The genesis of an Elixir
Amidst the second wave of COVID-19, people are getting really mad for vaccines and vaccination, they are questioning its safety and effectiveness and side-effects and all, because at this time we know the procedures of making a vaccine, how it works and cases where it can fail, etc. among all these there is a hidden story of its discovery, let’s get it.
Okay, whenever the discoverer of vaccination is talked about, there comes Edward Jenner and smallpox in our mind, right? But that’s not fully true because the concept was seeded a
B. Jesty did noticed the same thing that Jenner noticed some
20 years later, he noticed that infection with cowpox saves one from the grasp
of smallpox. And he worked accordingly, he noticed that those who cares for the
cows actually didn’t get affected by smallpox, with this observation in his
minds he took all of his family to a nearby farm and infected them with cowpox
and hence immunizing them against smallpox.
There were total six people who did this inoculation for being safeguarded from the severe smallpox. Among them Jesty’s work was notable and only one whose work predated Jesty’s work was of Jobst Bose of Germany (from "The Greatest Killer: Smallpox in History" by Donald R. Hopkins).
Two decades ahead from Jesty’s work Edward Jenner pushed the pus of pustules from cow pox into the body of several person through incisions on their arms who were at some point of their life was infected by cow pox. And later he found them unaffected on exposure to small pox.
But, he didn’t stopped there, he furthered his stepping and
took this whole thing one level up. On 14th of May, 1796 the one of
the biggest risk in the history of medicine is taken, by baiting an 8 year old
fresh life, James Phipps. And it was successful and the humanity got vaccine.
Prior to James Phipps Jenner tried his material (he called it – “variolous matter”) with 16 persons who had at some point of their life been infected by cowpox. And Phipps was the 17th case with his he tried the variolous matter and came up with the first vaccine.
Edward Jenner briefly noted all his experiments as cases and
it totals to 23. He published his experiments as cases along with observations
and some other factors on 1798 with a long title named “Inquiry into the Variolae vaccinae known as the Cow Pox”.
This breakthrough invention has saved a great number of
lives (i.e. a significant percentage of the human population) and earned him
the title of “The Father of Immunology”.
The idea that Jenner seeded in humanity is still the same
efficient as it was in the late 18th century, and one can say today’s
vaccines are more safer than that of Jenner’s.
As time passed vaccines jumped from generation-I to
generation-III, their process of preparation and sources were assessed and
modified time to time from injecting fresh pus from cowpox pustules in gen—I vaccine
to recombinant vaccines produced in highly modern plants in gen.- III vaccines.
With time and generation vaccine has grown more and more safe
for mass application and mass vaccination programs have stayed highly
successful in controlling the spread of diseases. But eradication of disease
using vaccine is only successful in case of smallpox with its last known case in
1977, Somalia.
But there are thousand other diseases to fight against with
vaccine as a weapon only after being sure that the weapon doesn’t hit back.
"The lives of millions of children have been saved, millions have the chance of a longer healthier life, a greater chance to learn, to play, to read and write, to move around freely without suffering."
