Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I am Tracy Will, I'm Holly Front. They were going
Speaker 1: to talk about smallpox, super fun topics. Well, and it's
Speaker 1: been pretty much gone for long enough that I think
Speaker 1: most people don't really have a sense of just what
Speaker 1: it was like. Like, I think the closest equivalent most
Speaker 1: people have today's chicken pox. But even if that doesn't
Speaker 1: touch it in terms of horrifying this No, even now
Speaker 1: that we have chicken pox vaccine, a lot of people
Speaker 1: have never experienced chicken pox. And I coincidentally never got
Speaker 1: chicken pox. What Yeah, I had to be vaccinated for
Speaker 1: it as I grown up because I never got it
Speaker 1: as a child, neither did my brother. So smallpox it's
Speaker 1: not like super chicken pox. It's been around for longer
Speaker 1: than recorded history, and it probably originated in Africa more
Speaker 1: than ten thousand years ago, and it spread around the
Speaker 1: world following migration and trade. We have physical evidence that
Speaker 1: it existed as far back as six b C, thanks
Speaker 1: to the mummified head of Ramsey's the Fifth, which has
Speaker 1: evidence of smallpox physically. It was also described in writing
Speaker 1: in China and India at about the same time. But
Speaker 1: based on all that knowledge, it's pretty clear that smallpox
Speaker 1: existed before writing did. Yeah, and there are several types
Speaker 1: of smallpox, and there are there's a range of possible
Speaker 1: complications that can come from it, but in general, uh,
Speaker 1: it causes these small, pus filled lesions on the skin,
Speaker 1: and people that have it also get a fever normally
Speaker 1: and other flu like symptoms. And when it existed in
Speaker 1: the wild, uh, it was fatal and roughly of all
Speaker 1: cases for babies, that number was between eight and so
Speaker 1: a really high mortality rate. And in the eighteenth century,
Speaker 1: as much as ten percent of the population of Europe
Speaker 1: died of smallpox every year, and more than three d
Speaker 1: million people died of smallpox during the twentieth century. Those
Speaker 1: are numbers that I bet people were not expecting. No,
Speaker 1: they're pretty enormous. Yeah, that's a lot of people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a contagious disease and once somebody had it, there
Speaker 1: was really not anything that could be done. Most treatments
Speaker 1: that people tried did not have any real medical value.
Speaker 1: One was called the red treatment, which was basically surrounding
Speaker 1: the patient with the color red, but the patient did
Speaker 1: have to be clean, fed and cared for until the
Speaker 1: scabs fell off, and that was a few weeks after
Speaker 1: the pox started to form. Smallpox was contagious that entire time,
Speaker 1: so it spread really easily among families, caregivers, and other
Speaker 1: people who were living in close quarters, and the people
Speaker 1: that survived having smallpox often had extensive and disfiguring scarring.
Speaker 1: There were actually etiquette manuals that offered advice on how
Speaker 1: to word a condolence letter to your friend after her
Speaker 1: lovely face had been horribly disfigured and scarred by smallpox.
Speaker 1: Many survivors also faced other complications, including blindness, and before
Speaker 1: it's eradication, smallpox actually caused more blindness than any other condition.
Speaker 1: So this disease killed royalty, It changed lines of succession,
Speaker 1: It struck down armies in the field, and shifted the
Speaker 1: tide of battle. An epidemic near the end of the
Speaker 1: Roman Empire killed almost seven million people, and when it
Speaker 1: was introduced into the America's it devastated the native population,
Speaker 1: and it was also spread to native people's on purpose
Speaker 1: as a form of germ warfare during the French and
Speaker 1: Indian War. It was so influential and terrifying. That many
Speaker 1: polytheistic religions have gods of smallpox, and there are Christian
Speaker 1: saints and martyrs associated with it and its victims as well.
Speaker 1: So smallpox was a disease deeply dreaded and feared and
Speaker 1: it did not mess around. But one and gets the
Speaker 1: credit thankfully changed all of this, and that was Edward Jenner.
Speaker 1: And he's the topic of most of this podcast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but before we talk about him, we kind of need
Speaker 1: to talk about like the state of the world before
Speaker 1: he came along. We've talked a little bit about the
Speaker 1: germ theory of disease and how it did not really
Speaker 1: start to spread around the United States and Europe until
Speaker 1: the eighteen hundreds, but people weren't completely clueless about ideas
Speaker 1: like contagiousness and immunity before this point. People knew that
Speaker 1: if you were around someone who had smallpox for a
Speaker 1: long time, you would probably get it too. And for
Speaker 1: more than two thousand years, people have also known that
Speaker 1: a person who had survived smallpox wasn't likely to get
Speaker 1: it again, So smallpox survivors were tapped often to care
Speaker 1: for the sick because they appeared to be protected. So
Speaker 1: it's not really a far jump from those two ideas
Speaker 1: to the thought that maybe you could give somebody smallpox
Speaker 1: on purpose so that they would be immune later, sort
Speaker 1: of how like the vaccine. Sometimes parents would send their
Speaker 1: kids to play with somebody who had chicken pox to
Speaker 1: get it over with. I guess they're probably parents who
Speaker 1: don't want to immunize their children who still do this,
Speaker 1: but it would take a lot more efforts, since chicken
Speaker 1: boxes a lot more rare now. Yeah, And that was
Speaker 1: often done, especially with young children, because allegedly, if you
Speaker 1: get chicken pox younger less horrible than if you get
Speaker 1: it older. Getting chicken pox as an adult can be
Speaker 1: extremely horribly painful, which is why I have had a vaccine.
Speaker 1: So the thing is that for the most part, this
Speaker 1: whole method of um of exposing to somebody to smallpox
Speaker 1: on purpose actually a whole lot grosser than chicken pox parties.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah. The earliest attempts to deal with this happened
Speaker 1: in China at least a thousand years ago, but in
Speaker 1: sixteen seventy traders introduced the practice to the Ottoman Empire,
Speaker 1: where it started to progress to other nations. Sometimes it
Speaker 1: was as simple as deliberately exposing yourself to someone with
Speaker 1: a relatively mild case of the disease. But a more
Speaker 1: direct method and also the grosser one, was to use
Speaker 1: a needle or a lancet to extract matter from an
Speaker 1: infected person smallpox lesions and put it under the scan
Speaker 1: of a healthy person. Sometimes the material would be dried
Speaker 1: out or stored at room temperature for a while so
Speaker 1: it wasn't as lethal as fresh material. And another method
Speaker 1: was to inhale dried material from a smallpox lesion or
Speaker 1: a crushed up smallpox gab. Yeah, I know this sounds
Speaker 1: just terrible. It sounds like the sort of thing that
Speaker 1: we would hear about on saw bones that we keep
Speaker 1: mentioning is is like a thing that's just a terrible idea,
Speaker 1: but that actually worked. Yeah. After this exposure, the healthy
Speaker 1: person would usually wind up with a case of smallpox
Speaker 1: that was less severe than if it had been caught naturally.
Speaker 1: So you can see where there would be a certain
Speaker 1: appeal to this concept, like I will at least control
Speaker 1: my exposure and hopefully get a mild version rather than
Speaker 1: just cross my fingers and wait for the really horrible
Speaker 1: case of smallpox to his for disfigurement, blindness, and death.
Speaker 1: This practice became known as both inoculation and vary elation.
Speaker 1: So inoculation is from a Latin word meaning to graft
Speaker 1: or to implants, so think of like grafting a bud
Speaker 1: from one tree to another. Vary Elation comes from bariola,
Speaker 1: which is the name for the virus that causes smallpox,
Speaker 1: and then bariola comes from Latin words meaning spots or pimples.
Speaker 1: And the practice of vary elation spread first through India, China,
Speaker 1: and Africa, and by the eighteenth century it had made
Speaker 1: its way to Europe as well. It was slow to
Speaker 1: catch on though, uh In the early eighteenth century, Edward
Speaker 1: Wortley Montague was ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, and while
Speaker 1: he was there, his wife, Lady Mary Worley Montague, whose
Speaker 1: face had been scarred from her own bout of smallpox,
Speaker 1: learned about vary elation. But in seventeen eighteen she ordered
Speaker 1: the embassy surgeon to perform variolation on her son. This
Speaker 1: procedure was successful and she had her daughter inoculated in
Speaker 1: seventeen twenty one. After they got back to London. The
Speaker 1: medical community in England was not too sure about all this,
Speaker 1: so naturally, the next people who are very elated were prisoners.
Speaker 1: We've discussed the previous podcasts that there are times when
Speaker 1: people say it's not so much risk to use a
Speaker 1: prisoner or a criminal, let's just put them at risk. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there there are many ethical considerations in the history of
Speaker 1: small box. But from the air and some successful experimentation,
Speaker 1: the practice spread through the English aristocracy and into the
Speaker 1: rest of Europe. Vary elation made its way to the
Speaker 1: America's shortly thereafter. Reverend Cotton Mather and Dr Zabdial Wolfston
Speaker 1: used it to try to curb a smallpox epidemic in
Speaker 1: Boston in seventy one. About half of Boston's population got
Speaker 1: the uh got the virus. During this outbreak. About fourteen
Speaker 1: percent of those who got it naturally died, and that
Speaker 1: compared to two percent of the people who had been
Speaker 1: vary elated. So Math and Boilston documented all of their
Speaker 1: progress and with these results that showed that it was
Speaker 1: overall of success. You know, variolating people was way less
Speaker 1: deadly than getting smallpox naturally. The practice started to become
Speaker 1: more common on both sides of the Atlantic, and variolation worked,
Speaker 1: but it was not foolproof. People still died as we
Speaker 1: just mentioned, and survivors uh still had scars after they recovered.
Speaker 1: Sometimes a very elated patient would spread smallpox to other people,
Speaker 1: accidentally causing an outbreak anyway, and other diseases like syphilis, hepatitis,
Speaker 1: and scrofula, which is usually caused by the same bacterium
Speaker 1: that causes tuberculosis, could also be transmitted during this variolation process. Overall,
Speaker 1: varilation was about eight percent effective and it had a
Speaker 1: two percent mortality rate, so it was better than getting
Speaker 1: smallpox the normal way. There was still a lot of
Speaker 1: room for improvement, and that leads us to Edward Jenner.
Speaker 1: He was born on May seventeen, seventeen forty nine in Barkley, Gloucestershire.
Speaker 1: He was the eighth of nine children, and he went
Speaker 1: to live with his brother after being orphaned at the
Speaker 1: age of five. In seventeen fifty seven, when he was
Speaker 1: eight years old, he was inoculated for smallpox. He started
Speaker 1: an apprenticeship when he was in his early teens, working
Speaker 1: with a surgeon and apothecary named Daniel Ludlow. He was
Speaker 1: Lidlow's apprentice for several years and as the story goes,
Speaker 1: it was while there that he heard a dairymaid say
Speaker 1: that she would never get smallpox because she had had
Speaker 1: cow pox. Cow Pox, like smallpox, is a virus. Cows
Speaker 1: get it and it causes them to get these sores
Speaker 1: on their utters. People who came in contact with these
Speaker 1: sores while they were milking could get cow pox from
Speaker 1: the cow, and it would cause similar sores on their
Speaker 1: hands and lower arms. This was normally a really mild disease,
Speaker 1: and the idea that someone who had had cow pox
Speaker 1: before would not also get smallpox was either conventional wisdom
Speaker 1: or country superstition, depending on who you asked. And in
Speaker 1: addition to all that, milk needs were reputed to have
Speaker 1: extremely beautiful complexions. They are the subjects of poems because
Speaker 1: of their lovely skin, presumably because none of them had
Speaker 1: smallpox scars. Jenner continued to study medicine and surgery for
Speaker 1: the next several years, apprenticing with George Harwick in seventeen
Speaker 1: sixty four and with John Hunter at St. George's Hospital
Speaker 1: in London after he turned twenty one, And in addition
Speaker 1: to his interest in medicine, uh Jenner was also adept
Speaker 1: at other areas of science. He studied and observed animals,
Speaker 1: He collected fossils, and he helped classify newly documented specimens.
Speaker 1: He also something of a renaissance man, liked to play
Speaker 1: the violin and write poems. And as we have in
Speaker 1: a practice we have alluded to previously in a recent episode,
Speaker 1: he was a balloonist, and he built and flew his
Speaker 1: own hydrogen balloon. Ballooning was all the rage at this point. Uh,
Speaker 1: And in seventy six he decided to try experiment, building
Speaker 1: off the idea that cow pox granted immunity from smallpox.
Speaker 1: What if, as with vary elation, you could deliberately give
Speaker 1: someone cow pox. So a dairy maid named Sarah Elms
Speaker 1: came to see Jenner about the sore that she had
Speaker 1: on her hand, and he examined her, said it looked
Speaker 1: like cow pox, and she confirmed that one of the
Speaker 1: cows that she milked had recently had cow pox. And
Speaker 1: the cow that gave Sarah smallpox was named Blossom. Blossom
Speaker 1: skin is actually on display in the University of London
Speaker 1: Library at St George's Hospital. It was removed for restoration
Speaker 1: in and replaced in August. UH. She was a Gloucester cow,
Speaker 1: which has horns in both the males and the females.
Speaker 1: So if you see the pictures of the skin, it
Speaker 1: has horns on it, which some people who are not
Speaker 1: used to seeing female cows with horns maybe confusing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's kind of darling that her name was
Speaker 1: Blossom and a little morbid than skin is still on
Speaker 1: display in a museum. It's such a wonderfully morbid thing.
Speaker 1: So Jenner extracted material from this sore and he used
Speaker 1: it to inoculate an eight year old boy named James Fips,
Speaker 1: and he was the son of Jenner's gardener. So what
Speaker 1: he did was he scratched James's arm and he rubbed
Speaker 1: the material from Sarah's sore into it. James went through
Speaker 1: a range of mild flu like symptoms and then he recovered.
Speaker 1: A couple of months later, Jenner inoculated James again, this
Speaker 1: time with fresh material from a smallpox sore. When James
Speaker 1: didn't get smallpox, Jenner concluded that his experiment was in
Speaker 1: fact a success. He decided to call his method vaccination
Speaker 1: from the Latin words for cow and cow pox. So
Speaker 1: before we talk about how this wound up radically changing
Speaker 1: the world. We would be remiss if we didn't talk
Speaker 1: about some of the other people who had come to
Speaker 1: the same conclusion at about the same time. Twenty two
Speaker 1: years earlier, an affluent tenant farmer named ben Jamin Jesti
Speaker 1: had performed this same basic procedure on his wife and
Speaker 1: his two sons during a smallpox outbreak in their area.
Speaker 1: He had gotten the idea because he and two of
Speaker 1: his milk maids had all had cow pox before, and
Speaker 1: neither none of them had ever gotten smallpox in spite
Speaker 1: of being exposed to it repeatedly. Jest took his wife
Speaker 1: and two children to a field where some cows were
Speaker 1: infected with cow pox, and he used a stocking needle
Speaker 1: to transfer some material from the cow sores to their
Speaker 1: arms his wife are. His wife's arm became infected and
Speaker 1: she almost lost it, but all three of his family
Speaker 1: members came through the outbreak without being infected. His sons
Speaker 1: were inoculated with smallpox later on and had no reaction,
Speaker 1: and they were all exposed to smallpox multiple times afterwards.
Speaker 1: The ever got it despite the arm infection. It was
Speaker 1: as successful though unsettling operations yes, and Jesti was the
Speaker 1: target of all kinds of derision and scorn in his
Speaker 1: community because of what he had done, and while word
Speaker 1: did spread of his actions in the local medical community,
Speaker 1: there's no written evidence that Jenner ever heard about it.
Speaker 1: A schoolmaster named Peter Plett also put cow pox to
Speaker 1: similar use in Holstein, Germany in sevente using material from
Speaker 1: a cow on his employers two daughters. They were the
Speaker 1: only children to survive an epidemic that struck three years later,
Speaker 1: but one of them also had a strong enough reaction
Speaker 1: when he did this experiment that he didn't go further
Speaker 1: with the idea. A third man, John Fuster, was a
Speaker 1: very elation practitioner, and in seventeen sixty three he vary
Speaker 1: related two brothers, and one of them, who turned out
Speaker 1: to have had cow pox before, didn't have any reaction.
