Louis Pasteur's Discovery Of The Small Pox Vaccination

In 1854 Louis Pasteur became a professor of chemistry at Lille. Shortly after, he became interested in fermentation. This was very helpful since alcohol making was a huge industry there. His interest in fermentation resulted in Louis developing many other interests. “In 1857 he jumped around from chemistry, biology then to medicine (Miller, 2002).” In 1860 he discovered pasteurization to kill bacteria in many food and beverages. This made a huge impact on the world. With pasteurization there would now be fewer illnesses due to people ingesting bacteria and parasites.

Edward Jenner and the Discovery of Vaccines Edward Jenner (1749-1823) trained in London, under John Hunter, and was an army surgeon for a period of time. After that, he spent his whole career as a country doctor in his home county, Gloucestershire (West of England). His research was based on careful case studies and clinical observation more than a hundred years before scientists could explain what viruses and diseases actually were. His innovative new method was successful to such an extent that by 1840 the British government had banned alternative preventive treatments against smallpox. [IMAGE]

A shot was developed by Edward Jenner at the end of the 1700’s to try to put an end to small pox. The death rate of small pox was spiraling out of control so they tried to put an end to it. The small pox shot was the first ever vaccine that was successful and actually cured people (How Small Pox Changed the World). Edward Jenner tested his theory of infected people with the cow pox virus to make them immune to small pox, and it miraculously worked. Before the vaccine was discovered/established small pox had been sweeping the nation and killing a lot of people in its path for approximately three thousand years. Small pox was spread by contact or even through the

Although most people think Edward Jenner was the first person to attempt a vaccination, this is not true. The earliest vaccinations started in the 7th century when snake venom was drank by Buddhists to try to gain immunity from snakebites. In 1796, Edward Jenner, a doctor in England, discovered he could give people immunity to smallpox by injecting them with material from cowpox lesions. Smallpox was a significant disease in most countries and killed millions of people in Europe and Mexico. Steps had already been taken to eradicate smallpox but it was Jenner who discovered using cowpox to immunize against smallpox as being the safest method. Using smallpox to create the vaccine was not safe so Jenner’s idea helped to save many people. This was the beginning of developing vaccines to keep people safe from diseases that were capable of wiping out entire populations. This

In the late 1700’s, Edward Jenner published his work on the development of a smallpox vaccination. Nearly a century later, Louis Pasteur goes on to formulate the Germ Theory of Disease. Two years later, Pasteur goes on to create the first live attenuated bacterial vaccine for chicken cholera. Six years later, the rabies vaccination is developed by the same man.

He was inspired by the tales of milkmaids who already suffered cowpox and did not catch a severe case because their immunity was built to prevent further infection from cowpox. The first experiment was based off of this tale. He injected pus from a milkmaid’s cowpox pustule into a healthy boy and later discovered that when he injected the boy with smallpox a few weeks later, the boy did not become deathly ill. The same experiment was tested on a milkmaid who had not contracted either cowpox or smallpox, and the results were identical to the boy’s, which confirmed the effective use of the vaccine (Dr. Edward Jenner, "An

The discovery all began in 1796 when Edward Jenner decided to test a local theory that if a person contracted cowpox they were immune to smallpox. Cowpox is a very similar disease, but is generally found in animals. It can however be contracted by farmers and others close to the sick animal. “Jenner extracted pus from a cowpox scab and inserted it into an incision on the arm of an eight-year-old boy. Although the child contracted a mild virus, he recovered quickly, developing antibodies that built up his immunity to both cowpox and smallpox” (The Feverish Roots). From that he shared his findings and vaccinations were born and are still used today. With the use of vaccinations there comes great benefits. “In a 2005 study on the economic impact of routine childhood immunization in the United States, researchers estimated that for every dollar spent, the vaccination program saved more than $5 in direct costs and approximately $11 in additional costs to society” (Vaccines). Instead of putting people through lots of trouble and hard times when they get ill. It is easier and better for society to be protected by having everyone vaccinated in the first place. “Vaccines protect not only yourself but also others around you” (Vaccines). Because of vaccinations the following illnesses have been completely eliminated if not all then at a large

In 1796, Edward Jenner created the first vaccine, but his discovery was an accident. Even though his discovery was an accident, Jenner’s discovery had revolutionized the medical world, and since his discovery, many more vaccines have been created. These vaccines can be very beneficial, so people should get vaccinated because it prevents diseases, stops outbreaks, prevents isolation among people, and exceeds the risks associated with vaccines.

