Last Word

Vaccines

The use of vaccines dates back to 1000 CE when

the Chinese inoculated their population against smallpox by wiping a piece of skin infected with cowpox onto patients. Similar techniques, called variolation or inoculation, where a portion of a smallpox blister was transferred to an open cut of a healthy person, were used in Africa and Turkey around the same time before reaching Europe and the Americas.

Variolation was not without controversy. In 1721, a smallpox epidemic was raging through Boston and prominent clergyman Cotton Mather advocated variolation to the populace. Two hundred and forty eight people were subsequently variolated and of those six died from the procedure. By the end of the epidemic, 844 people died and nearly 1,000 more fled the city. And while 3 percent of those variolated died, 14 percent of those that contracted the disease died.

Those favorable percentages for variolation didn’t stop some from vilifying Mather. A rock was thrown through his window with a note attached threatening: “Cotton Mather, You Dog, Dam You. I’ll inoculate you with this, with a Pox on you.”

Following the epidemic, Mather wrote: “I never saw the Devil so let loose upon any occasion. The people who made the loudest Cry … had a very Satanic Fury acting them. Their common Way was to rail and rave, and wish Death or other Mischiefs, to them that practis’d, or favour’d this devilish Invention.”

Counter-intuitive it may be, but the method of inoculation or the act of immunizing a person against a disease by introducing infected material or microorganisms into the body, allowing the body to create the antibodies to fight off future infection, was successful in protecting millions of people for centuries.

In the late 18th century, a British doctor named Edward Jenner confirmed that exposure to cowpox could also immunize people against smallpox and created a method of injection against the disease rather than through skin lesions. The scientific name for the virus cowpox is vaccinia from the Latin word vacca, meaning cow, and so Jenner named the process of immunizing people “vaccination.” As science and technology improved, “vaccines” became a safer method than variolation for protecting people from diseases. Indeed, over the next two centuries, as mass immunization programs developed, smallpox was eradicated from the globe in 1979.

Louis Pasteur’s rabies vaccine in 1885 tends to mark the beginning of the vaccine era, with the study of bacteria becoming an essential field of medicine in the 20th century. In the 1930s, vaccines were developed for diphtheria, tetanus, anthrax, cholera, plague, typhoid and tuberculosis, to name just a few. A few decades later came vaccines for polio, measles, mumps, rubella and chicken pox.

Humans, and animals, have dealt with several pandemics and plagues in history. From whooping cough, typhoid fever and yellow fever to Spanish flu, polio and COVID-19, each has taken a devastating toll on our existence.

Today, with the introduction of mRNA vaccines for COVID-19, the science of vaccination has taken another giant step in efficacy. mRNA vaccines teach our cells how to make a protein that triggers an immune response inside our bodies without using live virus as part of the formula. The success of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine has prompted scientists to look for prevention and protection from other viruses and diseases using the same science, including Zika virus, the flu and cancer.

For information on where to get vaccinated in North Carolina for COVID-19, visit covid19.ncdhhs.gov/vaccines.

SP