Speaker 1: So his brother got smallpox in a mild form, but
Speaker 1: nothing happened to him. So consequently Fuster wondered if cow
Speaker 1: pox might prevent smallpox, and he wrote a paper on
Speaker 1: the idea that he never published. He made some attempts
Speaker 1: at inoculating people with cow pox at roughly the same
Speaker 1: time as Jenner made his first attempts, although it's really
Speaker 1: unclear as to whether he and Jenner, who did know
Speaker 1: each other, ever talked about it. So then we sort
Speaker 1: of get to the question of what separates Jenner from
Speaker 1: these men and what earned him the nickname of Father
Speaker 1: of immunology, and it's that he made vaccination his life's work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's been several articles that have come out in the
Speaker 1: last ten or fifteen years that are sort of like,
Speaker 1: Jenner doesn't deserve this title. So and So did it
Speaker 1: twenty years before he did. And while it is true
Speaker 1: that he wasn't the first person ever in history to
Speaker 1: try this thing, he absolutely devoted himself to trying to
Speaker 1: uh to to protect as many people as possible from
Speaker 1: smallpox using cowpox from this point on, so much so
Speaker 1: that his other medical practice actually started to suffer. The
Speaker 1: first thing that he did was that he submitted a
Speaker 1: paper to the Royal Society in sev but it was
Speaker 1: rejected and he got a note from the society's president
Speaker 1: that he really should be concerned about his reputation. So
Speaker 1: taking that into consideration, he repeated his experiment a few times,
Speaker 1: and then he wrote up an Inquiry into the Causes
Speaker 1: and Effects of the very La Vaccinate, A disease discovered
Speaker 1: in some of the western counties of England, particularly Gloucestershire,
Speaker 1: and known by the name of cow pox. Just a
Speaker 1: lengthy title for a paper. I love the lengthy paper title.
Speaker 1: You can read this one online for free. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: that paper detailed his theories about the origins of cow pox.
Speaker 1: He thought it came from a horse ailment which is
Speaker 1: casually called Greece, which was later disproved, and he listed
Speaker 1: a number of case studies involving cow pox and smallpox immunity.
Speaker 1: He published his paper, financing it himself the next year.
Speaker 1: So the response to his publication and his ongoing vaccination
Speaker 1: work was mixed at best. People were really reluctant to
Speaker 1: believe that what he was proposing could work. Cow Pox
Speaker 1: was also not a really prevalent illness, especially in towns
Speaker 1: and cities, which made it kind of hard to get
Speaker 1: the material people needed to make backs nations. Uh. One
Speaker 1: of the things about variolation was that there was smallpox everywhere.
Speaker 1: You could easily get smallpox to inoculate other people with.
Speaker 1: Not so much so with cow pox because precautions like
Speaker 1: hand washing and sterilization we're not being used yet. Sometimes
Speaker 1: cow pox vaccines would become adulterated with smallpox through cross
Speaker 1: contamination that would make it look like a person had
Speaker 1: gotten smallpox from their cow pox vaccine, and people who
Speaker 1: made money off of variolation who are super opposed to
Speaker 1: Jenner's idea, as you can imagine, it would be a
Speaker 1: natural response. People also objected to vaccination on religious grounds
Speaker 1: or because they believe that cows were lesser than humans
Speaker 1: and so that humans should not be contaminated with material
Speaker 1: from cows. Clergy would speak against the idea of quote
Speaker 1: contaminating humans with a substance from a sick animal. The
Speaker 1: Anti Vaccine Society published a satirical cartoon called the cow
Speaker 1: poc or The Wonderful Effects of the New Inoculation, And
Speaker 1: this was a drawing of a group of people all
Speaker 1: being vaccinated and they were all growing cow heads out
Speaker 1: of their bodies. This was drawn by British satirist James Gilray.
Speaker 1: A year after Jenner had published his pamphlet, he conducted
Speaker 1: a survey to try to conclusively prove that cowpox did
Speaker 1: in fact confer smallpox immunity. Only once that was done,
Speaker 1: with the answer being a pretty decisive yes, it does.
Speaker 1: In fact confer small pox immunity. Did vaccination gradually begin
Speaker 1: to gain acceptance, And we're gonna talk about how has
Speaker 1: changed the world in a minute, but first we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about Jenner's personal life before we get to that point.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of what really was successful happened after
Speaker 1: he died in seventy eight. He got married and he
Speaker 1: eventually had four children. They built a cottage in the
Speaker 1: garden where he would give free vaccinations to poor children,
Speaker 1: and he called this the Temple of Vaccinia. Jenner would
Speaker 1: give vaccine to anybody who asked him for it for free,
Speaker 1: so the actual vaccination work was carried out by many
Speaker 1: other people. He started to call himself the vaccine Clerk
Speaker 1: to the world, and he developed new ways to collect
Speaker 1: and preserve cowpox material for the vaccines. Jenner put so
Speaker 1: much effort into vaccination that his own medical practices Tracy
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, really started to fail. Around the start of
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, Jenner gradually started to pull away from
Speaker 1: public life. His work had drawn huge praise, but it
Speaker 1: had also gotten a whole lot of judgment and scorned
Speaker 1: from people who feared what he was doing or questioned
Speaker 1: his practices. He received quite a number of awards and
Speaker 1: honors for his work, including several honorary degrees, and he
Speaker 1: received a medal from Napoleon in eighteen o four, and
Speaker 1: Napoleon so respected him that he was able to negotiate
Speaker 1: the release of British prisoners of war during the Napoleonic Wars.
