Most historians document the first vaccination to around 1796 when Englishdoctor Edward Jenner made the connection between people working with cows andtheir immunity to smallpox. For those that don’t know much about the virus orits severity then imagine chicken pox or the measles but much worse.

The picture above is of a young Bangladeshi girl taken in 1973 anddemonstrates how severe the outbreak on the body was. More so in adultsanything from 20%-60% of people died and in children it was much higher ataround 80%.

Going back to Dr Jenner and his connection between the cow workers and theirimmunity to smallpox, he eventually came to the conclusion that some how theseworkers were picking up something from the cows which gave them completeimmunity to the virus.

After some experimentation he finally injected a young 8 year old boy with asmall amount of cowpox (a disease harmless to humans but related to smallpox).As a result the boy was now immune to smallpox and thus began the campaign tovaccinate the world.

Within 3 years 100,000 British people were vaccinated and saved from thepotentially fatal smallpox virus. By 1979 the World Health Organisation (WHO)had declared the smallpox virus to be the first infectious disease to have beeneradicated from the face of the earth.

Now a days this killer virus exists only in a few select laboratoriesthroughout the world!

ScienceFacts

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