The belief that people can become ‘immune’ to a disease after an exposure to that disease dates back many centuries. For example, the Greek historian Thucydides, who was a contemporary of Hippocrates, is reported to have claimed that people who survived the plague of Athens were not later re-infected by the same disease.
This early belief developed into the idea that a mild form of any disease provides ‘protection’ against a more serious ‘attack’ of the same disease; it also inspired the creation of different methods to induce the ‘mild’ form of the disease; one of these methods was the practice of ‘inoculation’, or variolation as it was also called.
Although credited as the originator of ‘vaccination’, Edward Jenner is not to be credited as the originator of inoculation, which was practised in various places around the world many centuries before he was born. Some sources credit the Chinese as the originators of the practice of variolation during the 10th century.
Inoculation, the precursor of vaccination, was introduced into England in the early 18th century, which was a period when illness was often interpreted by reference to local traditions or superstitions and invariably ‘treated’ with a wide variety of crude methods and toxic substances as discussed in the previous chapter.
The practice of inoculation involved taking some ‘matter’, in other words ‘pus’, from the pustules or sores of a person suffering from the disease and introducing that ‘matter’ into the bloodstream of a healthy person via a number of deliberately made cuts on their arms or legs. However, prior to inoculation, patients had to undergo other procedures, such as ‘dieting, purging and bleeding’, that were administered by physicians. At that period of time, inoculation was exclusively a custom of the middle and upper classes, as they were the only people who could afford the services of a physician.
The following extract is from the 1885 book entitled The Story of a Great Delusion by William White; it provides a revealing description of the state of ‘medicine’ in the early 18th century in England when inoculation was first introduced.
“Those who fancy there could be any wide or effective resistance to inoculation in 1721 misapprehend the conditions of the time. There was no scientific knowledge of the laws of health; diseases were generally regarded as mysterious dispensations of Providence over which the sufferers had little control; and a great part of medicine was a combination of absurdity with nastiness. It would not be difficult to compile a series of recipes from the pharmacopoeia of that day which would alternately excite amusement, surprise, and disgust, and to describe medical practice from which it is marvellous that ever patient escaped alive; but so much must pass without saying. Suffice it to assert, that to inoculation there was little material for opposition, rational or irrational; and that what we might think the natural horror of transfusing the filth of smallpox into the blood of health, was neutralised by the currency of a multitude of popular remedies which seemed to owe their fascination to their outrageous and loathsome characteristics.”
The practice of inoculation also appeared in America in the early 18th century, courtesy of Cotton Mather. It is reported that he learned of the practice from his Sudanese slave.
The English medical establishment of the 18th century was generally supportive of inoculation, despite the complete absence of any ‘scientific evidence’ for its efficacy or safety. Dr Beddow Bayly explains in his booklet, The Case Against Vaccination, that inoculations frequently caused the disease they were supposed to prevent. He also discusses the introduction in 1721 of inoculation, which,
“…being acclaimed by the Royal College of Physicians as ‘highly salutary to the human race’, was assiduously carried out until 1840, when, on account of the disastrous spread of smallpox which resulted, it was made a penal offence.”
The Royal College of Physicians was considered a prestigious organisation, but those who were responsible for their policies had clearly failed to undertake a genuine scientific investigation of the practice of inoculation. As Dr Beddow Bayly explains, inoculation was discontinued in England in 1840; it was however, fully replaced by vaccination. But vaccination was based on exactly the same unproven theory, which is that the introduction of noxious matter into the bloodstream of an otherwise healthy person would provide ‘protection’ from smallpox.
The influence of Paracelsus and his belief that ‘poisons’ can create health is clearly discernible.
The only difference between inoculation and vaccination is that the former introduced ‘matter’ taken from the pustules of a person suffering with smallpox and the latter introduced ‘matter’ taken from the pustules of a cow suffering with cowpox.
The origin of the word vaccinate is from the Latin for cow.
