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The Hidden Life Behind The Zika Virus

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The “Hidden Life” behind the Zika Virus As a pharmacy major, this semester I took the class medical microbiology. As we talked about different diseases, we briefly touched on the history of some of the diseases and it made me very curious to learn more about how the history of medicine has shaped our world today. So, for this final paper I thought it would be a great way to explore more about world history, through the lens of medicine. For the past few months, the Zika Virus has been a “hot topic” in the news due to its recent outbreaks in the United States.
Zika virus was first discovered in 1947 in Uganda and is spread through the bite of an infected mosquito. It can cause a fever, joint pain, a rash, and pink eye, but most …show more content…

Edward Jenner was a scientist in London at the time who made the connection that his milkmaids, who had been infected with cowpox, were immune to smallpox. This connection is how Jenner created the first smallpox vaccine using cowpox because it provided immunity for smallpox. This was a revolutionary event in history, vaccines have been developed for diseases like chicken pox, shingles, polio, influenza, and many others. Although there is no vaccine for the Zika virus, because of Jenner’s findings, it is quite possible that there could be a vaccine for Zika Virus in the future.
The Industrial Revolution time period was not only at time for new technologies and factories, but it was a key time for breakthroughs in medicine. Before the Industrial Revolution, many scientists thought that some diseases randomly grew out of non-living objects, “miasmas” or fogs, in the air. In the mid-1800s, a chemist by the name of Louis Pasteur proved this wrong and he showed that diseases were actually caused by microscopic organisms in the environment. This discovery was revolutionary; now doctors were able to begin finding prevention methods or cures for diseases. There is so much that happens in the world today that we can trace back to Pasteur’s discovery. Without his findings, there would be no way to protect from treatable diseases. Because of Pasteur’s discovery, more research will be able to be done about Zika virus because it is failure unfamiliar to most people

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