Prevention of Disease Flashcards
All 14 cards in this deck
What did the Royal Jennerian Society do?
It made smallpox vaccination freely available, so prevention could take place on a wide scale.
What did Edward Jenner develop?
Vaccination against smallpox, using cowpox, which made it possible to prevent people getting smallpox.
How did the public and Parliament show acceptance of Jenner's work?
Parliament gave him a grant, and there was public recognition of the improvement in preventing illness.
True or false? Jenner could explain scientifically why his smallpox vaccination worked.
False. He could not explain how it worked; Pasteur's Germ Theory (1861) later provided the scientific explanation.
What was smallpox inoculation, used in Britain from the 1720s?
Deliberately infecting a healthy person with matter from a smallpox sore, so they caught a mild case and became immune. It was risky (some died) and costly.
What experiment did Jenner carry out on James Phipps in 1796?
He gave the boy cowpox, then later exposed him to smallpox. Phipps did not catch smallpox, supporting Jenner's idea that cowpox gave protection.
How did Jenner make his findings public in 1798?
The Royal Society refused to publish them, so he paid to publish his own book, An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae.
Give one reason some people opposed Jenner's vaccination.
Any one: inoculators feared losing the money they earned; some thought giving people a disease from cows was unnatural; some believed it went against God's will.
Who introduced smallpox inoculation to Britain in the 1720s?
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who had seen it used in Turkey and had her own children inoculated.
True or false? Vaccination was safer than inoculation because it could not give the patient smallpox.
True. Jenner used cowpox, a mild disease, whereas inoculation used smallpox matter and could kill the patient.
When did the British government make smallpox vaccination compulsory?
1853 — a significant step, because governments at the time favoured laissez-faire.
When was smallpox declared eradicated from the world?
1980, by the World Health Organisation.
Where does the word 'vaccination' come from?
From vacca, Latin for cow, because the method used cowpox, which Jenner called variolae vaccinae ('smallpox of the cow').
How did a failed London trial of vaccination help Jenner's opponents?
At the London Smallpox Hospital, William Woodville and George Pearson used cowpox matter contaminated with smallpox, so patients fell ill and one died, which critics used as evidence that vaccination was dangerous.