So I’m having trouble with this, and I’ve went through different links on Google and can’t find an answer. So they would poke into sores of people who had smallpox and then proceed to cut the patient and insert the infection directly into them. I’m not understanding why catching small pox that way would be any different than catching it naturally?
I am specifically referring to how it was done during the revolutionary war, not today’s vaccines. But wouldn’t mind knowing how those two things differ as a bonus
In: Biology
This is called variolation.
In china and asia, for example, they would grind scabs of _mildly infected individuals_ and snort them. This was the first variolation. Another method was the one you mention, but the aim was the same: this normally meant the body was exposed to damaged/weakened forms of the virus, or at least a milder strain, which would give immunity without as high a risk of death. However, there was little control, and often the resulting infection was still lethal, and no different from contracting the full blown disease.
Edward Jenner was arguably the first to try the safer vaccination – where a completely different, but similar virus was used to infect someone. Cow pox was different enough to ensure high survival rates, but similar enough to smallpox that people became immune to both.
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