The Eradication of Smallpox
Although it has taken a huge collective effort by many individuals and nations, the eradication of smallpox was mainly brought about by the pioneering efforts of Edward Jenner. Smallpox had been killing humans for over 3000 years and has been referred to as one of the greatest all-time scourges to mankind. One of the first known efforts to fight this horrible disease by immunization was in China where powdered scabs of smallpox pustules were blown into the nostrils of healthy persons through a tube. This method of immunization was called variolation and involved taking samples (which consisted of vesicles, pus from pustules, or ground scabs) from patients who had a mild form of the disease and inoculating the material into other persons through the nose or skin (Hopkins 24). The practice of variolation came to Europe from the East at the beginning of the 18th century by Lady Mary Wortley Montague, and English
By 1950, North America, Central America and Europe were virtually free from the disease. This method of variolation slowly gained general acceptance throughout all of Europe, although it had varying degrees of success. Victory was declared in the war against smallpox on May 8, 1980 when the WHO declared that smallpox had been completely eradicated (Hopkins 174). Since then there has only been one other case of smallpox, which was caused by a laboratory mishap in 1978. So, in 1796 he "vaccinated" an 8-year-old boy with fluid from a cowpox pustule on a milkmaid's hand. This was the first variolation performed in England (Hopkins 38). As a result of that program, the last natural occurrence of smallpox was treated in 1977 in Somalia. Lady Montague's husband was an ambassador to the East for England and while in Istanbul, she observed their method of variolation. Later, after much more research and testing by Jenner and other colleagues, vaccinations became increasingly more commonplace and popular. His hypothesis had been correct; but despite this breakthrough, the scientific and medical community in England scoffed at his experiments and rejected his research. After much investigation, Jenner decided that the only way to know for sure if having cowpox provided immunity from smallpox was to experiment. A few innovative scientists saw that there must be a better way to provide immunity, and Edward Jenner saw this "better way" in a correlation between cowpox and smallpox that eventually dubbed him the "father of the smallpox vaccination" (Zimmerman and Zimmerman 12). Throughout the 1800's and 1900's, the use of widespread vaccinations became commonplace. Jenner had fist proposed the idea of worldwide eradication of smallpox by vaccination in 1801, but it took until 1965 for the World Health Organization (WHO) to get such a program underway.
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