Accidental, risky and unethical: how the world's first vaccine was invented

Smallpox once killed millions of people. But one accidental discovery revolutionized human health and saved the lives of many. Air force.

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Smallpox is a terrible disease.

“Body aches, fever, sore throat, headache and difficulty breathing,” Rene Najera, an epidemiologist and editor of the History of Vaccination website, describes the symptoms.

But that's not the worst of it.

“The patient’s entire body was covered with a terrible rash that deformed the person. There were blisters of pus on the head, legs, throat and even lungs. Within a few days they dried out and fell off,” says Najera.

With the development of international trade and the growth of empires, smallpox devastated entire settlements around the world.

About a third of adults and eight out of ten infants who developed smallpox died.

At the beginning of the 400th century, in Europe alone, the disease killed about XNUMX thousand people annually.

Port cities suffered the most. An outbreak of smallpox in 1721 in Boston, America, wiped out 8% of the population. Even after recovering, many lost their sight, all had ugly scars on their bodies.

“When the scabs fell off, the scars on the skin were so bad that some would rather commit suicide than live with that appearance,” says the researcher.

The treatment was either ineffective or bizarre and ineffective. The patient was placed in a hot room, and sometimes in a cold one, they were not allowed to eat melons, they were wrapped in red cloth and, as one 24th-century physician said, they were given “12 bottles of low-alcohol beer” every XNUMX hours. Intoxication at least helped to dull the pain.

However, one type of therapy was actually effective. Manure from a patient was rubbed into a scratch on the body of a healthy person. Another technique involved blowing smallpox scabs into the nose. This was called vaccinations.

For the first time this method began to be used in Africa and Asia, and already in the XNUMXth century it came to Europe and North America, where it was brought by a slave named Onesimus. Vaccinations contributed to the mild course of the disease.

But not always. Some were seriously ill, moreover, all vaccinated became carriers of the infection, spreading it among others. A better solution was needed.

At the beginning of the XNUMXth century in rural England it was already known that smallpox did not take some people. But the milkmaids suffered from a relatively mild form of the disease, which they contracted from cattle and from which no scars remained. It was called cowpox.

During a smallpox epidemic in the west of England in 1774, farmer Benjamin Jest decided to try something. He rubbed some sick cow dung into the skin of his wife and son, and neither of them got smallpox.

However, this became known only after many years. The man, who is considered the inventor and, importantly, the popularizer of vaccination, made similar observations and came to similar conclusions.

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Edward Jenner worked as a rural physician in Berkeley, Gloucestershire. He studied in London with one of the most prominent surgeons of the time. Jenner's interest in treating smallpox is believed to have sparked his childhood vaccination experience.

“Jenner had a terrible memory of being vaccinated against smallpox as a child, and so he decided to find an alternative method that was safe and less scary,” says Aries Gaver, director of the Dr. Jenner House Museum.

In 1796, after collecting several random stories of farmers and milkmaids, Jenner decided to experiment. A potentially deadly experiment. And try it on a child.

He took some liquid from the vaccinia pores in the arms of young milkmaid Sarah Nelms and rubbed it into the skin of eight-year-old James Phipps. After several days of mild illness, James recovered, after which Jenner inoculated the boy with pus from a bladder of smallpox. James did not contract smallpox himself and did not infect anyone with whom he came into contact.

Although the experiment was successful, by modern standards it violated the principles of medical ethics.

“This was not a clinical trial, and the choice of subjects is confusing,” said Sheila Cruikshank, professor of immunology at the University of Manchester.

Jenner also didn't understand the science behind what he was doing. No one knew that smallpox was caused by the variola virus, much less the existence of the body's immune system.

“What he did was to create immunity, antibodies, memory, but the doctors had no idea what had happened,” Cruikshank says. “It’s amazing and a little scary at the same time.”

Jenner, however, realized that his smallpox vaccine (the word "vaccine" comes from the Latin name for cowpox, vaccinia) could create a revolution in health care and life-saving.

But he also understood that he would stop the disease only when he could vaccinate as many people as possible.

“Jenner wasn’t trying to make money from his vaccine, he wasn’t trying to patent it,” Gaver explains. “All he wanted was to tell people about it and spread it.”

The village doctor turned the house in his garden into a shrine for vaccinations and invited the locals to be vaccinated after Sunday Mass.

“He wrote to other doctors, offered them samples of the vaccine material and encouraged them to produce it themselves, so that people would get their shots from their local doctors whom they trusted,” Gaver said. “Now we understand such actions as propaganda for vaccination - it must be the right message from the right person.”

After Jenner released the findings of his research, the news quickly spread throughout Europe. And then, thanks to the support of the King of Spain, the whole world.

King Charles IV lost several members of his family, and his daughter Maria Louise survived, but remained scarred for life.

Hearing about Jenner's vaccine, he instructed a doctor to lead a worldwide expedition to take it to the most remote corners of the Spanish Empire. Although, in fairness, it was European colonists who brought smallpox to most of these places.

In 1803, a ship set off for South America with 22 orphans on board - they acted as carriers of the vaccine.

“Since mass production of the vaccine did not exist at that time, it was given to children,” Najera explains. When a child developed a blister on his skin, the next child was vaccinated against it, and so on.”

During the trip, the children were taken care of by the director of the orphanage Isabelle de Zendala y Gomez, who took her son with her to participate in the mission.

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Having split up, the expedition traveled around the Caribbean, South and Central America and subsequently crossed the Pacific Ocean to reach the Philippines.

In the 20 years since its discovery, Jenner's vaccine has already saved millions of lives. Smallpox vaccinations soon became common practice around the world. The disease completely disappeared in 1979.

“Personally, this gives me hope for a COVID-19 vaccine,” Najera said. “We now have 200 years of experience and knowledge about viruses and the immune system, but Jenner did all this without knowing what he was dealing with.”

“Jenner is one of my greatest scientific heroes,” Gaver adds. “His determination and innovation changed the world, saved countless millions of lives, and continues to do so.”

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