History of Clinical Research: Smallpox, Genetics, Epidemiology, Hand Washing, and Surgery Part 2

so let me move on now to smallpox as you'll see as i go through the rest of this talk i happen to have a profound interest in infectious diseases because that's my area of clinically and immunology so let's talk a little bit about smallpox which has a pretty neat history smallpox was first

described by al-razi who i had mentioned earlier probably about 900 a.d in the 11th century there actually were protective measures being used throughout the world taking scabs from smallpox pustules and putting them in the nostrils of a healthy subject and that actually offered some protection if you didn't get smallpox people were wearing the clothing of

someone who had the disease people ingested powdered fleas from infected cows which may have perceived the relationship of cow pox to smallpox in the 1720s the process of what's called virelation was practiced in africa china in india where you would take a scab from a patient who had smallpox remove it from the subject and take the

contents of that scab and scratch it into a healthy uh person most people got protected some people got small pucks and lady mary whirly montague who was british and the wife of the british ambassador observed in turkey in constantinople this virelation process and she brought it to london and she even inoculated her

own two children and a hospital for smallpox inoculation was founded in london in 1745 using this approach the first known use of um cow pox to protect against smallpox was done by benjamin jeste who lived in 1736 to 1816 and he was a farmer who lived in a village of yet minister in northeast united dorset in

the united kingdom and he was convinced that milkmaids who contracted cal parks were protected from smallpox and in 1774 he inoculated himself his wife and two sons with cowpox lymph from the underside of a cow utter and in 1805 he publicly inoculated his son robert with live smallpox after he had inoculated or immunized him and he