In the eighteenth century, the whole of Europe was tormented by the same disease - smallpox. They spread uncontrollably, there was no cure and several hundred thousand people died every year. Among them were several rulers and members of their families. Empress Catherine the Great was very frightened. She well remembered her arrival in Russia and her first meeting with her future husband Peter the Third, when she described in her notes as "disgusting" because of the scars on her face that were left by the goddesses. On the other hand, he was lucky to survive the disease from which his ancestor Peter the Second died at the age of fourteen. Peter the Third was a very small boy at the time, but the disease known as "black goddesses", he will return to this court, as well as to many European families, several times, so the fiancé of Empress Elizabeth passed away. All this was kept in mind by Catherine the Great, who after the death of one of the court ladies, in 1768, decided to be the first person in Russia to try a new means of immunization discovered in Great Britain. In this way, he will not only protect himself, his son and those closest to him, but also encourage others to do the same.
The vaccine did not yet exist. The Empress underwent an incomparably more dangerous method of immunization, but at that time the only one available, which, despite all the risks, managed to save millions of lives. It is an inoculation that has been used on the British island for decades, and it meant the direct introduction of germs of infectious material in order to get a milder form of the disease, and then gain immunity.
Instead of the current vaccines that contain a weakened or dead form of the virus, and sometimes only their proteins or other agents that resemble the cause of the disease, in the process of inoculation healthy people were introduced into the body by a live virus removed from the infected person's envelope. In addition to the risk of a person who has undergone this type of immunization becoming infected, there was a danger of becoming a carrier of the disease. However, as already mentioned, there was still no other way to avoid the cruel disease.
A poet who was looking for a cure
The inoculation arrived in England from Constantinople in 1721, thanks to the poet Mary Montague. She herself suffered from smallpox, from which her brother died, and she saw the application of this method on her journey through the Ottoman Empire, where she stayed as the ambassador's wife. Today, apart from transmitting medical knowledge, it is best known for "Letters from Turkey", which deepened Europeans' interest in oriental art, but also encouraged women to dedicate themselves to travel prose. After her, the whole tradition of women's harem travelogues developed, which lasted until the 20th century, and one of its successors was the writer Jelena Dimitrijević.
Edward Jenner vaccinates a boy (picture by Ernest Bord)
The eighteenth century was coming to an end when the English doctor Edward Jenner found a safer and safer way to protect against the smallpox virus. More precisely, his invention was the first vaccine in the world, and he named it after the Latin word for cow. After hearing a rumor that workers who work with cows develop a milder form of the disease because in many cases they are already infected with smallpox (variolae vaccinae), he injected pus from the hand of a milkmaid into an eight-year-old boy, which really protected him from smallpox. As part of this pioneering endeavor, Louis Pasteur proposed in 1881 that all vaccines be named after Jenner. Of course, at that time, a new generation of these medical devices was already being developed, which was far safer. In those years, Pasteur also found a vaccine against chicken cholera and anthrax, and the first laws on mandatory vaccination were passed.
If we go back in history, it is easy to see that vaccines are safer today than ever. The process of research and clinical trials is usually very long and only those vaccines that have been tested and that bring the greatest possible benefit with the least possible risks appear on the market. Vaccines could harm some people, but immunologists and medical experts recognize such patients and do not recommend vaccination. They will be protected by immunity if all those for whom there is no risk are vaccinated. This brings us to the point where, in most cases, the only side effect of vaccination is redness or mild fever, and when many infectious diseases have been eradicated or reduced to a small number of cases. Among the eradicated diseases are smallpox itself, which was officially announced by the World Health Organization in 1980, and was preceded by a long global vaccination campaign.
When Elvis gets vaccinated
The vaccine significantly limited polio, and in the twentieth century, instead of the empress, the biggest motivator of the citizens of one country was the rock and roll star. In the 1950s, about 25,000 people in the United States contracted the disease each year, and there was a belief among teenagers and adults that they did not have to be vaccinated. That is why, during the great campaign in 1956, before the show of the Edward Sullivan Show, the biggest star of that time, Elvis Presley, was vaccinated in front of the journalists.
The photos of the act itself flooded America, which led to a 90 percent drop in the number of patients in this country. Today, this vaccine, according to the list of the World Health Organization, is one of the most effective and safest medicines. According to the data of this institution, in 1988, there were about 350,000 people suffering from polio in the world, and in 2018, only thirty-three.
Among the important vaccines that had an interesting development path, there is also the flu vaccine. It was preceded by a discovery made during the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918, when a blood transfusion of recovered patients to new patients proved successful. In the thirties of the 20th century, researchers from Vanderbit University announced that they managed to grow a strain of the H1N1 virus in chicken eggs, which caused this deadly disease. The same method was later applied to the cultivation of influenza viruses, so by the 1940s, the first inactive vaccine was developed and used during World War II.
Today, the flu vaccine is recommended for elderly people, chronic diseases and people who come into contact with a larger number of people at their workplace, and above all medical and gerontological workers, and it is received seasonally. It has been shown to be effective in preventing the disease in a large number of people, while one part gets the flu, but thanks to it, the clinical picture is milder.
Many medical experts, researchers, but also lay people, consider vaccines to be one of the greatest achievements of mankind. It all started with the idea that a small dose of the microorganism that causes the disease can cause a reaction in the immune system and prevent the onset and development of the disease, but the methods have improved over time to become more efficient and safer, and the range of diseases we can vaccinate against However, for some of them, that is still not possible, but if the efforts of researchers around the world prove successful, each of the new vaccines will be a great victory for humanity.
In the light of the pandemic that is currently shaking the world, the vaccine against the Sars-CoV-2 virus is currently most eagerly awaited, which is being worked on by almost all research teams in the world that have the necessary conditions and knowledge for that. By June, 159 vaccine candidates had been developed and they are currently in various stages of research. Although unverified rumors are spreading among the citizens, as is often the case with vaccines, the only diseases that are caused by corona viruses and against which vaccines exist are animal diseases, and these are different viruses from the one caused by Covid-19. Therefore, rebellions against the vaccine, which does not yet exist, and which, after all the research procedures, could one day become another great step in the history of medicine, are in vain.
Excellent article