. . .” As such, I believe Dr. Humphries chose an excellent title, and that she and the other authors through this work provided an immense contribution to the medical field. What follows is primarily excerpted from Dissolving Illusions (available as both a book and audiobook). For brevity, citations and references can be found there.
History of Smallpox Vaccination
When the industrial revolution began, large numbers of serfs (economic slaves) moved from the countryside to the cities to serve as the new work force. In these early cities, they lived in conditions of absolute squalor that in our modern age are difficult for most to even conceive of (which may have been partially due to the recent adoption of Thomas Malthus’s ideas on the need for population control by the European aristocracy).
As a result of these dangerous living conditions, plagues and infectious disease were commonplace. Early progressives in turn argued that improving deadly living conditions through early public hygiene programs and lessening the capitalist exploitation of the working class (by say giving humane hours or not forcing children 5 years of age to do backbreaking labor all day long) was the key to public health. There were many battles on this subject, which the activists of the time eventually won as public sentiment turned against the horrific effects of the smallpox vaccination, banishing these deadly diseases to the past.
Scarlet fever for example, killed many more people than smallpox, its decline perfectly mirrored smallpox, and few are even aware this disease previously was a horrendous plague. “ . . .
. . .”Modern medicine snuck in and successfully claimed credit for these changes, attributing them to vaccines, despite the data showing the opposite and vaccines not existing for most of the diseases. Dissolving Illusions provides the data and graphs that demonstrate there is a much stronger hypothesis to explain the decline of these infectious diseases.
An early practice to mitigate smallpox involved the intentional transmission of smallpox from one person to another (variolation), which was endorsed by some, and rejected by others as it was often viewed to be both dangerous and likely to worsen rather than improve outbreaks. For example, a 1764 article assessing the effects of variolation after 38 years of implementation found it had increased smallpox cases by 41% and smallpox deaths by 27%. As the hypodermic needle had not yet been invented, inoculation was achieved by rubbing an open wound on the arm with infected material. Folk rumors that exposure to cowpox appeared to protect milkmaids from smallpox also existed and physicians had attempting inoculation of cowpox (rather smallpox variolation) as a means of smallpox prevention.” . . .
Difference is...the smallpox vaccination works....AND they didn’t quarantine well people.