History of Science 2220 Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Smallpox, Pus
5 Sep 2016
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Department
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Professor
Clinical medicine
Smallpox vaccination
⚫ Smallpox = Variola virus
⚫ This is the first real discovery of a powerhouse therapeutic method
⚫ Medicine becomes better at identifying the body, rejecting
humors, surgery is much better, you can preserve wounds. Still
do not really understand germs, no real new remedies to use,
nothing new to use. Smallpox was the first opportunity for
medicine to show it’s power
⚫ Was eradicated, it does not really exist anymore, you can still get it, it
is contained though
⚫ Used to be very serious, extremely contagious, easy to give to people.
Very deadly
⚫ Symptoms: rash -> pus filled lesions -> scabs
⚫ Very precise, at first you might get a rash and then you get
lesions (the pattern is key, where is the pus formed?), you
cannot hide it, once you get smallpox, everyone will know that
you have smallpox. Pus lesions will turn into scabs, you might
scar if you are covered. Here we are talking about lesion as
something that is not supposed to happen but does anyway.
Lesion used as a response, they will give these scabs to people
to make them immune.
⚫ Immune once affected
⚫ Once you had it, you will not get it enough, this was their tactic
⚫ Only treatment is the vaccine
⚫ Must prevent it in order to stop it, they can give you fever
medication to reduce the fever, but they cannot cure you
⚫ Often fatal to children
⚫ See timeline
⚫ Important to see the strict pattern of spread , during the
incubation period you do not express symptoms, then you will
see first symptoms (sometimes contagious), becomes most
contagious after this.
⚫ The pattern of spread came a lot around the face and the legs
while if you look at chicken pox, it comes mostly in the chest
area.
⚫ Sores are especially in the mouth, if you have one break open
in your mouth, than your saliva will be infected, your coughs
will spread a lot of germs
⚫ Variolization:
⚫ They want to stop it, there is a technique developed in the east, India
is credited as being one of the first to develop it, it moved to Turkey
and then England
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
⚫ What the technique does is put the virus (the pus) and insert it
in the body (inoculate) or you would eat the scab
⚫ Key thing is that you are deliberate inserting the virus into
your body
⚫ After you ingest it, you will be able to recover and than you will
not get it again
⚫ The statistic is that approx. 1/3 of people who did it
deliberately had a better chance of surviving, 1/3 of people
would die. The assumption is that you are better off to get it
deliberately but you can still die
⚫ You are still gambling and taking a risk because if you wanted,
you could just wait and see if you will not get it.
⚫ innoculate with the Variola virus
⚫ popularized in Europe by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (based on
experience in Turkey)
⚫ she brought it back within 7 years (1772) and then the royal
family got it, the idea is that the royal family acted as a model
to the method
⚫ people had parties to try and infect each other
⚫ While effective, it could lead to uncontrolled spread and unpredictable
severity
⚫ Vaccination
⚫ This is a generic word for anytime of injection or shot that is designed
to create protection against some virus
⚫ Folk medicine derived from experience with milk maids
⚫ Means that people know it works but do not know why
⚫ If you had a cow that got cowpox, it was very similar to small
pox
⚫ Milk maids who worked with cows who had cowpox would get
it from the cow (this was not smallpox)
⚫ If you got cow pox, you would not get small pox
⚫ Edward Jenner (1749-1823) developed a safe vaccine derived from
cowpox (Vaccinia)
⚫ He is a family doctor, he had done work on other animals, gives
you a sense of how unsystematic medicine was at the time
⚫ Jenner tested it on James Phipps in 1796 (he survived; lucky for him!)
⚫ He controlled the experiment but he did not do it with a lot of
people, only this one boy
⚫ He took him and cut his arm and inoculated the boy with the
vaccine from the cow pox, he waited 6 weeks and did the same
with small pox and to see what happens to him. HE SURVIVED,
he got the cow pox but he did not get the small pox.
Fortunately, he happened to be right. JUST A HAPPY ACCIDENT
BUT IT WORKED!!!!!!
⚫ Related to Galen, he did experiments, the Greek tradition!
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
This is the first real discovery of a powerhouse therapeutic method. Medicine becomes better at identifying the body, rejecting humors, surgery is much better, you can preserve wounds. Still do not really understand germs, no real new remedies to use, nothing new to use. Smallpox was the first opportunity for medicine to show it"s power is contained though. Was eradicated, it does not really exist anymore, you can still get it, it. Used to be very serious, extremely contagious, easy to give to people. Symptoms: rash -> pus filled lesions -> scabs. ), you cannot hide it, once you get smallpox, everyone will know that you have smallpox. Pus lesions will turn into scabs, you might scar if you are covered. Here we are talking about lesion as something that is not supposed to happen but does anyway. Lesion used as a response, they will give these scabs to people to make them immune.
