- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804754897
- eISBN:
- 9780804779494
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804754897.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
This chapter considers the social, political, and institutional frameworks within which Edward Jenner conceived and presented his hypothesis that cowpox virus, Variolae vaccinae, could be used to ...
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This chapter considers the social, political, and institutional frameworks within which Edward Jenner conceived and presented his hypothesis that cowpox virus, Variolae vaccinae, could be used to prevent smallpox. Since Variolae vaccinae can be transmitted successfully from person to person without loss of its essential properties, this would mean that protection against smallpox could be transmitted using human beings as the agents of transmission. Jenner tested whether vaccination could prevent smallpox in the recipient.Less
This chapter considers the social, political, and institutional frameworks within which Edward Jenner conceived and presented his hypothesis that cowpox virus, Variolae vaccinae, could be used to prevent smallpox. Since Variolae vaccinae can be transmitted successfully from person to person without loss of its essential properties, this would mean that protection against smallpox could be transmitted using human beings as the agents of transmission. Jenner tested whether vaccination could prevent smallpox in the recipient.
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781846310867
- eISBN:
- 9781846314216
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/UPO9781846314216.006
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
This chapter focuses on Edward Jenner, who studied the use of cowpox to prevent smallpox. In May 1796 Sarah Nelmes, the daughter of a farmer in the neighbourhood of Berkeley, developed cowpox on her ...
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This chapter focuses on Edward Jenner, who studied the use of cowpox to prevent smallpox. In May 1796 Sarah Nelmes, the daughter of a farmer in the neighbourhood of Berkeley, developed cowpox on her hands after milking a cow suffering from the disease. Jenner took matter from one of the pustules with his lancet and transferred it to the arm of an eight-year-old boy called James Phipps, who in due course developed cowpox. Several weeks later he was inoculated with smallpox and failed to respond with even a modified form of the disease: the first successful example of what came to be called ‘vaccination’. The controversy generated by Jenner's findings is discussed.Less
This chapter focuses on Edward Jenner, who studied the use of cowpox to prevent smallpox. In May 1796 Sarah Nelmes, the daughter of a farmer in the neighbourhood of Berkeley, developed cowpox on her hands after milking a cow suffering from the disease. Jenner took matter from one of the pustules with his lancet and transferred it to the arm of an eight-year-old boy called James Phipps, who in due course developed cowpox. Several weeks later he was inoculated with smallpox and failed to respond with even a modified form of the disease: the first successful example of what came to be called ‘vaccination’. The controversy generated by Jenner's findings is discussed.
Mervyn Susser and Zena Stein
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195300666
- eISBN:
- 9780199863754
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195300666.003.0011
- Subject:
- Public Health and Epidemiology, Public Health, Epidemiology
This chapter discusses the historical development of the concept of host and immunity. Smallpox is a disease that, until the 20h century, had long been among the greatest of human plagues. In the ...
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This chapter discusses the historical development of the concept of host and immunity. Smallpox is a disease that, until the 20h century, had long been among the greatest of human plagues. In the last quarter of the 18th century, Edward Jenner set public health on the path to its eventual virtual eradication in the late 20th century. Louis Pasteur, in his second major phase of thought and research, carried forward, consolidated, and generalized the themes of immunity and host resistance to specific organisms. His work was the necessary prelude to the general application of immunization for many diseases in domesticated animals and in human beings.Less
This chapter discusses the historical development of the concept of host and immunity. Smallpox is a disease that, until the 20h century, had long been among the greatest of human plagues. In the last quarter of the 18th century, Edward Jenner set public health on the path to its eventual virtual eradication in the late 20th century. Louis Pasteur, in his second major phase of thought and research, carried forward, consolidated, and generalized the themes of immunity and host resistance to specific organisms. His work was the necessary prelude to the general application of immunization for many diseases in domesticated animals and in human beings.
Stanley Williamson
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781846310867
- eISBN:
- 9781846314216
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/UPO9781846314216
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
Smallpox was for several centuries one of the most deadly, most contagious, and most feared of diseases. This book charts the history of one of the most controversial techniques in medical history. ...
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Smallpox was for several centuries one of the most deadly, most contagious, and most feared of diseases. This book charts the history of one of the most controversial techniques in medical history. Originating probably in Africa, smallpox progressed via the Middle and Near East, where it was studied around the end of the first millennium by Arab physicians. It arrived in Britain during Elizabethan times and was well established by the seventeenth century. During the closing years of the eighteenth century, a far-reaching and ultimately controversial development took place when Edward Jenner developed an inoculation for Smallpox based on a culture from Cowpox. The author examines the astonishing speed at which Jenner's technique of ‘vaccination’ was taken up, culminating in the ‘Compulsory Vaccination Act of 1853’. The Act made a painful and sometimes fatal medical practice for all children obligatory and as a result set an important precedent for governmental regulation of medical welfare. It remained in force until 1946 and was only ended after decades of intense pressure from the National Anti-vaccination League, but the issues raised by this book remain current today in debates about vaccination. The book highlights the social, political, and ethical consequences of compulsory vaccination and the repercussions that followed the ending of the policy through the most major medical resistance campaign in European medical history.Less
Smallpox was for several centuries one of the most deadly, most contagious, and most feared of diseases. This book charts the history of one of the most controversial techniques in medical history. Originating probably in Africa, smallpox progressed via the Middle and Near East, where it was studied around the end of the first millennium by Arab physicians. It arrived in Britain during Elizabethan times and was well established by the seventeenth century. During the closing years of the eighteenth century, a far-reaching and ultimately controversial development took place when Edward Jenner developed an inoculation for Smallpox based on a culture from Cowpox. The author examines the astonishing speed at which Jenner's technique of ‘vaccination’ was taken up, culminating in the ‘Compulsory Vaccination Act of 1853’. The Act made a painful and sometimes fatal medical practice for all children obligatory and as a result set an important precedent for governmental regulation of medical welfare. It remained in force until 1946 and was only ended after decades of intense pressure from the National Anti-vaccination League, but the issues raised by this book remain current today in debates about vaccination. The book highlights the social, political, and ethical consequences of compulsory vaccination and the repercussions that followed the ending of the policy through the most major medical resistance campaign in European medical history.
