10 Things to Know about the History of Vaccines

10 Things to Know about the History of Vaccines

Immunisation can be traced back to hundreds of years ago when Buddhist monks drank snake venom to build their immunity against snake bites in 17^th century China. Edward Jenner established vaccinology in the West by inoculating a 13-year-old boy with the vaccinia virus of cowpox and demonstrating immunity to smallpox in 1796.  The first smallpox vaccine was invented in 1798. The systematic implementation of mass smallpox immunization in the 18th and 19th centuries culminated in the disease’s global eradication in 1979.

This article will explore some facts about the history of vaccines that will give the reader insight into how the medical field has made steps towards ensuring that people do not succumb to diseases that can be prevented.

1 Vaccination came later after variolation

A picture if several vaccines by Prefeitura de Itapevi-Wikimedia

Edward Jenner, a British doctor is said to be the father of vaccines after he performed the first vaccination of smallpox in 1796. People all over the world used variolation to protect themselves against smallpox before Jenner’s vaccine. Subcutaneous injection or inhalation of material from smallpox pustules, such as pus as well as dried scabs, was used as a variolation

Patients would develop smallpox symptoms after variolation procedures, such as a rash and fever. Those infected through variolation, on the other hand, had a much better chance of survival than those who contracted smallpox naturally.

2 The first vaccine produced in a laboratory was for chicken

Pasteur was studying chicken cholera, which was caused by the bacterium Pasteurella multocida, in 1879 by injecting the bacteria into chickens and observing how the disease progressed. By chance, Pasteur discovered that injecting the chickens with older samples of bacteria caused them to contract a milder form of the disease.

When the chickens were injected with fresh bacteria, they did not become ill, indicating that their previous exposure to the weakened bacteria had rendered them resistant to future infection. Pasteur went on to study anthrax and rabies using the concept of attenuation, which is the process of weakening pathogens and using them to make vaccines. This was a huge step forward in vaccine science.

3 Vaccines made using weakened viruses have proved effective

Preparation of the measles vaccine by technicians in albania. Photo by WHO-Wikimedia

Vaccines based on weakened viruses have been enormously successful. The measles vaccine, for example, eradicated a virus that caused over 2 million infections, 50,000 hospitalizations, and 500 deaths in the United States each year. These steps have been critical in ensuring that a viral infection is not as severe as it would have been if a person had not already been injected with the weakened virus.

4 Vaccines were used as the first free medical service in the UK

After vaccines had been discovered and tested to be effective, they became the gold standard in the United Kingdom as it was safer than variolation. Variolation was even banned after the national vaccination act was passed. The law also ensured that vaccines could be accessed by the poor as the first instance of free medical care given in the United Kingdom. Vaccination became mandatory for newborns in 1853, and in 1855, Massachusetts passed the first state law in the United States requiring it for school children.

5 Special farms were created to meet the demand for vaccines

A picture of the smallpox vaccine by James Gathany-Wikimedia

With the demand for vaccine doses increasing year after year, scientists developed a method for propagating cowpox among calves for use in vaccines, dubbed “animal vaccine.” In essence, scientists extracted infectious fluid from cows for use in smallpox vaccines. This was safer than transferring pus from one person to another because it reduced the risk of other diseases, such as syphilis, being transmitted. After the concept was understood, people opened several vaccine farms to ensure the production of the specimen was sufficient.

6 In Spain, orphans were used to harvest viral materials that would be used to make vaccines

One issue with vaccinations was that scientists were unable to produce a vaccine. The viral material had to come from a person who was already infected, making public health vaccination campaigns difficult. However, in 1803, the Spanish government devised an unusual, and highly unethical, workaround.

King Carlos IV wished to immunize the people of Spain in their American and Philippine colonies. Doctors devised a plan that included shipping 22 orphaned children. The plan was to set sail and then vaccinate the children one by one, with one child passing on the cowpox pus to the next, and so on, forming a human chain and ensuring access to the valuable viral material. This was a barbaric route to take as they preyed on vulnerable orphaned children who had no one to defend them.

7 HeLa Cells have been critical in vaccine development

Human cells grown in laboratories are critical to scientific research, and one of the most well-known cell lines is the “immortal” HeLa cells. The first HeLa cells were obtained from a cervical cancer patient at Johns Hopkins in 1951, Henrietta Lacks, a 31-year-old African American woman from Baltimore.

Unlike other cell populations, scientists had tried to grow in the lab, which only lasted a few days, the HeLa cells divided indefinitely. This provided scientists with a large population of identical cells to study. Furthermore, the cells have been critical in the realization of some scientific breakthroughs in the medical field like the testing of the polio vaccine.

8 Vaccines have helped prevent a lot of deaths in past years

A picture of a woman being injected with a vaccine by NIAID-Wikimedia

In past years, vaccines have played a significant role in preventing more than two million deaths a year and also eradicating viral diseases like smallpox and it is also close to eradicating polio. Since vaccines cause herd immunity in that if many people in a community are vaccinated against a particular disease, then those who are not vaccinated are less likely to get sick and thus prevent deaths.

9 The process of developing vaccines has become easier

With the introduction of HeLa cells which can be grown in the laboratory, the process of developing vaccines has been made easier and people do not have to wait for long and fatalities increased before a vaccine is found. For instance, the coronavirus pandemic ravaged the world recently and scientists were able to develop a vaccine within a year and thus reducing casualties who would have succumbed to the virus.

10 Campaigns are pushing for people to be vaccinated

There are several campaigns by stakeholders and scientists in the medical field pushing for people to be vaccinated against different diseases to ensure that an epidemic or a pandemic is prevented. One of the campaigns is the Covid-19 vaccine campaign where people are being urged to take the vaccine to develop herd immunity and eradicate the virus.