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A Brief History of Vaccines
We’re all watching for a vaccine for COVID-19, which sadly probably won’t come until mid to late 2021 if all goes well. (Most likely, what will get us out of having to do social distancing will not be a vaccine but a reliable treatment).
Vaccines have been controversial of late, with the anti-vax movement causing its various issues. But vaccines remain one of our biggest medical breakthroughs as a species.
What was the First Vaccine?
Most of us know the story of the first vaccine. Edward Jenner, in the 18th century, noticed that dairy workers did not get smallpox as often as the general population.
It turned out that a much milder disease carried by cows, cowpox, was so closely related to smallpox as to be what we now call cross-reactive. Antibodies to cowpox stopped smallpox.
Jenner hunted down a dairy maid with cowpox and took material from her lesions, which he then used to inoculate a child. He then, in steps which would be utterly unethical today, tried to give the child smallpox and failed (If you have heard the words “human challenge trials” in relation to COVID-19 vaccination, this is exactly what they mean). His method became known as vaccination…from the Latin for cow.