img

Blog

How Was Vaccine for Smallpox Discovered?

Posted by:
Posted on: July 28, 2011
img

How Was Vaccine for Smallpox Discovered?

Before inventing the vaccine for preventing smallpox, it showed dreadful influence on the people in every part of the world. In eighteenth century,   one among every ten children of France and Sweden suffered from smallpox. In this context, a Britain doctor named Edward Jenner decided to invent the medicine for curing the smallpox disease at any cost. As a part of fulfilling his ambition, he started studying, observing and analyzing the various aspects of smallpox disease.

While doing experiments on the smallpox disease, Edward Jenner came to know a surprising and curious fact about it. He came to know that people who were working in the poultries of cattle breeding in his town are not affected by the smallpox at all. Similar to the smallpox disease for human beings, cows get affected by cowpox disease. That cowpox disease would affect the people working in the poultry of cows and would be cured later. Jenner came to know the fact that the persons who got affected by cowpox are not at all getting affected by smallpox disease. There by Jenner understood that the actual medicine for the smallpox disease affecting the human beings lies in cowpox.

To know the truth behind these facts, Jenner chose a youngster named James Phips for experimenting on smallpox disease on him to find out the curing medicine. Jenner made a wound on the hand of James Phips and applied virus fluid taken from the cowpox. As a result, James got affected with cowpox and was cured later. After the complete recovery of James, Jenner followed the same procedure of making wounds and injected the virus fluid taken from smallpox wounds into him exactly after the time period of forty eight days. As expected by the Jenner, James was not affected by the smallpox disease. Then scientists understood what to do to prevent the smallpox disease. Based on this experiment, scientists have invented the vaccine for smallpox disease.

Leave a Reply