the surrounding population. An inoculee with a mild case might feel well enough to walk around town, infecting countless others with potentially more serious infections.
Edward Jenner and the history of smallpox and vaccinationWhile Jenner's interest in the protective effects of cowpox began during his apprenticeship with George Harwicke, it was 1796 before he made the first step in the long process whereby smallpox, the scourge of mankind, would be totally eradicated. For many years, he had heard the tales that dairymaids were protected from smallpox naturally after having suffered from cowpox. Pondering this, Jenner concluded that cowpox not only protected against smallpox but also could be transmitted from one person to another as a deliberate mechanism of protection. In May 1796, Edward Jenner found a young dairymaid, Sarah Nelms, who had fresh cowpox lesions on her hands and arms (Figure (Figure33). On May 14, 1796, using matter from Nelms' lesions, he inoculated an 8-year-old boy, James Phipps. Subsequently, the boy developed mild fever and discomfort in the axillae. Nine days after the procedure he felt cold and had lost his appetite, but on the next day he was much better. In July 1796, Jenner inoculated the boy again, this time with matter from a fresh smallpox lesion. No disease developed, and Jenner concluded that protection was complete.
It existed in 1777.
The fatality rate sounds like a total lie.
In any event I don’t believe it.
The cases were mild because there were known at the time to be at least two strains of the virus, one of which was mild. That’s the one, through the pustules of which they would draw the thread that would later be placed under the skin of the healthy person (often a Continental Army recruit) to have them get mildly sick and recover in two weeks.
Yes, Edward Jenner himself was inoculated in 1757.. he was 8 years old. This was the earlier variolation technique with actual smallpox.. not the cowpox that was developed later by Jenner as a vaccine.. the history is here:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1200696/
Insane with a triple dose of 🤡🌎.
Sorry if I get things messed up. And I’m not concerned too much about the precise definition of vax vs innoc vs immun. Etc.
But Washington DID indeed get as much of the armies inoculated. May not have been Jenner’s but the point is it did happen and this smallpox immunity stuff was really percolating at that time.
Thanks. That’s the same link I used.
Interesting.
Yet, given the “major” strain of smallpox has a CFR about 30%, that might’ve been a risk to take.
John Adams did it too.
Please provide a link to that information.
It was a long long way from a 98.9% survival rate.
Sorry about that.. I’ve got to start being more attentive. I did find it interesting that Jenner had been vaccinated for smallpox as a child though.
Not to beat the subject into the ground but, originally you stated that “the first patient was inoculated in 1757.” It also seemed you were saying that first patient was Edward Jenner.
But the article we both linked to states he was one of thousands of children inoculated in England that summer. And the practice went back hundreds of years, first introduced in Europe in 1670.
One or more of these three I think. Sorry can’t be more specific at this point.
These three are all absolutely splendid authors.
Washington himself contracted smallpox as a young man when he visited the Carribean with his older half brother Lawrence. Recovered well enough but had some persistent scarring on his face thereafter. Obviously he believed in natural immunity.
1.
Washington: A Life
by Ron Chernow
2.
1776
by David McCullough
3.
His Excellency: George Washington
by Joseph J. Ellis
Yes, I scanned the blurb from the Google results and misread it. The paragraph was referring to Jenner’s inoculation.not ‘the first’ one.
“John Adams did it too.”
__________
Indeed he did. Wisely do. Was not a happy camper. Wrote to Abigail from quarantine to complain. The old cannonball was back in fighting shape soon enough.
I should have known better because I knew that one of Queen Anne’s children (none out of over a dozen survived) had been inoculated... that would have been in the late 17th century.
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