The Begginings Of Change: Prevention Of Disease

Question 1

What is the difference between inoculation and vaccination?

Answer 1

Inoculation: purposely infecting someone with a disease in a controlled way to creat immunity from it. (This includes infecting someone with a small amount of the actual disease so they will suffer symptoms and be contagious.

Vaccinations: giving weakened strands of a disease to a healthy person to trigger immunity. (E.g cow pox to vaccinate against small pox)

Question 2

Why was small pox a problem during the 18th century/1700?

Answer 2

• it was one of the biggest killers in this time.
• it was highly infectious and could be passed on by coughing, sneezing or touching.
• it killed 30-60% of those who caught it.
• doctors at the time tries to prevent it by using smallpox but it was controversial.

Question 3

What were the symptoms of small pox?

Answer 3

Symptoms:

• fever
• headache
• rash
• pus blisters covering your entire body.

Even is you survived you could be left blind or with deep scars.

Question 4

What was the origin of inoculations/where did it originate?

Answer 4

In medieval parts of China and other parts of Asia, they used a basic form of inoculation. (They scratched pus from a small pox victim onto a healthy persons skin.) this gave them a mild does of small pox so they were able to build up resistance to the full disease.

Question 5

What caused the wide spread usage of inoculation by doctors?

Answer 5

• it became profitable.
• In the 1760s a father and son (Robert and Danie Sutton) found a more efficient way to inoculate.
• they made a tiny stage through the skin with lancelet-surgical knife.
• this meant doctors could earn a lot of money quickly, however only the rich could afford it.
• by late 1770s doctors used this method to prevent small pox because it was such a wide spread killer.

Question 6

What were the draw backs of using inoculation?

Answer 6

• there were religious objections. Some still believed illness was sent to test people and their faith and punish sin so preventing it was wrong.
• sometimes by giving the patient a small amount of disease they died. Even if they survived the were contagious, spreading the disease further.
• the poor could not afford it.

Question 7

When was small pox completely irradiated?

Answer 7

1980.

Question 8

What was the impact of small pox?

Answer 8

• Attitudes changed as people soon realised that vaccinations were more effective and less dangerous than inoculation.
• Jenner has powerful supporters, like the royal family who were vaccinated and parliament agreed to give Jenner £10,000 in 1802.
• He used scientific methods to prove his theories.
• He May have not been the first person to discover cowpox but he made people notice. By the 1800s doctors were using this technique in America and Europe and by 1853 the British government made the vaccination compulsory. This was a laissez faire Government do it means they were quite fearful of the disease if they were interfering with people’s lives.

Question 9

What opposition did Jenner face from his discovery of vaccinations?

Answer 9

• Jenner was nota fashionable city doctor so there was snobbery against him.
• many doctors profited from small pox inoculations so didn’t like his findings.

Question 10

What were the origins of the small pox?

Answer 10

• small pox inoculation was used before Jenner became a surgeon.
• Jenner heard stories that milkmaids who caught cowpox (a similar but milder version of the disease that affected cows) were protected against small pox and decided to test his theory.

Question 11

How did Jenner experiment to find his vaccination and test his theories?

Answer 11

• In 1796 Jenner inserted cowpox into a poor 8 year old boy. If the cow pox worked, the child would not react to the follow up of small pox inoculations. If it failed he would catch a small of amount of small pox.
• to prove his vaccination worked he gave cow pox to another patient. He then took pus from the patient (who caught cow pox) to vaccinate a new patient. He tested this 16x over several weeks. None of the patients reacted to the small pox inoculation. He concluded that cowpox prevented humans from small pox.
• six weeks after he gave boy small pox inoculations. No disease followed.
• Jenner called his cowpox inoculation technique vaccinations.
• Jenner published his vaccination findings in 1798 but he could not explain how his vaccination worked, which made it difficult for others to accept.