Eighteenth century medicine

Question 1

What was inoculation?

Answer 1

Inoculation was being used in Turkey in the eighteenth century. The wife of the British ambassador to Turkey, Lady Mary Wortley Montague had her family inoculated and in 1821, news spread to Britain.
The process included scratching pus from an infected person into the skin of an uninfected person, giving that person a weak dose of the disease. However, after that, the person’s body would be protected from the disease and will never catch it.

Question 2

What were the problems with inoculation?

Answer 2

1. Sometimes, a strong dose of the disease is given to the person. This meant that the person could get the full disease and die.
2. Inoculation was quite expensive and only the rich could afford to be inoculated.
3. The inoculation equipment was never cleaned and other diseases were passed from person to person.

Question 3

How did Edward Jenner invent vaccinations?

Answer 3

1. In 1796, Jenner heard that milk maids who caught cowpox, a milder version of small pox, never caught smallpox.
2. Jenner carried out an experiment to see whether cowpox could really prevent smallpox.
3. He scratched pus from infected milk maids and injected it into a poor local boy, James Phipps. This gave the boy cowpox.
4. Once the cowpox passed, he then gave the boy a full dose of smallpox, but noticed how the boy never caught smallpox.
5. Jenner repeated the experiment 23 times and concluded that cowpox did indeed prevent smallpox.
6. Jenner then published his ideas and called this new technique vaccination, after the Latin for cows.

Question 4

Why did many people reject Jenner’s ideas?

Answer 4

1. Many people didn’t like new ideas.
2. Jenner wasn’t a famous doctor so people didn’t think he was reliable.
3. Inoculation was big business and inoculators didn’t want to lose their jobs.
4. Jenner could not explain his idea so he could not justify himself.