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Smallpox history research paper
Elimination of smallpox
Smallpox history research paper
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“Smallpox is a viral infection caused by a virus known as the Variola virus that has been in existence for over 3000 years”. The first outbreak known was in the western area. With that said people should know about the way it is transmitted, what the treatment is and the vaccine for it and is it still needed today, how is it detected and the symptoms. To begin, smallpox is transmitted from contact with someone how has the disease. Most of the time just long, face to face contact with someone how has it is why smallpox’s spreads from one person to another. Smallpox can also be transmitted through the contact of body fluids or contaminated object like bedsheets. It’s rare that smallpox can infect someone through the air of an isolated area. Secondly, “Smallpox has been …show more content…
Scientist and researchers have found that the only way to prevent the Smallpox virus is by using the Smallpox vaccine. The vaccine helps the the body develop immunity to smallpox and was eradicated from the human population and back in the middle 1900’s cowpox was the vaccine to smallpox. In 1972 the vaccine was stopped in the U.S for the public, but is continued for those people who are in high risks of getting smallpox such as the military and scientist
A different perspective on a smallpox epidemic during the French and Indian War appears in Andrew J. Blackbird's History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan. Blackbird, Chief Mack-e-te-be-nessy, was a member of a distinguished Ottawa family from the northwest shore of the Michigan lower peninsula. He wrote his History late in life, after a long career in education, politics, and public service.
One similarity between smallpox and the black death was that they both established new trade with countries they had rarely traded with before. With smallpox, the Americas were faced with a labour shortage due to the amount of people smallpox had killed. The labour was needed to work in silver mines and sugar plantations.To fill the shortage of labour, slaves were traded from the Guinea Coast, somewhere there was not much trade in before, but now was a bustling center of trade due to the demand for slaves. Similarly, during the black death, there was a shortage of people because of the shrunken population. There were less people buying wool, wine, and cheese, so merchants from Europe sook out customers in different areas. Some such areas were
The perspective the author gives to this book is a unique. Smallpox according to most histories does not play the role of a major character, but a minor part. In my opinion smallpox was a major factor during the Revolutionary War, and Feen focuses on several key areas which allows us to see just how bad this epidemic was and the grip it had not only on the soldiers, but the colonist as well.
Vaccine safety is one of the most controversial topics in today’s public discourse. Everyone has heard of them, but few know why they are so encouraged. A vaccine contains a weak or dead version of a microbe. This creates a small scale invasion of the immune system, which activates cells to destroy the microbe. Once these cells have been made they are always there to provide protection. This protection is immunity, for those cells are then able to recognize any live version of the same microbe and attack it immediately. This can save lives but also be dangerous, vaccines carry many other components which can cause side effects. These could be simple adverse effects such as a small cold or, in the rare case,
In order to understand the history of smallpox one first has to understand how diseases like it evolve. Much like other species, diseases that survive in the long run are the microbes that most effectively reproduce and are able to find suitable places to live. For a microbe to effectively reproduce, it must "be defined mathematically as the number of new infected per each original patient." This number will largely depend on how long each victim is able to spread the virus to other victims (Diamond, 198).
It was spread by physical contact with human skin and mostly affected children and adults. This disease was so outrageous that led to a vast number of deaths in New England colonies. Also, smallpox virus transmitted through airborne from the oral, nasal mucus of the infected person. But mostly was spread from close contact or contaminated material of the infected person. It was spread very slowly and less broadly than other viral illness which took long time to identify the infection in first two weeks. Infection of smallpox started to grow between 7 to 10 days when the scabs form onto bruise. The signs and symptoms of this disease were with high fever, widespread rashes, redness, muscle pain, headache, common cold, vomiting, nausea and many more. Consequently, the virus was found in the bone marrow along with bloodstream in huge numbers. There were different types in between the smallpox disease with other classification. By preserving the virus, Boylston personally inoculated 247 people in 1721 and 1722 to prevent transmission. However, from there only six people died, and Boylston was the first American surgeon to inoculate his patients personally. The author portrays the background data Boylston used to examine the inoculation practice on different age and gender of persons to cure his patients were from previous experiments. The inoculation method provided higher rank of immunity in preventing smallpox infection. The prevention for smallpox was through inducing antibodies by vaccine which lasts longer for a person taken
Vaccines have been used to prevent diseases for centuries, and have saved countless lives of children and adults. The smallpox vaccine was invented as early as 1796, and since then the use of vaccines has continued to protect us from countless life threatening diseases such as polio, measles, and pertussis. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (2010) assures that vaccines are extensively tested by scientist to make sure they are effective and safe, and must receive the approval of the Food and Drug Administration before being used. “Perhaps the greatest success story in public health is the reduction of infectious diseases due to the use of vaccines” (CDC, 2010). Routine immunization has eliminated smallpox from the globe and led to the near removal of wild polio virus. Vaccines have reduced some preventable infectious diseases to an all-time low, and now few people experience the devastating effects of measles, pertussis, and other illnesses.
Although the Columbian Exchange allowed for the beneficial exchange of cultures, ideas, foods, and animals around the world during the 1450-1750 time period, it also had a dark side. One detrimental result of the Columbian Exchange would be the spreading of smallpox from Europe to the New World.