Amanda B. Moniz
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- June 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780190240356
- eISBN:
- 9780190240387
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190240356.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, American History: early to 18th Century, British and Irish Early Modern History
Long-standing doubts about universal benevolence came to the fore as the French Revolutionary Wars and the Haitian Revolution destabilized the Atlantic world. Some activists had always contested the ...
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Long-standing doubts about universal benevolence came to the fore as the French Revolutionary Wars and the Haitian Revolution destabilized the Atlantic world. Some activists had always contested the new trend by pursuing national and particularistic approaches. Now, many more criticized it and pressed for the primacy of national or local moral obligation. Yet in spite of the waning of cosmopolitan ideals, philanthropists across causes continued working with faraway colleagues. Most important, British, American, and European activists jointly undertook a campaign to eradicate smallpox. Vaccination activists built on the structures of the humane society cause but adapted the older movement’s person-by-drowning person approach to a global scale. With this undertaking, activists from the last Atlantic generation and their protégés together achieved a worldwide reach in beneficence. Paradoxically, they celebrated this accomplishment and the ongoing cooperation in other causes in nationalist tones.Less
Long-standing doubts about universal benevolence came to the fore as the French Revolutionary Wars and the Haitian Revolution destabilized the Atlantic world. Some activists had always contested the new trend by pursuing national and particularistic approaches. Now, many more criticized it and pressed for the primacy of national or local moral obligation. Yet in spite of the waning of cosmopolitan ideals, philanthropists across causes continued working with faraway colleagues. Most important, British, American, and European activists jointly undertook a campaign to eradicate smallpox. Vaccination activists built on the structures of the humane society cause but adapted the older movement’s person-by-drowning person approach to a global scale. With this undertaking, activists from the last Atlantic generation and their protégés together achieved a worldwide reach in beneficence. Paradoxically, they celebrated this accomplishment and the ongoing cooperation in other causes in nationalist tones.
Robert D. Hicks (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781469643205
- eISBN:
- 9781469643229
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469643205.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
As smallpox spread through the Confederacy, its physicians tried to innoculate the population against the dreaded disease. They created vaccine matter, which are human-made artifacts, by infecting ...
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As smallpox spread through the Confederacy, its physicians tried to innoculate the population against the dreaded disease. They created vaccine matter, which are human-made artifacts, by infecting civilians, and they then tried to treat soldiers, who did not always follow correct medical procedures.Less
As smallpox spread through the Confederacy, its physicians tried to innoculate the population against the dreaded disease. They created vaccine matter, which are human-made artifacts, by infecting civilians, and they then tried to treat soldiers, who did not always follow correct medical procedures.
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804754897
- eISBN:
- 9780804779494
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804754897.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
Variola major, the virus that causes smallpox, circulates continuously from one susceptible human to another. As the variola virus establishes its migratory sphere, a dramatic transmission of the ...
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Variola major, the virus that causes smallpox, circulates continuously from one susceptible human to another. As the variola virus establishes its migratory sphere, a dramatic transmission of the virus occurs. By the eighteenth century, smallpox had become a universal disease that afflicted populations worldwide. This chapter reviews methods of combatting smallpox before 1800, focusing on a technique called variolation, which involves the exposure of an uninfected person to a person with a mild case of smallpox. Because of the great risks involved, this technique failed to gain official support in Japan. Nevertheless, Japanese physicians continued to seek ideas and instruction from foreign physicians who were experimenting with variolation techniques. The discovery of an alternative method by Edward Jenner before the end of the century initiated a revolution in medicine.Less
Variola major, the virus that causes smallpox, circulates continuously from one susceptible human to another. As the variola virus establishes its migratory sphere, a dramatic transmission of the virus occurs. By the eighteenth century, smallpox had become a universal disease that afflicted populations worldwide. This chapter reviews methods of combatting smallpox before 1800, focusing on a technique called variolation, which involves the exposure of an uninfected person to a person with a mild case of smallpox. Because of the great risks involved, this technique failed to gain official support in Japan. Nevertheless, Japanese physicians continued to seek ideas and instruction from foreign physicians who were experimenting with variolation techniques. The discovery of an alternative method by Edward Jenner before the end of the century initiated a revolution in medicine.
