Category: Uncategorized

SO ENDS this first of two weekend Fragments on a snippet of the history of the smallpox vaccine, the first to be successfully developed in the west. The attribution of the discovery to Jenner was clearly only a tiny part of a much bigger chain of observations and experiments worldwide, including its practice in the 10th century. What is very interesting is how, without the germ theory of diseases, or experimental methodology, various cultures came up with the same solution. And, without controlled preparations, there was clear immunity induced. View in LinkedIn

PARALLEL EVOLUTION OR MYTH? “The record shows that it was there that Jenner heard a dairymaid say, “I shall never have smallpox for I have had cowpox. I shall never have an ugly pockmarked face.” It fact, it was a common belief that dairymaids were in some way protected from smallpox.” https://lnkd.in/eQfnZZv View in LinkedIn

“EDWARD JENNER’S work is widely regarded as the foundation of immunology—despite the fact that he was neither the first to suggest that infection with cowpox conferred specific immunity to smallpox nor the first to attempt cowpox inoculation for this purpose.” https://lnkd.in/eQfnZZv View in LinkedIn

IMMUNIZATION SOURCE. “Whereas vaccination involved the use of a cowpox vaccine extracted from infected humans with cowpox, the older method of variolation used live smallpox virus, extracted from a human pustule, requiring two week isolation due to infectivity risk (which was often not possible).” https://lnkd.in/eYNfQxg View in LinkedIn

COW UDDER VACCINATE. “When smallpox was present in Jesty's locality in 1774, he was determined to protect the life of his family. Jesty used material from udders of cattle that he knew had cowpox and transferred the material with a small lancet to the arms of his wife and two boys. The trio of vaccinees remained free of smallpox, although they were exposed on numerous occasions in later life.” https://lnkd.in/eQfnZZv View in LinkedIn

FIRST COWPOX VACCINATION. “Benjamin Jesty was a humble cow farmer who observed the immunity afforded milkmaids to smallpox. “His grave stone indicated that he utilized cow pox material to inoculate his wife and sons in 1774, 22 years before Jenner’s experiments in 1796.” The inoculation was conducted with his wife’s knitting needle since he was not a doctor. https://lnkd.in/eMnANmQ View in LinkedIn

NEW ATTRIBUTION. “There has been a growing recognition of Benjamin Jesty (1737–1816) as the first to vaccinate against smallpox.” https://lnkd.in/eQfnZZv View in LinkedIn

MILITARY VARIOLATION. “In 1766, American soldiers under George Washington were unable to take Quebec from the British troops, apparently because of a smallpox epidemic that significantly reduced the number of healthy troops. The British soldiers were all variolated. By 1777, Washington had learned his lesson: all his soldiers were variolated before beginning new military operations.” https://lnkd.in/eQfnZZv View in LinkedIn

EUKARYOTIC VIRUSES. “There are 10 families of eukaryotic dsDNA viruses that do not show clear evolutionary relationship to the polintoviruses or the “Megavirales”. These viruses are characterized by rather narrow host ranges, most of them being found only in animals.” http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nyas.12728/full View in LinkedIn

LARGE DIVERSE GENOMES. “The genomes of Polintons are large by transposon standards, 15–20 kb, and encode arrays of diverse proteins. However, several proteins are shared by all Polintons, including protein-primed type B DNA polymerase (pPolB), RVE family integrase, FtsK-like DNA-packaging ATPase, and an adenovirus-type cysteine protease implicated in the maturation of capsid proteins.” http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nyas.12728/full View in LinkedIn