For approximately three-thousand years, smallpox has ravaged and plagued the four corners of the globe. In fact, in the 17 th and 18 th centuries, it was claimed to be the most infectious disease in the West, with an astounding 90% mortality rate in America. It wasn't until 1796, with English surgeon Edward Jenner's smallpox vaccination, that the world saw relief from this devastating virus. However, even with this inoculation in use, the world continued to witness death from both the virus and the vaccine. In the year 1966, it was estimated that 10-15 million infected citizens world wide had passed away from smallpox that year alone ( “History” 12). As a result of these devastating numbers, in the following year, 1967, the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) created a program to eradicate the smallpox virus. Ten years later, in 1977, the estimated 10-15 million cases had dwindled down to one; a man in Somalia. Three years later, W.H.O. officially announced that smallpox had been eradicated, leaving the only remaining virus cultures stored and guarded in laboratories in Russia and the United States. Inoculations ceased, smallpox epidemics were non-existent, and the virus was no longer a concern. In order to ensure complete eradication of this deadly virus, the W.H.O. insisted that the remaining smallpox cultures be destroyed by 1999 ( “Smallpox Eradication” 2). However, despite the W.H.O.'s recommendation, the remaining cultures continue to be contained and protected to this day, five years after the suggested date of elimination.
We are there food. Those germs of the past that best converted our bodies into their own propagation are the germs of the present. Those germs of the present that best convert our bodies into their own propagation will be the germs of the future. Why should we care about the prospects of one particular germ over another? Aren't they all just plain bad? The answer is no. We can never get rid of them all. Their future is our future. If their future goes one way, we will be relatively healthy; if it goes another, we will be sick or even dead. Neglect of the germ's-eye view of the world is not restricted to the average person; it extends to medicine as a whole for most of its history (Ewald 9). Scientists have proven that some viruses are to blame for certain diseases not the genes that have been inherited.
Smallpox is caused by the variola virus that emerged in human populations thousands of years ago. Smallpox is a specific, infectious, and highly contagious febrile disease known only to be transmitted by humans. It is caused by a virus from air currents which are eventually passed on from person to person. Smallpox varies from a mild form without skin manifestations to a highly fatal hemorrhagic form. Edward Jenner, an English physician, discovered a means of preventing smallpox through vaccination. Gradually mass vaccination programs were introduced in many parts of the world. Smallpox was the first disease conquered by human beings and was eradicated by vaccination. The last known cases of naturally occurring smallpox were isolated in 1977 in Somalia. Smallpox had been one of the world’s most feared diseases which killed hundreds of millions of people and scarred and blinded millions more.
It was the English scientist called Edward Jenner who found the method of vaccination. “Scientist Edward Jenner observed that milkmaids often got a disease called cowpox and that seemed to make them immune to smallpox.” (Smallpox Symptoms). Jenner’s vaccination strategy was to transfer the virus by taking the blistering fluid from a person with cowpox and give it to someone no had not yet had
The smallpox virus plagued humans for thousands of years, resulting in millions of deaths worldwide, before Edward Jenner stumbled upon a way to eventually eradicate the disease. The disease devastated populations across Asia, Africa, Europe, and eventually the Americas through the voyages of discovery. The number of Aztecs and Native Americans killed by the virus is far greater than the number killed in battles with white settlers. The virus had a fatality rate of approximately 30% while survivors were often left with permanent scarring, deformities, and blindness as a result of the disease. Before Jenner's vaccine, practitioners in Asia developed a method known as variolation that was eventually brought to England in 1721 by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu after spending time abroad in Turley. This became the
Vaccines are undoubtedly one of the greatest medical developments in the health industry. The discovery of the smallpox vaccine by Edward Jenner was a groundbreaking innovation in public health during the time of the great epidemic. The smallpox vaccination, successfully eradicated the infectious disease that threatened the lives of people around the world. This was only the beginning of the new era of healthcare. Within the years, new vaccines helped save the lives of billions of humans yearly preventing them from disease that would have ended their lives. A recent report by the Centers of Disease Control (2014) confirmed that “vaccines given to infants and young children over the past two decades will prevent 322 million illnesses, 21 million
The smallpox vaccine is the first vaccine to be discovered by Edward Jenner. Jenner noticed that milkmaids who had contracted a diseases called cowpox did not catch the smallpox. When he noticed that he took a fluid from cowpox blisters and scratched it on the skin of James Phipps an eight-year-old boy who only got one blister after being exposed to cowpox but recovered. Once James recovered Jenner’s inoculated him with the smallpox but he did not get it, then Jenner knew that the vaccine is successful. The vaccine is made from live vaccinia virus strain and is manufactured by using modern cell-culture techniques stocked in a lyophilized. The vaccinia vaccine helps the human body fight against the infection caused by the variola virus and also trigger robust T and B cell responses that target a wide array of viral proteins (Kennedy, et al., 2009). The vaccine can be administered through several quick puncture on the upper arm with a two-pronged needle known as bifurcate, then covered by a gauze to make sure the virus does not spread to other parts of the body or persons. The site where the vaccine was given begin to have multiple normal skin reactions similar to the stages of smallpox, this is a sign that the body is building