INTRODUCTION
“For centuries, prior to Jenner’s discovery of vaccination in 1798, Smallpox had been regarded as the King of fatal diseases.”
- Eugene Foster, 1888
It has been forty years since smallpox has vanished from the planet, Earth. The disease was abolished worldwide in the 1980’s. It is the only human contagious disease that disappeared and destroyed by man through considerable effort.
Smallpox is a severe infectious disease produced by the variola virus, a member of the orthopoxvirus family. It was one of the world’s most virulent diseases known to humanity and killed many millions of lives before eradication.
The latest known natural case was in Somalia in 1977. Smallpox eradicated in 1980 following a global immunization campaign led by the World Health Organization.
Smallpox transferred between person to person through infective droplets.
ORIGIN OF SMALLPOX
The origin of Smallpox is unknown or lost in pre history. It is believed to have appeared around 10000 BC in North-eastern Africa. The evidence says, Smallpox dates back to the Egyptian Empire around the 3rd century based on a smallpox-like rash found on three mummies. The earliest writing described Smallpox clearly resembles that Smallpox appeared in China in the 4th century CE, in India by the 7th century, and in Asia by the 10th century.
Smallpox found on faces of mummies from the time of the 18th and 20th Egyptian Dynasties (1570–1085 BC). The Egyptian mummy of Ramses V who died in 1157 BC bears evidence of this disease. In the meantime, smallpox reported in ancient Asian cultures. Smallpox found as early as 1122 BC in China and mentioned in ancient Sanskrit texts of India.
According to most authors, it first emerged in the year of the birth of Mahomet in 570 or 572. Rhazes was the first person to describe the disease and its treatment. Rhazes wrote about Smallpox in the first chapter as “On the causes of Smallpox & why all men, except one or two, are attacked by this disease”.
SYMPTOMS
The primary symptoms of Smallpox are high fever and vomiting, accompanied by nausea and backache. Smallpox virus mostly attacks the skin cells creating pimples accompanied by the formation of sores or lesions in the mouth and the skin rash. The rash starts as red spots on the tongue and in the mouth. After few or more days, the skin rash turns into fluid-filled bumps. After the bumps fell off it leaves scars on the skin.
 |
| Obsolescent variolous lesions, smallpox |
 |
| Child with Smallpox |
The rash arises on the skin in 24 to 48 hours once the lesions break in the mouth. The pimples first appear on the forehead and it spreads to the whole face then arms and legs then to the hands and feet. Within 24 hours, it spreads to the whole body.
CAUSES OF SPREAD
Smallpox spread to Europe from Asia by the crusades between the 5th and 7th centuries and it was epidemic during the Middle Ages.
The Arab expansion, the Crusades, and the discovery of the West Indies are some of the causes for spreading the disease.
In the 6th century, trade with China and Korea spread disease into Japan.
By the 7th century, Arab expansion spread Smallpox to North Africa, Spain, and Portugal.
In the 15th century, the Portuguese spread Smallpox to West Africa.
In the 16th century, European Colonization, African Slave trade introduced Smallpox into the Caribbean, Central and South America.
In the 17th century, spread to North America.
In the 18th century Great Britain spread Smallpox to Australia.
One of the characteristics or features of Smallpox is that it was extremely contagious in nature. Smallpox infected all types of people in the society regardless of the rich and the poor. In the 18th century in Europe, 400,000 people died yearly of smallpox, and one-third remaining people went blind.
Smallpox killed many members of the Royal Families. Queen Mary of Great Britain died of Smallpox and left her spouse King William III (1650-1702) of England disfigured. Louis XV King of France died of Smallpox in 1774.
The nature of these tiny, invisible beings was unknown even though it existed for a long time; the only thing known was it is contagious. The nature of this virus was became known in the 1930’s.
 |
smallpox, grown via tissue, isolate by centrifuge |
Smallpox caused by the virus of the Poxvirus family. The genetic material is a single or double-stranded DNA molecule. Two varieties of variola virus identified. One causing the benign form or “alastrim” (Variola minor) and the other is the severe form (variola major).
EARLY TREATMENTS
The word variola usually used for smallpox introduced by Bishop Marius of Avenches (near Lausanne, Switzerland) in AD 570. It is obtained from the Latin word varius, meaning “stained,” or from varus, meaning “mark on the skin.” The word small pockes (pocke meaning sac) first used in England at the end of the 15th century to differentiate the disease from syphilis, which then known as the great pockes.