One of the areas that we have greatly improved in has been our medical studies. With the improvements in our medical studies came vaccines. The first recorded vaccinated happened in 1774 by a farmer named Benjamin Jesty (The Dorest Page). Benjamin was an ordinary farmer, but during the summer there was an outbreak of smallpox (The Dorest Page). Small pox was a dangerous disease that sometimes ended with death. “Benjamin reasoned that if dairymaids who caught cowpox accidentally were immune to smallpox, then someone who caught cowpox deliberately should be equally immune. He therefore resolved to infect his family with cowpox with a

One of the most groundbreaking discoveries of medical history was the vaccination and eventual eradication of smallpox, thanks to Edward Jenner. When he noticed that milkmaids exposed to cowpox were immune to smallpox, he used the pus from a cowpox lesions and inoculated a young boy. The boy soon was sick from cowpox but recovered quickly. When he was then inoculated with smallpox matter, he never became ill. This proved that there was a way to save people from the deadly disease of smallpox. This led to a better understanding of immunology. Other vaccines such as polio, MMR, and influenza wouldn’t have been created as quickly, if at all without Jenner. It is suspected that his interest and curiosity for curing smallpox was when he was 13 years old as an apprentice to a surgeon; he heard a milkmaid say, “I shall never have smallpox for I have had cowpox. I shall never have an ugly pockmarked face.” Although it was already suspected there was a connection between the two, it wasn’t determined until Edward Jenner created the vaccination. Smallpox has been eradicated from the World since 1980 because of this.

The epidemic of smallpox is one of the most groundbreaking moments in medical history, It created the usage of vaccination to be extremely normal. Smallpox had managed to kill millions of people, which was a large part of the population at the time. Edward Jenner came up with a vaccine that could treat the illness and doctors were easily able to diagnose individuals. The process took a merely It only took around fourteen years to see that smallpox was no longer something people needed to fear. A vaccine is defined as any preparation used as a preventive inoculation to confer immunity against a specific disease, usually employing a harmless form of the disease agent, as killed or weakened bacteria or viruses, to stimulate antibody

Preliminary Thesis: Edward Jenner’s discovery of the smallpox vaccination demonstrated that the vaccine would protect against smallpox where no disease would develop, which prompted the World Health Organization to begin the process of worldwide eradication of smallpox.

Louis Pasteur was born 27 December 1822 and grew up in a small village, Arbois in France. In school, he liked to paint and draw so his teachers encouraged him to work hard on that subject. However, his father thought that painting was just something Louis could do at his pastime and told him to study hard. Louis followed his advice and graduated in 1847 from a highly regarded school in Paris called École Normale Supérieure. There, he had studied molecular asymmetry and continued to examine it at the University of Strasbourg. Louis soon discovered that molecules that looked like they were the same could occur as mirror images of each other. The finding was a huge step forward in the microchemistry.

First, in 1796, a doctor named Edward Jenner performed the very first vaccination. “Taking pus from a cowpox lesion on a milkmaid’s hand, Jenner inoculated an eight-year-old boy, James Phipps. Six weeks later Jenner variolated two sites on Phipps ' arm with smallpox, yet the boy was unaffected by this as well as subsequent exposures” (Minna & Markel, 2005)& (Cave, 2008). The first vaccination allowed people to recognize that it was beneficial for their health. It provided the base for the rest of the variations of vaccinations to come. Vaccinations began with the notion that it is rooted in the science of immunology. Throughout history, there have been many variations of this first vaccine for things such as small pox, mumps, malaria and guinea worm. (The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, n.d.)

Pasteur had already done work six years earlier with the disease chicken cholera, a disease that was to blame for the elimination of chicken flock in France. Through this one vaccine he produced for a single species of bird, he was able to discover the phenomena of virulence, or the harmful quality of a microorganism that causes the