Speaker 1: Statues have been erected in Jenner's honor all over the world.
Speaker 1: Parliament granted Jenner ten thousand pounds in eighteen o two
Speaker 1: for his vaccination work, and that was followed by another
Speaker 1: twenty thousand pounds five years later, and this is millions
Speaker 1: of today's dollars. Vaccination gradually started to overtake variolation in popularity,
Speaker 1: and in eighteen forty England prohibited variolation outright, since the
Speaker 1: vaccination was had at this point proved to be much safer,
Speaker 1: and this sparked protests from people who objected to vaccination
Speaker 1: for one reason or another and wanted to have variolation
Speaker 1: available as a choice. Tragically, although Jenner did so much
Speaker 1: work to stop the spread of smallpox at the time,
Speaker 1: tuberculosis was still a very common and deadly illness, and
Speaker 1: it also was not particularly treatable. He lost his oldest
Speaker 1: son to tuberculosis in eighteen ten and his wife in
Speaker 1: eighteen fifteen, and he had other deaths in his family
Speaker 1: in the intervening years. Edward Jenner did not, as was
Speaker 1: his custom, come down for breakfast on January eighteen twenty three,
Speaker 1: and he was found in his room having had a
Speaker 1: massive stroke. Uh. He died shortly thereafter on January. And
Speaker 1: really at this point his legacy was just at its
Speaker 1: earliest stages. And we're going to talk about that in
Speaker 1: just a moment, but first we will take a minute
Speaker 1: and talk about So now let's get back to how
Speaker 1: really the groundwork that Edward Dinner laid actually changed the world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as we mentioned before, although other people had made this
Speaker 1: same discovery that Jenner did, and even earlier than he had,
Speaker 1: it was still Jenner's tireless work that really started the
Speaker 1: world on a path to eradicating smallpox. It is, at
Speaker 1: least as of when we are recording this, the only
Speaker 1: disease that mankind has eradicated from the planet. Uh. Currently,
Speaker 1: the only samples of it that remain are in laboratories.
Speaker 1: Vaccination was pretty prevalent in Europe by eighteen hundred in
Speaker 1: eighteen oh three and really just one of my favorite
Speaker 1: stories that maybe we will do whole episode on later.
Speaker 1: Francisco Xavier to Balmus, acting on behalf of King Charles
Speaker 1: the Fourth, started an expedition from Spain to South America
Speaker 1: via the Canary Islands, and the goal of this expedition
Speaker 1: was to deliver vaccine to South America and Asia. So
Speaker 1: at this point, the preservation methods that were used to
Speaker 1: h to make the vaccine just they couldn't keep it
Speaker 1: potent over such a long and hot voyage. So they
Speaker 1: had to come up with a different method, which was
Speaker 1: that they rounded up twenty two orphans who had never
Speaker 1: had cowpox or smallpox and used them as a chain
Speaker 1: of human carriers to allow the vaccine to reach the Caribbean.
Speaker 1: There are many ethical employee implications of this practice, simultaneously
Speaker 1: ingenious and a little spine chilling. Yeah. So basically they would,
Speaker 1: you know, infect one person before the voyage started and
Speaker 1: then pass it from person to person as they crossed
Speaker 1: the sea. So so many moral layers to what we
Speaker 1: were talking about. I cannot even scratch the surface of
Speaker 1: it with my my pitiful moral attempts. But in eighteen
Speaker 1: o seven, Bavarians became the first to require military recruits
Speaker 1: to be vaccinated for smallpox, since troop movements had always
Speaker 1: been a major factor in the spread of the disease.
Speaker 1: In eighteen fifty three, England made smallpox vaccination compulsory. Other
Speaker 1: nations followed suit, and the rate of smallpox infection really
Speaker 1: dramatically started to drop. Resistance to vaccines continued to grow
Speaker 1: as more nations began to require it. Nobel Prize winning
Speaker 1: writer George Bernard Shaw, who caught smallpox in eighty one
Speaker 1: in spite of having been vaccinated as a baby, called
Speaker 1: vaccination quote a peculiarly filthy piece of witchcraft. Jenner had
Speaker 1: thought the protection granted by childhood vaccination would last forever,
Speaker 1: but that turned out to not be the case. And
Speaker 1: really there were some real, verifiable problems with the earliest
Speaker 1: vaccines because of the state of medical knowledge at the time.
Speaker 1: They simply were not being made or given in a
Speaker 1: way that was sterile or safe. There was no quality control,
Speaker 1: there was no method of standardizing how much of the
Speaker 1: virus a person got with any given vaccination. Plus, the
Speaker 1: first vaccinations were often as the case was with the
Speaker 1: orphans who were crossing the ocean. They were made from
Speaker 1: arm to arm, from person to person, and that would
Speaker 1: spread disease from the first person or wherever on down
Speaker 1: the line. It wasn't until the eighteen forties that people
Speaker 1: started instead passing the infection from cows to cows and
Speaker 1: then mass producing the vaccine from cow material only, which
Speaker 1: did cut down on some of the related bloodborne infections
Speaker 1: that could be passed along. And unfortunately, Jenner's record also
Speaker 1: was not perfect. Some of his conclusions, including the connection
Speaker 1: to the grease disease and horses and the idea of
Speaker 1: the immunity was permanent, proved to be false during his lifetime.