One of the first method or the most successful way of treating smallpox before the discovery of vaccination was inoculation or variolation named after the virus that causes smallpox (variola virus).
Inoculation is the instillation of smallpox virus into non-immune individuals i.e., variolation or inoculation is the method by which material from smallpox sores (pustules) was given to people who never had smallpox. The material introduced into the arms or legs of the non-immune person or by inhaling it through the nose.
Variolation spreads worldwide. Inoculation for smallpox seems to have started in china around the 1500s. Europe embraced this method from Asia in the first half of the 18th century. However, a few people deceased from variolation treatment.
DEATHS
Smallpox was a devastating or deadliest disease. On common, three out of each ten people who got it died those who remained usually left with scars.
Estimation says in the 18th century, in Europe, 400,000 people perished from this disease per year. One-third of people left blind. In the 20th century estimated that the Smallpox virus ruined nearly 300 million people. Almost 500 million people deceased due to Smallpox in the last 100 years of existence.
THE DISCOVERY OF VACCINATION
Edward Jenner was born in Berkeley the city in California, Gloucestershire on 17th May 1749. He was the son of the Rev. Stephen Jenner.
The basis for vaccination began in 1796. Edward Jenner an English doctor observed that milkmaids who had cowpox did not show any symptoms of smallpox after variolation.
The method involved taking material from someone who infected with cowpox and inoculating it into another person’s skin; this was arm-to-arm inoculation treatment.
The first examination held in May 1796, when Edward Jenner met a juvenile dairymaid, Sarah Nelms, who had freshly cowpox lesions on her hands and arms. On May 14, 1796, Dr. Jenner took matter from cowpox sore on Nelms' hand and he innoculated an 8-year-old boy James Phipps’ arm, son of Jenner’s gardener. Consequently, the boy suffered from mild fever and trouble in the axillae.
Nine days after the treatment, James Phipps felt cold and lost his appetite. The next day, the boy was much better. Jenner inoculated the boy again in July 1796, but this time with matter from a fresh smallpox lesion. This time the boy does not suffer from any disease therefore Jenner assumed that protection was complete.
More tests followed, and, in 1801, Jenner published his paper 'On the Origin of the Vaccine Inoculation', in which Jenner revealed his discoveries and expressed hope that
“the annihilation of the smallpox, the most dreadful scourge of the human species, must be the final result of this practice.”
The Latin term for cow is vacca, and cowpox is vaccinia; Jenner named this new method as “vaccination”.
Late in the 19th century, the people realized that vaccination will not bestow on lifelong immunity and that subsequent revaccination is necessary.
In 1967, a global campaign initiated under the guardianship of the World Health Organization and ultimately resulted in the extermination of smallpox in 1977. Over the period the Intensified Eradication Program began in 1967, North America abolished Smallpox in 1952 and Europe abolished Smallpox in 1953.
 |
Smallpox Eradication Logo |
The World Health Assembly proclaimed that the world was free of smallpox and recommended that all countries cease vaccination on May 8, 1980:
“The world and all its people have won freedom from smallpox, which was the most devastating disease sweeping in epidemic form through many countries since earliest times, leaving death, blindness and disfigurement in its wake”
THE FUTURE OF VACCINES
Did you know that scientists are still performing to formulate new types of vaccines? Here are two exciting examples:
DNA vaccines are simple and low-price to execute — and they produce strong long-term immunity.
Recombinant vector vaccines (platform-based vaccines) act as natural infections, so they are remarkably good at training the immune system how to attack germs.
CONCLUSION
The invention of the Smallpox vaccine directed to the invention of many vaccines, which protects people from many most dangerous viral bacterial illnesses. Due to the progression in technology vaccines given as single form are in combination form e.g. MMR (Measles, Mumps and Rubella).
The vaccination for many diseases like Diphtheria, Tetanus, Pertussis (combination as DTaP), Polio, Hib, Hepatitis B, Varicella, Hepatitis A, Pneumococcal, Influenza, Rotavirus, and MMR injected from the childhood at regular intervals for a particular period.
ALSO READ : MORE ABOUT THE VACCINATION
No comments: