Inoculation Nation Essay
Inoculation Nation 1796 was a year of illness; pox-plagued people lay on their deathbed, gasping for their last breath. Bodies littered the streets, and the dead did not always receive a proper burial. With that magnitude of mortality, many were searching for an answer. Immunity would be the solution. However, the first inkling of a thought that immunity was acquired from exposure to disease originated with Thucydides in Athens, circa 430 B.C. He stated, “the sick and the dying were tended by the pitying care of those who had recovered because they knew the course of the disease and were themselves free from apprehensions. For no one was ever attacked a second time, or not with a fatal result” (Orenstein). This acquired immunity theory inspired Doctor Edward Jenner in 1796 to attempt something unethical. Edward had taken notice that milkmaids did not fall ill to smallpox while those around them did. Jenner realized that the milkmaids had been exposed to a form of cowpox, also known as vaccinia, which was less severe than smallpox, overcame the illness, and were then immune after multiple forms of exposure to the related disease, including smallpox, also known as variola vera. He deduced then that the viruses were similar enough genetically that acquiring vaccinia would grant immunity from variola vera. With the assurance from his new discovery, Jenner took a leap of faith and variolated, or placed pus from a cowpox lesion, into an open wound of a young boy, James Phipps. He continued to test his
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The concept is that the government outlawed polygamy because it often leads to human rights violations. The government enforced their will upon the people for the good of the group, and in requiring vaccinations, the concept is nearly identical. The objective is to solidify the wellbeing of the human race by prioritizing the human race as a whole, not as an
The concept is that the government outlawed polygamy because it often leads to human rights violations. The government enforced their will upon the people for the good of the group, and in requiring vaccinations, the concept is nearly identical. The objective is to solidify the wellbeing of the human race by prioritizing the human race as a whole, not as an