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
In natural infection smallpox would be breathed in, hit all the internal organs and multiply first, and only then appear on the skin.
Stabbing it into skin causes immune reaction to begin immediately in response to damage, which catches the virus at the early stage and doesn’t let it multiply so much.
The way it was done was still not entirely safe and sometimes led to severe disease and even death in 1% cases, which admittedly was a big improvement compared to getting smallpox that led to death in about 20% cases.
It was then replaced with infecting with related but way less dangerous cowpox virus, and then to another related virus vaccinia.
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