As a non-shitpost tid bit, this picture is depicting Edward Jenner, who made the first vaccine by inoculating people (first milkmaids, then anyone) against cowpox. Basically just took a scalpel and took some material from the sore on a cow with cowpox and scraped it on people.
Turned out pretty effective - and down the line we have vaccines
I imagine he might not be the first person who did, the rest are just lost to history due to lack of observable / recorded results.
Earlier generations of people tended to have kind of a general, observation based understanding of that kind of thing where cause and effect was generally observed but people didn’t understand the why of it. People even very early on knew that if you caught a disease once you were less likely to catch it severely again, and they knew that if you quarantined a group of people the disease would eventually “die out”, but they had no real idea as to why in either case.
People have always been able to understand patterns like that, it’s just really hard to develop germ theory without microscopes, and they need a lot of supporting technology before you can make them.
Variolation (introducing the smallpox virus through the skin, not respiratory tract as its natural spread would be, usually leading to a milder infection and subsequent immunity) had been around for a while. Jenner’s accomplishment was successfully using the related cowpox virus to grant immunity to the smallpox virus, based on observations that people working with cattle rarely caught smallpox. This eliminated many of the downsides of variolation (eg. risk of breakthrough disease, and variolated individuals being infectious for smallpox for a while).
As a non-shitpost tid bit, this picture is depicting Edward Jenner, who made the first vaccine by inoculating people (first milkmaids, then anyone) against cowpox. Basically just took a scalpel and took some material from the sore on a cow with cowpox and scraped it on people.
Turned out pretty effective - and down the line we have vaccines
Didn’t he start with an orphan because no one would care about him? Which is harsh by modern standards.
Also: cow is “vacca” in Latin and that’s there we got the word vaccine from.
Gotta admit, that’s pretty bad ass.
I do imagine if he failed. Then he’d be the guy who did weird things to people.
I imagine he might not be the first person who did, the rest are just lost to history due to lack of observable / recorded results.
Earlier generations of people tended to have kind of a general, observation based understanding of that kind of thing where cause and effect was generally observed but people didn’t understand the why of it. People even very early on knew that if you caught a disease once you were less likely to catch it severely again, and they knew that if you quarantined a group of people the disease would eventually “die out”, but they had no real idea as to why in either case.
People have always been able to understand patterns like that, it’s just really hard to develop germ theory without microscopes, and they need a lot of supporting technology before you can make them.
Variolation (introducing the smallpox virus through the skin, not respiratory tract as its natural spread would be, usually leading to a milder infection and subsequent immunity) had been around for a while. Jenner’s accomplishment was successfully using the related cowpox virus to grant immunity to the smallpox virus, based on observations that people working with cattle rarely caught smallpox. This eliminated many of the downsides of variolation (eg. risk of breakthrough disease, and variolated individuals being infectious for smallpox for a while).
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