Speaker 1: He had also written a study on the behavior of
Speaker 1: newly hatched cuckoo birds that was correct, but wasn't proved
Speaker 1: to be so until many years later. So people disbelieved
Speaker 1: his conclusions and used that as another strike against him. Basically,
Speaker 1: he said, you were wrong about this, And it wasn't
Speaker 1: even kind of their argument. Father. It wasn't even just
Speaker 1: that he was wrong. What he had what he had proven,
Speaker 1: was basically that that newly hatched cuckoos will throw the
Speaker 1: other eggs and other hatchlings out of the nest and
Speaker 1: everybody thought they were not physically capable of doing that.
Speaker 1: And so it was not only that they were like
Speaker 1: you're wrong, Like you're wrong, and that's ridiculous, But in fact,
Speaker 1: cuckoos are jerks. Cuckoos are jerks, and they do that
Speaker 1: for real, and he had watched them do it with
Speaker 1: his own eyes. Yeah. But basically anything that he said
Speaker 1: or published that turned out to be wrong or was
Speaker 1: believed to be wrong and not proven until later really
Speaker 1: became fuel for the anti vaccination fire. Another big log
Speaker 1: on that fire was that although he had many years
Speaker 1: of medical training, he hadn't passed any kind of comprehensive
Speaker 1: medical exam when he started doing his immunization work. Those
Speaker 1: weren't compulsory when he went through his training, and the
Speaker 1: fact that he hadn't passed the equivalent of the boards
Speaker 1: became this huge bone of contention, and some people just
Speaker 1: thought that vaccination wasn't necessary. They claimed that the rate
Speaker 1: of smallpox decline was really just because of improvements in
Speaker 1: general sanitation and hygiene as the rate dropped, which meant
Speaker 1: that people felt less threatened by smallpox on a day
Speaker 1: to day basis. Objection to vaccination became more and more vehement.
Speaker 1: Patent medicine pushers and other quacks also started to deliberately
Speaker 1: spread anti vaccine sentiments as those practices started to grow
Speaker 1: in the eighteen hundreds. And there are some legitimate ethical
Speaker 1: issues that surround vaccination, you know, some of which we've
Speaker 1: talked about before earlier in this podcast. Compulsory vaccination was
Speaker 1: viewed as wealthy people invading the privacy of poorer people
Speaker 1: and robbing of them of their freedom of choice. And
Speaker 1: some nations there were layers and layers and layers of
Speaker 1: entangled religious and ethical considerations. In India, for example, there
Speaker 1: was the fact that the vaccine came from cows, which
Speaker 1: was symbolically sacred to many Hindus. The vaccine was also
Speaker 1: being passed from person to person through a society that
Speaker 1: had a really rigid cast system, and the whole thing
Speaker 1: was wrapped up under this umbrella of British colonialism. So
Speaker 1: as with the chain of human orphan carriers, that's a
Speaker 1: whole lot of moral and ethical discussion to try to unpack. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really problematic, and regardless of all of these considerations,
Speaker 1: the end result was the only time ever in human
Speaker 1: history that a contagious disease had been eradicated through the
Speaker 1: efforts of human beings, so that almost adds another like
Speaker 1: dicey layer of people being able to say, well, the
Speaker 1: end justifies the means. But then there was also some
Speaker 1: mythical weirdness along the way. Right, it becomes a really
Speaker 1: complicated issue. Smallpox was eradicated in most of Europe and
Speaker 1: North America by the nineteen fifties, but it was still
Speaker 1: really prevalent in many other parts of the world at
Speaker 1: that point. In nineteen sixty seven, the World Health Organizations
Speaker 1: spearheaded and global vaccination effort, which was met with a
Speaker 1: lot of skepticism. The vaccine and use at this point
Speaker 1: was freeze dried. It was generally made from animal lymph,
Speaker 1: and it was made too much, much, much higher standards
Speaker 1: of quality control and purity and sanitation and everything else
Speaker 1: than what was around in Dinner's time. We were not
Speaker 1: just extracting material from sores and sticking it into people anymore,
Speaker 1: which is still so the grossest gives to the wiggles uh.
Speaker 1: In some regions, the goal was to vaccinate everyone, but
Speaker 1: when that wasn't possible, they turned to a method that
Speaker 1: was known as ring vaccination, and since smallpox spreads through
Speaker 1: close contact rather than casual contacts, so you'd get it
Speaker 1: from living in the same house with someone, but not
Speaker 1: from walking past an infected person on the street. Uh,
Speaker 1: the focus was on vaccinating people who came into close
Speaker 1: contact with someone who had been exposed. So getting a
Speaker 1: vaccine within three days of exposure dramatically decreases the likelihood
Speaker 1: of getting smallpox, or it enables you to only get
Speaker 1: a very light case of it. Yeah, So when there
Speaker 1: would be a reported case of smallpox, they would sort
Speaker 1: of come and immunize everyone around that person and cut
Speaker 1: off this one infection vector, uh from spreading it to
Speaker 1: other people. Had there been multiple stable strands of smallpox,
Speaker 1: which there weren't, just really just one main one, or
Speaker 1: if it had also been carried by animals, this whole
Speaker 1: eradication attempt would have been a lot more difficult than
Speaker 1: it was. And The last occurrence of the most serious
Speaker 1: form of smallpox, known as very ala major, was in
Speaker 1: Bangladesh in nineteen seventy five. The last naturally occurring case
Speaker 1: of smallpox was in Somalia in ninety seven, and on
Speaker 1: May eighth of nineteen eighty the World Health Organization declared
Speaker 1: that the world was now free of smallpox. Like we said,
Speaker 1: first and only time ever for that to happen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there have been some diseases that have kind of faded
Speaker 1: from history thanks to changes in diet and sanitation and
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. So they're diseases that used to
Speaker 1: be common that really aren't anymore. But this is really
Speaker 1: the only time that people have said we are going
Speaker 1: to get rid of this disease and then did it.
