Smallpox kills billions of people and how medicine defeats them!

10,000 years ago, a deadly virus "hit" in northeastern Africa, they spread through the air, attacking the victims' skin, bone marrow, spleen and lymph nodes. People who are unfortunate to become infected begin to experience fever, vomiting and rash.

30% of infected people died in the second week after that, survivors carried scars for the rest of their lives. Smallpox has officially launched an invasion of Earth.

In 1350 BC, the first outbreak of smallpox erupted during the period of the Egyptian War - Hittite. Egyptian prisoners spread smallpox to the Hittites, this pandemic killed their king and devastated civilization under his time. After that, smallpox spread to the whole world, following the Egyptian merchants, following the crusade to Arabia and heading to the Americas thanks to the conquests of Spain and Portugal. .

Since then, it has killed billions of people, an estimated 300-500 million people were killed in the 20th century alone. But smallpox is not invincible, in fact, the collapse of smallpox 'empire' begins long before modern medicine. From 1022, a Buddhist nun lived in a famous mountain called OMei Shan in the southern region of Sichuan who recorded how to treat smallpox.

She crushed smallpox psoriasis of people who had had a powder and blew this powder into the noses of healthy people. She did this after realizing that the smallpox survivors never got sick again and the strange treatment was effective, but it was not replicated.

In the 1700s, doctors took some of the material in the sores of patients and put them in healthy people through skin incisions. And getting pretty good results when healthy people are resistant and uninfected again, but it's still not absolute. The number of deaths when exposed to pathogens is still high up to 3%.

It was not until the British doctor Edward Jenner noticed an interesting thing in milking people. At the age of 13, while Jenner was apprentice to a surgeon in Sodbury, near Bristol, he heard a milking worker say, "I will never get smallpox, because I have been parked. cow season ". Later, when he became a doctor, he realized that the worker was right, once infected with smallpox cows would not be infected with smallpox in humans.

Cowpox is a skin disease like smallpox and infection in cows. Smallpox and smallpox virus have the same origin but when a virus infects an unfamiliar subject, such as cowpox infecting humans, it becomes significantly weaker. So Jenner decided to check whether cowpox virus could be used to 'vaccinate' against smallpox?

In May 1796, Jenner met a dairy cow worker named Sarah Nelmes, who suffered some hand injuries due to cowpox from the Blossom cow. Using materials from her pustular nodules, he "vaccinated" James Phipps, the gardener's 8-year-old son. After a few days of fever and discomfort, the boy recovered.

Two months later, Jenner vaccinated him again, but with materials from human smallpox. The pathogen did not develop and Jenner concluded that James Phipps was fully protected. His plan was successful.

Jenner then did the same thing on some others to prove that they could be immune to the disease and from here, smallpox vaccination was invented using a less dangerous virus to create resistance. fight more dangerous viruses. The medical background carefully considered Jenner's findings before actually accepting and applying widely.

After many major vaccination campaigns during the 19th and 20th centuries, the World Health Organization confirmed smallpox was officially pushed back in 1979. Jenner was forever remembered as the father of immunity. learn, but we also do not forget dairy coworker Sarah Nelmes, Bull Blossom and boy James Phipps - the hero in the adventurous adventure to destroy the monster named 'smallpox' .

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