Diahann Claghorn
(Editor’s Note: This is the first in a three-part series dedicated to the history of immunizations.)
The Downtown Lock Haven Rotary Club regularly holds fundraisers to help eradicate polio.
Since 1985, when Rotary International kick-started the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, Rotary clubs all over the world have been collecting money, donating funds and serving as volunteers to help stamp out the disease.
This Saturday, April 30, the Downtown Lock Haven club will sell pretzels and peanuts at the Wine in the Wilds event to raise money for this important work. Wine in the Wilds (sponsored by the Clinton County Historical Society) will be held Saturday from 2 to 6 p.m. at the Clinton County Fairgrounds in Mackeyville and will feature wineries, vendors, door prizes, food and music.
The event happens to be scheduled on the last day of World Immunization Week.
In recognition of this special week, the Downtown Lock Haven club also offers Express readers a three-part “History of Immunization,” starting today.
Readers should find this information helpful since we are still going through the COVID-19 pandemic.
SAVING LIVES
Researchers estimate vaccines have prevented more than 10 million deaths from disease since 1962. Rotarians know something about this, as eradicating polio has been a priority for more than 35 years.
Many Rotarians in America grew up during the polio outbreak of the 1940s and 1950s, or even contracted polio themselves. These experiences lead them to launch the global program.
Since it started, new “wild” polio cases around the globe have gone down 99.9 percent, and the virus remains in only two countries, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Rotary members also have gotten involved in supporting the COVID-19 vaccine rollout in some of the same ways they’ve been working to eradicate polio.
AN AGE-OLD IDEA
The idea behind immunization dates to 430 B.C., when Greek historian Thucydides observed that people who survived a plague that decimated Athens were never affected by it again.
Starting in 200 B.C., variolation was used to immunize people. Variolation works through injecting a healthy person with material taken from a once-sick person who had recovered from the disease, in the hope that a mild but protective infection would result.
This same method was employed for 2,000 years. For example, it was used to innoculate people against smallpox in the 1500s.
SMALLPOX IN
AMERICA
Also in the 1500s, smallpox was brought to the Americas and decimated indigenous populations who had never been exposed to it before.
In 1706, Onesimus, who was Puritan minister Cotton Mather’s slave from Libya, showed Mather his smallpox scar and explained how variolation was used in North Africa. Mather was convinced it could be effective against the scourge of smallpox in New England. He persuaded a Boston doctor to use it against the smallpox epidemic of 1721 in Boston. It faced some opposition, but it was used and it saved lives.
Variolation is no longer used today. It was replaced with the smallpox vaccine, which in turn led to the development of modern vaccines now available against other diseases.
In 1777, George Washington, who had contracted smallpox at age 19, had every soldier in the Continental Army immunized against the disease if they hadn’t contracted it earlier in their life. Smallpox had decimated many 18th-century armies, and General Washington didn’t want to lose any men to something that could be prevented by inoculation.
In 1796, Edward Jenner, a London-trained doctor, investigated a folk story about milkmaids who never got smallpox. He inoculated an 8-year-old boy with lesions from a milkmaid who’d had cowpox. The boy recovered quickly and did not develop any smallpox symptoms, as he might have done with variolation. Jenner concluded that the exposure to cowpox made the boy immune to smallpox. He called his discovery a “vaccination” from the Latin word vacca which means cow.
In 1801-1803, President Thomas Jefferson learned that the Jenner Vaccine wasn’t being handled and administered correctly. Jefferson designed a container to transport it properly. He also vaccinated 30 people at his Monticello estate.
The vaccine was successful, and in 1980, after a global effort, smallpox was declared officially wiped out everywhere.
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Diahann G. Claghorn, a retired educator, is Rotary Area Governor and a member of the Rotary Club of Downtown Lock Haven. For more information, find the club on Facebook or visit endpolio.org.
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