Smallpox History

Biology Research

History of Smallpox and Scientific Methods of Dr. Edward Jennings

Name: Wael Aboul Hosn Date: Tuesday, October 4, 2010
Grade : 10 ADP

SMALLPOX: THE ORIGIN OF A DISEASE:

The origin of smallpox as a natural disease is lost in prehistory. It is believed to have appeared around 10,000 BC, at the time of the first agricultural settlements in northeastern Africa. It seems credible that it spread from there to India by means of ancient Egyptian merchants. The earliest evidence of skin lesions (An injury to living tissue usually on the skin) resembling those of smallpox is found on faces of mummies from the time of the 18th and 20th Egyptian Dynasties (1570–1085 BC). The mummified head of the Egyptian pharaoh
Ramses V bears evidence of the disease. At the same time, smallpox has been reported in ancient Asian cultures: smallpox was described as early as 1122 BC in China and is mentioned in ancient Sanskrit (an ancient language of India) texts of India.
Smallpox was introduced to Europe sometime between the fifth and seventh centuries and was frequently epidemic during the Middle Ages.
The disease greatly affected the development of Western civilization. The first stages of the decline of the Roman Empire (AD 108) coincided with a large outbreak: the plague of Antonine, which reported for the deaths of almost 7 million people.
Unknown in the New World, smallpox was introduced by the Spanish and Portuguese explorers. The disease killed in large numbers the local population and was the fall of the empires of the Aztecs and the Incas. Similarly, on the eastern coast of North America, the disease was introduced by the early settlers and led to a decline in the native population. The devastating effects of smallpox also gave rise to one of the first examples of biological warfare.
During the French-Indian War (1754–1767), Sir Jeffrey Amherst, the commander of the British forces in North America, suggested the considered the use of smallpox to diminish the American Indian population hostile to the British. Another factor contributing to smallpox in the Americas was the slave trade because many slaves came from regions in Africa where smallpox was originally
found.
Smallpox affected all levels of society.
In the 18th century in Europe, 400,000 people died annually of smallpox, and one third of the survivors went blind.The symptoms of smallpox, appeared suddenly and the sequelae(an abnormality resulted from a disease) were devastating. The case-fatality rate varied from 20% to 60% and left most survivors with disfiguring scars.
In this time smallpox was greatly feared, Voltaire recorded that 60% of people caught smallpox, with 20% of the population dying of it. In the years following 1770 there were at least six people in England and Germany (Sevel, Jensen, Jesty 1774, Rendell, Plett 1791) who had successfully tested the possibility of using the cowpox vaccine as an immunization for smallpox in humans. However, it was not until Jenner's work was proved. Twenty years later did that the procedure became widely understood. Jenner’s Initial Theory: |

The initial source of infection was a disease of horses, called "the grease", and that this was transferred to cows by farm workers, transformed, and then demonstrated as cowpox. The steps of the Scientific Method are:
Observation/Research
Hypothesis/Prediction
Experimentation
Conclusion
| Observation:
Smallpox was rare among people who came into direct contact with cows. | Hypothesis: | There was something about having cowpox that changed the people’s physiology in a way that prevented an infection with smallpox. | Prediction: | If variolation after infection with cowpox fails to produce a smallpox infection, immunity to smallpox has been achieved.Experiment:On 14 May 1796, Jenner tested his hypothesis by inoculating James Phipps, a young boy of 8 years (which was the son of Jenner's gardener), with material from the cowpox blisters of the hand of Sarah Nelmes, a milkmaid (which is a woman that works in diary) had caught cowpox from a cow. Phipps was the 17th case described in Jenner's first paper on vaccination.Jenner vaccinated Phipps with cowpox pus in both arms on the same day. The vaccination was accomplished by scraping the pus from Nelmes' blisters onto a piece of wood then transferring this to Phipps' arms. This produced a fever and some uneasiness but no great illness. Later, he injected Phipps with variolous(relating to a small pox) material, which would have been the routine attempt to produce immunity at that time. No disease followed. Jenner reported that later the boy was again challenged with variolous material and again showed no sign of infection. |

Conclusion:
The infection with for humans harmless cowpox is able to prevent an infection with harming smallpox. Immunity to smallpox can be brought on much more safely than by variolation.