Speaker 1: There there are some others that are getting kind of
Speaker 1: close to that point now, but as of right now, um,
Speaker 1: which is October, smallpox is the only one, although it's
Speaker 1: been eradicated and you know, you cannot generally get it
Speaker 1: from another person unless that person has been infected in
Speaker 1: some kind of lab accident. There are many nations that
Speaker 1: maintain a stockpile of smallpox vaccine in case of a
Speaker 1: biological weapon attack using smallpox. Right now, the only known
Speaker 1: smallpox virus samples still in existence are in laboratories in
Speaker 1: the United States and Russia, and every once in a while, uh,
Speaker 1: everybody involved kind of re visits the idea about whether
Speaker 1: we should destroy those The most recent conversations I've seen
Speaker 1: about it are from twenty eleven. Um that like there
Speaker 1: had been. Yes, we are destroying them as far back
Speaker 1: as in the eighties, but they're still around um and
Speaker 1: the most recent conversations about it. The recommendation is, you know,
Speaker 1: there might actually be a need for us to have
Speaker 1: intact uh samples of the original virus if there were
Speaker 1: something like a terror attacked using small box. So that
Speaker 1: remains to be discussed for a long time. I think yeah,
Speaker 1: probably underlock and key. Uh. And the home that Jenner
Speaker 1: had is today known as the Edward Jenner Museum. You
Speaker 1: can visit it. You can visit it and see the
Speaker 1: Temple of Vaccinia. I just love they called it that.
Speaker 1: How do you do? It's sort of cute. So yes, uh.
Speaker 1: We we got some questions about vaccination after we talked
Speaker 1: about Elsa Manchester and that her mother not wanting her
Speaker 1: to be vaccinated, and that kind of led me to
Speaker 1: what how did how did I knew the basic story
Speaker 1: was about Jenner and counts now I know a lot
Speaker 1: more of it and how super gross it was. We
Speaker 1: could have been way more graphic in our language in
Speaker 1: this episode, and we mostly have not been because I
Speaker 1: don't think I could stomach it. Yeah, we're not trying
Speaker 1: to be gentle with you. We're trying to be gentle
Speaker 1: with us. Yes, I can probably stomach it, but filling.
Speaker 1: Do you have some listener mail that is not full
Speaker 1: of biological yuck? No? Actually I have two pieces of
Speaker 1: mail that is full of biological Yes, so are The
Speaker 1: response we've gotten to our episodes about the Haunted Mansion
Speaker 1: has been generally overwhelmingly positive that the people who have
Speaker 1: not been positive are so angry. Yeah, super angry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm going to take the giant pile of love and
Speaker 1: just told it close. Um. So the first thing this
Speaker 1: is from Aubrey. Aubrey says, I just discovered your podcast.
Speaker 1: Then I love it. As a stay at home mother
Speaker 1: of three, I feel my brain has become mush and
Speaker 1: this is so refreshing. While I was listening to the
Speaker 1: Haunted Mansion episode, I was reminded of a friend of
Speaker 1: mine whose family spread his ashes and the pirates of
Speaker 1: the here being that Disneyland, it was a major in
Speaker 1: All Caps ordeal. Of course, they're obviously watching everyone at
Speaker 1: all times, and they caught them letting handfuls of ashes
Speaker 1: into the water. They were told to stop while the
Speaker 1: ride was going, and then the ride was shut down,
Speaker 1: and then security stopped them, took them to private quarters
Speaker 1: where they were told they could press charges against them
Speaker 1: because it is illegal, and they were kicked out of
Speaker 1: the parks and their annual passes which they could just purchase,
Speaker 1: were removed with their refund and rightfully so, I have
Speaker 1: been disturbed greatly ever since. When I ride Pirates, they
Speaker 1: were told the water has to be drained and has
Speaker 1: Matt has to come in to make a proper cleaning.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if this is true, but it's terrible,
Speaker 1: So just thought i'd share that it's not just the
Speaker 1: haunted mansion that is among the dead. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: Disney's magical. Too many people Disneyland and Disney World, and
Speaker 1: people really like the idea of spending eternity there in
Speaker 1: their cremine state. And I understand that appealed it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't do it well. And I also think I'd
Speaker 1: feel empathy with people for the decisions that they make
Speaker 1: regarding you know that their deceased loved ones. Um. I
Speaker 1: am a person who has spent exorbitant amounts on my
Speaker 1: deceased cats. Um, but yeah, those are human remains, and
Speaker 1: you don't really just want to have human remains around,
Speaker 1: certainly not they're in a public place. Our other listener
Speaker 1: mail is along a similar subject, So this is just
Speaker 1: our bioas episodes from a cast. We got a lot
Speaker 1: of great emails from cast member and this one gave
Speaker 1: us some additional inside info on this problem. So we're
Speaker 1: gonna keep this one anonymous because we don't want to
Speaker 1: get her in trouble. Yeah with word. I've been listening
Speaker 1: to your amazing podcast for over a year now and
Speaker 1: have always wanted to write in, but have never had
Speaker 1: anything that was interested enough to talk about. Considering that
Speaker 1: I started listening to you guys to kill Tom on
Speaker 1: my forty five minute ride to work at the Magic
Speaker 1: Kingdom in Walt Disney World, I finally have my moment.
