An indispensable healthcare tool
Many illnesses and diseases plague humanity as well as other species of organisms in our natural world. Bacteria, viruses, as well as a plethora of other types of pathogens are responsible for harming billions of peoples’ lives all over the world. It is because of this that vaccines have been conceived by many cultures around the world since a very long time ago. We hear about vaccinations in the modern era in many ways: to treat or prevent communicable and non-communicable diseases and to maintain the order of public health in society. Today, we are going to be exploring the history of how vaccines developed to be, and how scientists’ views of them changed as time progressed.
The vaccines against smallpox
Smallpox has been around with humanity since ancient times. According to the U.N., some of the earliest examples of vaccination-like measures were actually public health officials exposing healthy, uninfected people to those who had contracted the disease, but were suffering relatively less severely from it. This process is similar, but is even more basic, to inoculation of the smallpox disease, and evidence shows that they could have been “taking place as early as 200 BCE.” Smallpox has devastated many communities historically, and sadly, anyone catching it without receiving vaccinations would have a thirty percent chance of dying.
In the early 1700s, smallpox inoculation was practiced in Europe for the first time ever. Prior to that time, inoculation had already been widespread in places like Turkey.
In the late 1700s, there was a further breakthrough in developing a more effective treatment of smallpox. English physician Edward Jenner decided to inoculate an eight-year-old child suspected of contracting the smallpox virus. However, Jenner used some material related to cowpox to inoculate the boy. Jenner theorized that cowpox infections are milder diseases that can train the human immune system to be more resistant to the smallpox virus, and in doing so, he officially created the world’s first successful vaccine. The boy turned out to make “a full recovery,” even though he had contracted smallpox beforehand.
Louis Pasteur
In the 1800s, a famous microbiologist, Louis Pasteur, created “the first laboratory-produced vaccine” against the fowl cholera disease. In 1885, he also prevented rabies by developing a form of post-exposure vaccination. Even though Pasteur was not a medical doctor, he was still credited for furthering science and developing a crucial new form of treatment for rabies diseases.
The 1900s
In 1918, the Spanish Flu killed approximately “20-50 million people worldwide.” Since it happened right in the middle of World War I, the American military was also devastated by the disease, with many soldiers killed. This spurred government recognition of the production of vaccines, as the U.S. Military made it one of its top priorities. However, in the case of the Spanish Flu influenza vaccines, the final results were somewhat inconclusive, and the vaccines did not prove to be the most capable.
It wasn’t until 1945 was the first influenza vaccine approved for military use. Soon after, in 1946, the first influenza vaccine was approved for civilian use.
In 1960, a new polio vaccine was invented by Albert Sabin, which was administered orally with a weakened form of the virus. Soon after, the vaccine was mass-manufactured in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and saw much success in countries like Czechoslovakia (the first country to eliminate polio).
In 1988, the WHO set out a Global Polio Eradication Initiative, demonstrating greater international effort in eradicating various diseases worldwide. This was following the success of eradicating the smallpox virus, which had been achieved a few years earlier.
Image by Van3ssa Desiré Dazzy from Pixabay
The 21st century
In 2016, the Meningitis Vaccine Project succeeded, and it marked one of the pivotal cases where there were significant public-private partnerships for developing vaccines. This vaccine helped many countries in Africa, which were suffering from the disease’s spread.
In 2021, coronavirus vaccines were rolled out rapidly in nations around the world. Despite the large number of vaccines administered, critics say that most of the vaccinations took place in more developed countries and that international aid organizations should place more effort into providing vaccines for less developed countries. The coronavirus vaccine was created in record time (only a year since the first case was detected), and it symbolized greater scientific innovation, as well as the greater variety of vaccines that can be developed using modern-day technology.
Conclusion
From even before the times of the ancient Roman empire, to our twenty-first century, vaccines have gone a long way in the methods and quality for treating or curing diseases worldwide. We have seen miracles, such as the eradication of smallpox, and yet there are still diseases (such as AIDS), of which the hunt for developing a working vaccine still yields elusive results. Ultimately, vaccines are powerful, but not all-encompassing. It is still up to each and every one of us to protect our own health, through a variety of different methods, rather than solely depending on vaccines.