sihai.com: the word "vaccine" has been pushed to the forefront of the wave recently, which has aroused great discussion among the whole people. Do you know how the world's first vaccine was produced?
The discovery of vaccine is a milestone in the history of human development. In 1796, British doctor Edward Jenner (1749-1823) inoculated the liquid in the blister on the skin of the girl who was giving out the cowpox to an 8-year-old healthy boy, which was the most adventurous experiment in the history of medicine. The first vaccine in the world was born from this. Jenner was also known as the 'father of immunology'.
Edward Jenner (1749-1823): the father of Immunology
When Jenner was a young medical intern, he began to think about one thing he heard from a rural milkmaid. According to the female workers, she never worried about smallpox because she had already contracted vaccinia once. Cowpox is a very mild disease, very common, from the breast of the cow to the hands of the milkmaid, causing a small abscess rash. Cowpox is similar to smallpox, but it is much lighter. In the rural areas of Gloucestershire, where Jenner worked as a country doctor, the fact that vaccinia can lead to smallpox immunization is common knowledge.
As we all know, if a person is spared slight smallpox, he or she will be immune to the next infection. In fact, some doctors have grafted this mild disease on a few rich people to protect them from the smallpox epidemic that swept Europe in the 18th century. Vaccination costs money and is almost as dangerous as the disease itself. The vaccination process is sometimes fatal and often leaves ugly scars on patients.
In the 17th-18th century, Jenner spent almost 20 years studying smallpox, the most serious infectious disease in the west, and made a detailed record of smallpox and its patients. Finally, in May 1796, he did an experiment. He took the pus from an infected milkmaid and 'vaccinated' an 8-year-old named James Phipps. As Jenner expected, the child contracted mild cowpox, but it recovered as soon as Jenner expected. Take the next step in two months. Jenner then vaccinated the child with a lethal dose of smallpox. It's a very dangerous and controversial experiment, but the child is healthy all the time, and there's no sign that he's infected with this deadly disease. A few months later, Jenner repeated his experiment, again injecting young Phelps with another high dose of smallpox serous. The child is still healthy.
Jenner published his findings. Despite initial skepticism and resistance, vaccination was fully accepted in the UK in 1800 and soon adopted by the rest of the world. It is worth mentioning that Jenner himself vaccinates more than 300 poor people every day in the courtyard of his hometown. By 1800, 100000 people were estimated to have acquired new immunity. Many countries soon implemented mandatory vaccination. After that, incidence rate of smallpox decreased dramatically. Jenner's experiment was successful, and the world's first effective vaccine was born. But no one knew exactly why the smallpox vaccine worked, or what caused this or that disease. Although it was later found that smallpox vaccination was not effective for life and had to be 'reactivated' or subsequently 'enhanced', Jenner's measures not only freed the world from a terrible disease, but also established the science of immunology, and opened the way for future research, prompting later scientists, such as Pasteur, to seek treatment and immunity for other diseases.
In 1885, Louis Pasteur (1822-1895), a French microbiologist and academician of the French Academy, gave Joseph Meister, a 9-year-old boy who was bitten by a rabid dog, the first rabies vaccine in human beings. A month later, the boy recovered. Pasteur became the first person in the world to save lives from rabies. To commemorate his great contribution to the fight against rabies, the United Nations designated Pasteur's death anniversary and September 28 as World Rabies Day. Pasteur: creating a new era for the prevention and control of infectious diseases
As the founder of the theory of bacteria, the advocator of pasteurization in food disinfection and the inventor of rabies vaccine, Pasteur's name is widely known.
The theory of bacteria, which he put forward in 1860's, is a great breakthrough in the history of life science. Since then, it has been confirmed that micro organism is the medium to cause infectious diseases, and many people engaged in public health have found solutions. By the 1890s, several bacteria had been identified and identified as related to certain diseases and infectious diseases, and new methods had been found to eliminate them or at least control their spread, and introduced into hospitals and surgeries. But there are still some diseases that are still hard to explain and seem more difficult to deal with. Rabies is one of them. Pasteur speculated that perhaps the organisms involved were so small that they could not be seen even through a microscope. (later studies confirmed Pasteur's conjecture that the virus is also the cause of the disease. )
Pasteur suffered from the death of three children from infectious diseases (typhoid fever), which inspired him to study ways to cure various deadly infectious diseases. Later, he found that rabies was the highest mortality rate. In order to challenge this problem, Pasteur began to study methods to deal with rabies.
The dog returned to normal 28 days later after injecting the 'weakest germ solution' into the dog. After a period of time, the dog was injected with 'the most toxic germ solution', and the dog survived successfully. Pasteur reasoned that rabies virus should be concentrated in the nervous system, so he boldly took a small section of spinal cord from the dead rabbit and hung it in a sterile flask to make it 'dry'. The dry spinal cord and distilled water were mixed into the dog, and the dog survived miraculously. (as we know today, this is a live attenuated vaccine)
The dog's survival confirmed Pasteur's belief in vaccine development. He believes that the vaccine, which is made by extracting spinal cord from the body, drying it in a completely sterilized bottle, taking it out 14 days later and grinding it up and adding water, can be used in human body. On July 6, 1885, the appearance of Joseph Meister, a boy infected with rabies, was not only the beginning of Joseph's hope, but also the beginning of the success of Pasteur's experiment.
On July 6, 1885, the rabies vaccine invented by Pasteur was first used. He personally vaccinated 9-year-old Joseph with rabies vaccine, the world's first person rescued by rabies vaccine Joseph Meister
Compared with the modern cell culture vaccine, the live attenuated rabies vaccine developed by Pasteur more than 100 years ago has serious defects in safety and effectiveness. According to the quality standard of modern rabies vaccine, all of Pasteur's rabies vaccines were unqualified products. But the rabies vaccine invented by Pasteur not only had more advantages than disadvantages, but also laid a foundation for the development of a series of other modern vaccines, and created a new era for the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases. After several generations of renewal, the efforts of numerous researchers have developed into a modern cell-based inactivated rabies vaccine.
In 1887, the Pasteur Institute was founded in Paris. Today, the leading-edge Pasteur Institute has 32 research institutions in 29 countries around the world, and 8 Nobel Laureates in physiology and medicine have studied and worked in the Pasteur Institute. As Pasteur expected when it was founded, 'our institute will become a treatment center for rabies, a research center and a training center for infectious diseases', Pasteur's vision has now been realized.