Speaker 1: Living in the subculture that is being a cast member
Speaker 1: is like living in a crazy parallel universe. It makes
Speaker 1: complete sense that it took eighteen years for Disney to
Speaker 1: open Haunted Mansion, considering that they've been talking about replacing
Speaker 1: the Electric Light Grade with Spectro, which tends to be
Speaker 1: more beloved and is sitting in storage for two years,
Speaker 1: and never have because of technical delays. Cast member gossip
Speaker 1: is usually about rumored lands or ride updates that will
Speaker 1: probably never happen. There are so many creatives working in
Speaker 1: the parks that ideas get really far in development and
Speaker 1: then get shelved. In Part one, you commented that it
Speaker 1: was kind of weird that in the nineteen fifties the
Speaker 1: Haunted Mansion was going to be a home for English
Speaker 1: ghosts from the war, which it totally is, but it's
Speaker 1: also totally in the wist idea of the show of Disneyland.
Speaker 1: As a cast member, we'd have meetings to talk about
Speaker 1: maintaining show. Cinderella live in the castle at the age
Speaker 1: of Main Street, across from Belle and Aerial. The wire
Speaker 1: that comes out from the castle but tanker bell flies
Speaker 1: on during the fireworks is Cinderella's clothesline for Charming's ESPN hookup.
Speaker 1: The and You Ask the Country Bears love giving thirty
Speaker 1: slightly strange shows every day and then they hibernate for
Speaker 1: the night. Alice hangs out with the White Rabbit by
Speaker 1: the Mad Tea Party, unless you're in Epcot, then she's
Speaker 1: probably gone home to England. Any question that a guest asked,
Speaker 1: has a preplanned answer and it's probably magical. Also, people
Speaker 1: totally do dump ashes on ride. One of my roommates
Speaker 1: worked at the Toy Story ride at Hollywood Studios and
Speaker 1: they had a guest to dump their mother's ashes on
Speaker 1: the ride. They had to stop, cycle everyone out of
Speaker 1: the ride and deep clean. It makes a forty five
Speaker 1: minute wait closer to three hours. Everyone gets angry, and
Speaker 1: the ashes end up in a hazardous waste somewhere. I
Speaker 1: love the show and everything you do. I'm sure you've
Speaker 1: been asked before, but Walt's life would be amazing. It's
Speaker 1: super long topic. And then she also sent some pictures
Speaker 1: which are charming. Yes, and I have to say Toy
Speaker 1: Story Midway Mania already has one of the longest lines
Speaker 1: any of the parks, like the Way if you don't
Speaker 1: have a fast pass, is often a couple of hours.
Speaker 1: So the idea that you would add another three to
Speaker 1: that because somebody did this, I can only imagine, like
Speaker 1: the guest fury, and I'm sure they do not tell
Speaker 1: guests that that's what's going on. So the poor cast
Speaker 1: members that have to deal with people that are just
Speaker 1: fury angry. Yes, and I understand the anger, especially if
Speaker 1: it's hot, you are frustrated and probably thirsty. Yes, it's rough,
Speaker 1: so public service announcement. Don't spread cremates like dumping of
Speaker 1: cremated people or cremated anyone really is problematic and we'll
Speaker 1: maybe cause there to have to be has that team, Yeah,
Speaker 1: nobody wants that. Yes, So thank you both for these letters.
Speaker 1: Thank you everyone for the We've gotten really just amazing, fantastic, excited,
Speaker 1: delightful letters about this. And for those of you who
Speaker 1: are really angry that we spent two episodes talking about
Speaker 1: a carnival ride. Sorry about that. Uh, we have lots
Speaker 1: of other episodes that are on lots of other things.
Speaker 1: We have a pretty diverse as sort it. Like today
Speaker 1: we're talking about death and disfigurement and you know, changing
Speaker 1: the world, not to carnivally. Nope. If you would like
Speaker 1: to write to us about this or anything else, we
Speaker 1: are at History Podcast at Discovery dot com. We're also
Speaker 1: on Facebook at facebook dot com slash history class stuff
Speaker 1: and on Twitter at miss in history our tumbler which
Speaker 1: has just been zooming along in popularity lately, and I
Speaker 1: thanks everyone who has contributed to that. That's at miss
Speaker 1: in history dot tumbler dot com, and we are also
Speaker 1: pinning things up on Pinterest. If you would like to
Speaker 1: learn more about what we have talked about today, come
Speaker 1: to our website and put the word smallpox in the
Speaker 1: search bar. You will find the ten oldest known diseases,
Speaker 1: of which smallpox is one. There may be someone there
Speaker 1: that you were expecting to see, which it turns out,
Speaker 1: are much more recent. You can learn about all that
Speaker 1: and a whole lot more at our website, which is
Speaker 1: how Stuff works dot com. For more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Because it has to forks dot com.
Speaker 1: This episode of Stuff you Missed in History Classes brought
Speaker 1: to you by Linda dot com. You can learn it
Speaker 1: at Linda dot com, an online learning company with more
Speaker 1: than seventy seven thousand video tutorials to teach software, creative
Speaker 1: and business skills. Membership starts at twenty five a month
Speaker 1: and provides unlimited seven access to top quality video courses
Speaker 1: taught by expert instructors with real world experience. Listeners of
Speaker 1: Stuff you Missed in History class can trial Inda dot
Speaker 1: com free for seven days by visiting Linda dot com
Speaker 1: slash history stuff