What I am about to share with you is an amazing story of how a disease even deadlier than the COVID-19 was eradicated from the face of the earth using the medical knowledge of the 1700s. Yes, the story of Small Pox.

Hotspots of the Virus in the Human Body


Just like today's pandemic, an even more, deadlier virus broke out in the African continent. 30% of people who contracted the disease, died in less than 2 weeks. The virus attacked Skin Cells, Spleen, Lymph Nodes and Bone Marrow. Survivors had scars on their bodies for the rest of their life. This disease spread so rapidly that it killed more than 500 million people.



But, a Buddhist monk tried something different, she noticed that people who survived Small Pox never contacted it again, so she took a little amount of the virus from an infected person and injected it into healthy people through their nose so that the body's immune system could easily outperform the little amount of injected virus and would develop resistance to the future attacks of the same disease. This method seemed to work, 97% of patients she worked on, never contracted Smallpox ever again. Thus the method of Variolation evolved.


Monk Injecting vaccine

But this doesn't end here, many people with poorer immune systems who couldn't resist even a little amount of virus in their bodies were led to a gruesome death. Now starts the amazing story. One day a milkmaid visited Edward Jenner's house and in a conversation said,
  " I shall never have Small Pox, for I have had Cow Pox "
this statement would then be remembered as the most valuable verse in the history of medical science. Edward Jenner immediately started his study on Smallpox and Cowpox, he later found out that those viruses originated from a single family of viruses, and if one contracted Cowpox they would never contract Smallpox. He immediately started his medical test.

He used a sample of cowpox collected from the maid's body and injected it into her son's body, the very next day the maid's son contracted cowpox and was suffering from fever and illness, in less than a week he recovered. A week later, Edward Jenner injected Smallpox into the boy's body and noticed that he didn't contract the disease. He then concluded that people who caught cowpox would never catch smallpox. He then tested this on six adults and none of them contracted smallpox. This very method helped us eradicate smallpox from the face of the earth. Since our ancestors developed immunity towards the disease, we inherited it genetically. 

Edward Jenner Injecting Cowpox to James Phipps (BlueMarks - Cowpox)

Edward Jenner Injecting SmallPox to James Phipp ( Red Marks - Smallpox)

This method from history might help us eradicate Corona by injecting a weaker strain of Corona Virus into healthy people thereby forming immunity to the mutated virus. The human body then produces antibodies against the virus and thereby not letting the Corona Virus infect new cells of the body. But, right now medical science prohibits the usage of Variolation. But if the situation demands History has to repeat itself.

Please do leave your valuable comments below.

Sources :
TedEd - How we conquered the deadly SmallPox https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqUFy-t4MlQ