[Downloaded from Dick Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter, dated January 8 2015] A Cow’s Head Will Not Erupt from Your Body if You Get a Smallpox Vaccination Our ancestors had some strange ideas about medicine. In the late 1700s and early 1800s, smallpox was a common and often fatal medical disease. According to Wikipedia, the disease killed an estimated 400 000 Europeans annually during the closing years of the 18th century (including five reigning monarchs), and was responsible for a third of all blindness. Of all those infected, 20–60 percent — and over 80 percent of infected children — died from the disease. There was no cure at the time. While Cotton Mather and others practiced inoculation in the 1700s, the practice was not well-known or in widespread use until Edward Jenner, an 18th-century English country doctor, discovered that immunity to smallpox could be produced by inoculating a person with material from a cowpox lesion He published his findings and other doctors soon started vaccinating their patients. The practice caused widespread controversy, however. As scary as smallpox may have been, people were also terrified of this new idea of inoculation. Religious leaders said it was immoral to stop a disease that God has created One common rumor was that anyone who received a vaccination would soon grow a cow’s head. Since the vaccine was created from cowpox, a similar but non-lethal disease commonly found in cows, many people believed that the vaccination would convert the patient into a cow-human hybrid. Reason prevailed and the vaccination slowly became commonplace. The last case of smallpox ever recorded was on October 26, 1977, in Somalia. You can learn more and even listen to a news broadcast about smallpox on the NPR web site at http://goo.gl/Rk3guG. I have to wonder what “strange ideas” we have about medicine today will be considered ridiculous by our descendants 200 years from now. Sally Rolls Pavia [email protected] List Owner: [email protected] Archives: http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/index/GENEALOGYBITSANDPIECES "Our Soldiers are one of our greatest assets!"