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    The Homespun Origins of Vaccination
    The Homespun Origins of Vaccination
    The Homespun Origins of Vaccination
    Ebook91 pages58 minutes

    The Homespun Origins of Vaccination

    By Patrick Pead

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    About this ebook

    If you think you know how vaccination began - think again - because its dawn is clouded in myth and misrepresentation. Not a ‘discovery or an ‘invention’, vaccination was a development of what had gone before. Man’s battle against infectious disease had started in the Far East long ago with strange but effective practices to prevent smallpox. The true process of vaccination was first conceived and performed during 1774 by a yeoman farmer named Benjamin Jesty who lived in Dorset, UK. This predated Dr Edward Jenner by 22 years.

    The author presents a brief history of an endeavour which eventually culminated in the global eradication of an infectious disease. Edward Jenner is rightly recognised as the father of vaccination, but one of Mankind’s greatest achievements had very humble beginnings. The first verified applications of an empirical vaccine took place in a field in a rural area of southern England by a little known historical figure – an ordinary man who did something extra-ordinary. His ‘experiment’ may have had much greater influence than is commonly supposed. Here is a fascinating story that is thought provoking, and one which sets the record straight.

    The Homespun Origins of Vaccination is a low cost, well illustrated e-book. It is suitable as an introduction for students, historians, those in the medical professions, or anyone with an interest in the topic
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTimefile Books
    Release dateApr 16, 2017
    ISBN9780955156144
    The Homespun Origins of Vaccination

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      The Homespun Origins of Vaccination - Patrick Pead

      Preface

      Time Warped Histories

      This e-book is intended as an introduction to a true but little known historical event, and a person who has been described as ‘the man who history forgot’. It has relevance because the common assumption that Dr Edward Jenner ‘discovered’ vaccination is an overly simplistic view and misrepresents the facts. The author hopes that this monograph will bring a fresh perspective to the topic, stimulate discussion, and provide a basis for further study.

      How do we know what’s happening in the world today? Is news reliable? The accuracy of journalism may vary due to a multiplicity of factors. The interpretation of world events can be heavily subject to bias for various reasons. Even within the same country, press reports often differ according to the political persuasion of the newspaper or media agency. So what of history? Many accounts of bygone events were set down for posterity by those who prevailed over others. Some were scripted by members of their families or friends who had a vested interest. Modern retrospective studies have shown that we are left with much history which is inaccurate, incomplete or totally fabricated. There are examples of historical figures who have gone unrecorded or whose contributions were overlooked. Over the years, some questionable acknowledgements have become established as accepted truths but in reality they are little more than fables. This is unfortunate, for we are left with some records of the past that may be incomplete or not authentic.

      The invention of the steam engine is often attributed to James Watt, but his actual contribution was to perfect an existing machine devised by Newcomen and Savery. Edmond Halley was not the first to observe Halley’s Comet, nor did he give it his name. He is celebrated for realising that the comet had a regular periodicity of 76 years and predicting that it would return in 1758. Sir Francis Beaufort’s first scale of wind strength was copied from a Memoir written by Alexander Dalrymple five years before. Dalrymple, in turn, had adapted an idea proposed by the civil engineer John Smeaton in 1759. It is commonly supposed that Marconi invented radio, but this was really the brainchild of the Croat, Nikoli Tesla. The US Supreme Court dismissed Marconi’s claim in 1943 when they overturned his patent because it was proven that he had been predated by Tesla.

      Wainwright has compiled a fascinating review of the deficiencies in ‘standard accounts’ of discoveries in microbiology. Textbooks give credit to Louis Pasteur for linking moulds with the process of fermentation, but this work had already been explored in depth (and published) by Antoine Bechamp years before Pasteur began his experiments. In 1849 the physicians Swayne, Britten and Budd, described comma shaped ‘fungoid bodies’ in the faeces of cholera patients and also reported finding these organisms in water samples from cholera districts. This predated both Pasteur and the father of epidemiology, John Snow, who is noted for associating the infectious nature of water in spreading the disease.

      Ignatz Semmelweis is hailed as the first to show that hospital epidemics of puerperal fever could be prevented if medical staff washed their hands before attending women in childbirth. Thirty years before Semmelweis, a surgeon named William Hey had adopted this practice at the General Infirmary at Leeds in 1815. He may have based his ideas on the theories of Charles White and Alexander Gordon, who concluded in the late eighteenth century that childbed fever could be reduced by cleanliness and isolation. The American, Oliver Wendell Holmes published a paper in 1843 mentioning a doctor washing his hands in chloride of lime during maternity visits. Semmelweis wrote about the same topic three years later. In 1863 an article by the Manchester Professor of Chemistry, Frederick Crace Calvert, was printed in The Lancet. He described the medical uses of carbolic at the Manchester Royal Infirmary, including its use as an antiseptic application to wounds by a surgeon named Thomas Turner. There were other reports of the disinfecting powers of carbolic by McDougall in 1852 and by the Parisian doctor, Lemaire, in 1865. Joseph Lister did not publish his Lancet paper ‘On the use of carbolic acid’ until 1867, yet he is regarded as the father of antisepsis.

      Prevention of the debilitating effects of scurvy by a regular intake of citrus fruit was first noticed as early as 1534 by Jacques Cartier. This was confirmed seven years later by Sir James Lancaster who gave his sailors a regular issue of lemon juice. His proof was disregarded by the medical establishment of the day, and thousands of seamen were to die of scurvy until James Lind published his recommendations in 1753. Mankind’s battle against malaria could have begun in 1572 when the captain of a merchantman noticed that outbreaks of the disease appeared to be associated with mosquito bites. Doctors were not interested, so the world had to wait for three hundred years before this crucial observation was announced by Ronald Ross. He was awarded a Nobel Prize for his work. In so many cases, the plenary records of our scientific heritage have become usurped by the ‘standard accounts’ and

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